Android 13 will let you adjust the brightness of your flashlight
With how good low-light photography has gotten on phones, people find themselves using their LED flash as a flashlight more than a, well, flash. It’s easy to just take out your phone, pull down the notification shade, and tap the flashlight icon to turn your phone into a flashlight. However, one thing some people have wanted was the ability to adjust the brightness. Sometimes, people don’t want their flashlight to be at full brightness all the time. This is where new APIs in Android 13 come in handy. As discovered by Esper blog, Android 13 may let you adjust your flashlight’s brightness. Even though the developer preview is currently out, no one enabled the feature just yet. Rather, users see the strings for this hidden deep within Android 13’s code. Screenshots of the code show several strings with labels such as “s_getTorchStrengthLevel” which implies that the flashlight is referred to as the torch. It also implies that there will be different strength levels to the flashlight.
This may not be for all Android 13 devices.
Right now, things are up in the air. While the strings do exist in Android 13, no one can really say if this feature will, indeed, launch. Google has not enabled the feature just yet. Not only that but this code was only spotted on the Pixel 6 Pro. This points to the fact that the feature may only be on the Pixel 6 pro. This would make sense as a marketing stunt to help bring people to team pixel, but it would leave out the base Pixel 6 model. If Google made this feature exclusive to the Pro model it probably wouldn’t be as much of a surprise. The same thing could be happening with face unlock. The Android 12L beta for the Pixel 6 pro has strings pointing to face unlock being enabled. However, that’s only for the pro variant. Right now, people continue to find hints to new features and additions in the Android 13 developer preview. As the beta testing stage gets closer, we should all get more insight into the flashlight feature and many more.
