Android 13 will be introduced later this year and it looks like a potentially very useful new feature will be included in this version. Esper editor Mishaal Rahman says he’s found several impressive API additions in Android 13 code, such as getTorchStrengthLevel and turnOnTorchWithStrengthLevel. These, as the names might suggest, allow for customizing the brightness of the flashlight on Android phones.
Currently, on most pure Android (and some other) phones the flashlight feature can only be set to on – off and it is not possible to change how bright it is. However, based on these API additions, it seems likely that this capability will be available with Android 13.
Of course, you’ll still be limited by how bright the LED camera flash on your phone can actually be, which will vary from device to device. However, at the very least, you will be offered better control over a feature that almost everyone can say is used.
However, this Android update does not seem to be coming to every device that will receive Android 13. In fact, it may only apply to phones that ship with pure Android 13, not devices that have been upgraded to the update. This is because the feature also requires an update to the camera hardware abstraction layer (HAL).
Of course, some phones like the Samsung Galaxy have had this feature for years. That’s why the phones that are related to the news are models that work with pure Android, as we said above. These include Google’s own Pixel phones.
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