Last month Google released their Android 13 Developer Preview, giving us a sneak peak into what Google has in the works for the next version of Android. Among the many new features in Android 13, Google is reportedly testing the ability to control the brightness of the device’s rear flashlight.
While the ability to toggle the flashlight on an Android device has existed for many years, it was only added to the AOSP version of Android in 2014 with Android 5.0. Although, this feature only allowed users to toggle their flagship between on and off, without any way of controlling the level of brightness.
Apple and Samsung have offered the ability to control the flashlight brightness levels for quite a while. The feature is reportedly now being tested in the Developer Preview of Android 13, which is evident from the two new additions to the CameraManager API, namely TorchStrengthLevel and turnOnTorchWithStrengthLevel. With these additions, apps can get more granular control of the device’s flashlight brightness level.
A thing to note is that this feature may not be available on all Android devices, as there are a couple of software and hardware requirements that OEMs need to meet with their implementation of Android. If the feature does arrive with the stable version of Android 13, hopefully many manufacturers will implement it in their devices.