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Flashlight

nextappsgen

nextappsgen

Well-Known Member
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The Flashlight is a reliable, convenient and free illuminate app.
With one touch you instantly turns your device into the brightest flashlight!

This illuminate application has a simple and user-friendly interface containing only the necessary things and shows remaining battery percentage.
The most essential illuminate app for every Android device!

With this the brightest flashlight, you can do:
- Change the bubble or repair car at night
- Light your house during a power outage
- Open doors in low light
- Illuminate the way when hiking
- Find your keys in the dark
- Read an interesting book at night
- Control remaining battery percentage

Features：
- Intuitive and elegant design
- Launch it and get light instantly by pressing one button
- The brightest light
- Small size
- Torch works when screen is turned off or locked
- No camera permission needed for torch on devices with Android version more than 6.0
- Easy and fast to use torch
- Shows remaining battery percentage


Google Play link

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bcrichster said:
Just curious, is there anything that makes this flashlight app different from the others in the play store? I really like flashlight apps, so I'm interested..
Click to expand...
Seems similar to many others. It has a small footprint and the permissions are only what a flashlight app needs. As for the "network connections", it needs that perm to display google ads.
 
Agreed. Friggin google adds that perm automatically as soon as they detect the admob code. If we use an ad network outside of google, then we must add the perm ourselves to the manifest or the app will crash. That's big brother googs for ya.
 
Could be a good app for phones that don't have native flashlight function.

Really like the built-in flashlight of my old HTC phone (2012), it even has three levels of luminosity, a feature that most of phones lack.
 
But this just adds to the conundrum -- flashlight apps have a documented history for privacy issues but the '...Permissions allowing Networking for ads' issue is a very valid one. Currently there's the big problem for independent developers -- either charging a fee for an app, or keeping it free but with ads to at least generate some funding.
And it's completely unfair to bring any of this up on this thread really. There's no definitive evidence this particular flashlight app should be maligned in any way. My apologies to @nextappsgen
 
Hadron said:
Why does it need to view network connections?

The permissions aren't as bad as flashlight apps often have, but it wasn't obvious to me why that one was needed.
Click to expand...

Admob that showing ads in app required network connections and internet. Unfortunately, Google has not yet figured out how to show ads without the Internet
 
bcrichster said:
Just curious, is there anything that makes this flashlight app different from the others in the play store? I really like flashlight apps, so I'm interested..
Click to expand...
The main advantage of this Flashlight - is that camera permissions are not requested when the android version is more than 6.0.
All flashlight applications that I have seen on market use this permission and have access to your camera.
Although with the advent of a new api for androids > 6.0 this permission is no longer needed. Flash starts from this version is no longer depends on the camera.
 
nextappsgen said:
Admob that showing ads in app required network connections and internet. Unfortunately, Google has not yet figured out how to show ads without the Internet
Click to expand...
Ha ha. There is a difference between "full internet access" and "view network connections". It's obvious why the first is needed for ads, it's not obvious why the second is.

Google do however love to require permissions that are not technically needed, or link things that have no good need to be linked, so once AdMob was mentioned it became believable.
 
nextappsgen said:
The main advantage of this Flashlight - is that camera permissions are not requested when the android version is more than 6.0.
All flashlight applications that I have seen on market use this permission and have access to your camera.
Although with the advent of a new api for androids > 6.0 this permission is no longer needed. Flash starts from this version is no longer depends on the camera.
Click to expand...
Why not make it ad free? Nobody wants ads, and In My Opinion, this makes this flashlight app no different than the million others. You see, many ppl live in horrible cell service area and/or have extremely limited data pkgs that make your phone usage extremely difficult. No offense, but on the aspect of having ads.. I'm a little disenfranchised with it. I believe: do the community a favor and make apps without ads or you probably won't have much of a product pitch..
 
nextappsgen said:
The main advantage of this Flashlight - is that camera permissions are not requested when the android version is more than 6.0
Click to expand...
As a developer I wouldn't pitch this as an advantage since it doesn't deduct or add value to the end user. An advantage or feature is something more tangible like something user can use within the app(ie. other themes).

Your app does seem to be nice and compact. I think it'll do well on the play store. ;)

nextappsgen said:
Unfortunately, Google has not yet figured out how to show ads without the Internet
Click to expand...
There's really nothing to figure out here. To serve ads, internet is really the only way.

There's hundreds of thousands of advertisers across multiple ad networks. Without serving them from the internet it would have to be stored on user devices and updated regularly. This would take up an obscene amount of space on a device. So internet is the only way.

Hadron said:
There is a difference between "full internet access" and "view network connections". It's obvious why the first is needed for ads, it's not obvious why the second is.
Click to expand...
Google needs to do a better job to make these permissions obvious to the end user. They've improved, but not quite there yet.

View network connections is more of a status permission to determine if there is an internet connection and if so, is it data or wifi. This allows the dev to disable features on data to save data for the user. Can also be used to disable features when there is no internet to save battery.
 
GameTheory said:
View network connections is more of a status permission to determine if there is an internet connection and if so, is it data or wifi. This allows the dev to disable features on data to save data for the user. Can also be used to disable features when there is no internet to save battery.
Click to expand...
Thank you for that extremely clear description of why that permission is used (and can be a good thing).
 
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