• pyromaster55@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A decent flashlight.

    A streamlight stylus pro is $20, uses 2 AAA batteries, is barely bigger than a pen, and can be an absolute life saver. It produces way more light and throws it way further than your phone’s light, and I’ve been carrying the same one every day for nearly 15 years now with no signs of it failing. I use it nearly daily in my personal and professional life, you will genuinely wonder how you manages without it if you make it a habit of carrying it.

    Or go nuts and get yourself a something like a surefire G2. Bigger, heavier, but more durable and incredibly bright.

      • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        yeah I don’t doubt that a dedicated flashlight is miles better than my phone, but I rarely need a flashlight at all, and the times I do 99% of the time my phone is more than sufficient. I don’t want to carry something around all the time just so that in the rare occasion I do need it it’s marginally better (from a purely practical perspective) than what I was already going to have with me. When I need a flashlight, it’s because something fell under a piece of furniture, or the lights went out in a room - it’s never a scenario when i need to be able to light up a field or something

      • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        The phone flashlight is barely adequate for some uses, but like a lot of stuff on a phone has some serious compromises. YMMV if that matters to you. For me, I find it’s really hard to hold a phone when I need a flashlight and hit where I need the light, whereas a more traditional flashlight doesn’t take up an entire hand exactly - you can grip it with like 2 fingers or in your teeth, or under your arm etc. Hard to describe but try it without getting the phone to thing you’re trying to turn the flashlight off. (I might suck at using smartphones though).

        But worst than that, it’s got a really short throw and isn’t that bright. It might be me just getting older, but I’ve found a “real flashlight” like a “real camera” makes a world of difference. I have some cheap Anker one I got as a gift which is like 10 times brighter and throws probably 100 times as far as my smartphone. I have to imagine new “high end” ones are much better.

        I also recently got a “improved phone light” off of tech dirt and I probably overpaid, look on Temu to save money. But it clips to my SAK, or keys, it’s a lot brighter, it has a fold out stand and a magnet and is pretty tiny.

        Again - if you don’t ever curse out your phone as a flashlight, then you don’t need any of this, but if you regularly do (or just want to save your phones battery for something other than being a flashlight) - check some of these out.

    • Nioxic@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Ive needed a flash light once, in my life. When A fuse blew.

      But these days my phone has a flash light…