[jrdul6748]

'Nuff said.... and I don't care about battery life, I've got three different ways to charge my phone at all times for cryin' out loud!

P.S., I'm not a "developer," but you know what I mean. ;)

[whickie]

Usually flashes can't just be turned 'on'. A large capictor needs to be charged up first (which is why your hear the 'whine' on some flashes).

I don't think it's possible, but you could still try.

Will

[jrdul6748]

I see, I see... It's just that I've seen on some camera phones (most notably the Sony Ericsson Walkman series) have a flash on their camera that can be turned on as a flashlight, with a neat "SOS" feature.

[jfisher]

i could be wrong but i believe the sony walkman models actually use a couple of high powered white led's for the flash, this is why they can also be used as a torch (here in the uk that's what we call a flashlight :P). not sure if the pearl is the same but if they do use led's there's no reason they couldn't be used the same way; whether or not the api gives programmers access to control this is another matter, i'm porting an existing application to make use of pearls new trackpad this weekend, while i'm doing it i'll see if i can find the info needed and report back.

[jfisher]

had a quick look and i'm 90% sure this isn't supported.

[ifonline]

Originally Posted by whickie

Usually flashes can't just be turned 'on'. A large capictor needs to be charged up first (which is why your hear the 'whine' on some flashes).

I don't think it's possible, but you could still try.

Will

Flashes (speedlights) can't be "turned on." The only option, like my Nikon SB-800 does, is to rapidly cycle the flash unit so that the quick bursts of flash almost appear as a continuous light source. Of course, I highly doubt that the BlackBerry has the ability to do this, as it takes some serious hardware abilities to rapidly flash in this manner. Even then, the SB-800, for example, runs out of juice quickly and can only rapid flash for about 8 bursts or so before it has to stop and refresh. Additionally, the rapid burst generate so much heat that the SB-800 will shut down if this action is performed too many times too quickly.

End result... won't happen.

[dyzs]

It's an LED, there should be no reason why it can't be used as a flashlight. Have a look at the Nokia 5100 and 5140 models, they both use an LED as a flashlight. This is actually an intentional feature of the phone.

[nuopus]

Originally Posted by ifonline

Flashes (speedlights) can't be "turned on." The only option, like my Nikon SB-800 does, is to rapidly cycle the flash unit so that the quick bursts of flash almost appear as a continuous light source. Of course, I highly doubt that the BlackBerry has the ability to do this, as it takes some serious hardware abilities to rapidly flash in this manner. Even then, the SB-800, for example, runs out of juice quickly and can only rapid flash for about 8 bursts or so before it has to stop and refresh. Additionally, the rapid burst generate so much heat that the SB-800 will shut down if this action is performed too many times too quickly.

End result... won't happen.

Yes yes I know its a reply to an old post. LOL But the Pearls flash is not a XENON flash. It is just an LED light that would have no problem staying on if it was supported software wise.

[proFeign]

Originally Posted by nuopus

Yes yes I know its a reply to an old post. LOL But the Pearls flash is not a XENON flash. It is just an LED light that would have no problem staying on if it was supported software wise.

Nuopus, you're absolutely right.

That thing about the capacitor is totally inaccurate. While I don't know the schematic for inside the phone the LED stays on for far too long to be a capacitor discharging, and anyway the only reason that guy thinks there's a capacitor is he's confusing conventional Xenon flashes with this LED "flash" which really is just a probably ~1 watt white LED. The only reason to have a capacitor is to use a AA (1.5 volts) to build up a massive amount of high-voltage charge because a xenon flash won't work at low voltages. This is not the case with LEDs, which can run from about .5-9 volts directly, and a broader range with resistors or step downs.

There is no reason it should not work off the battery directly, and the phone battery should drive it for maybe two or three hours on a full charge. So a few moments of light here and there wouldn't hurt your battery life too bad. I really want a flashlight app and I'm really surprised one isn't included.

The app probably only needs to be "prompt ledflash=on" or something like that. Would be sweet to have as a convenience key option.

Anybody write one yet?

[jfisher]

this just isn't possible, there's currently no way for programmers to manipulate the flash. it would be a minor and welcome change though (if it is just an led and doesn't have any power issues), i'll put in a request but it'll be way down on the list of priorities.

[proFeign]

Originally Posted by jfisher

this just isn't possible, there's currently no way for programmers to manipulate the flash. it would be a minor and welcome change though (if it is just an led and doesn't have any power issues), i'll put in a request but it'll be way down on the list of priorities.

Cool. I hope they do get around to it in a firmware upgrade or something. Is there no way to write a "camera" app that just co-opts the flash and sends an on/off command based on button presses but does not write any image data?

And it's for sure an LED; white LEDs have a distinct yellow hue to the die, which you can see. It comes from them being made essentially as a blue LED with a sulfur cap (yellow) over the blue die. Most all white LEDs look yellow like that when off. Especially the higher-powered ones. Mine has a nice soft white hue. White LEDs tend toward the blue end but they chose well with this one. A bluish flash would f- up fleshtones really bad in pictures.

[John Clark]

RIM has to allow access to it via their API's. Until RIM does that there's no way developers can have access to it. It's possible they will allow access in the future. I've seen lots of things that were inaccessible to developers in the past showing up in 3rd party apps of today.

[Ominx]

Has there been any progress on this? With OS 4.3, the video recording app alows the LED flash to remain on. I would think this would be rather simple to implement provided RIM has opened up the API.

Just a little bump in case there have been recent developments.

[Kyos]

Mine froze other night with the light on. lol
Had to pull the battery.

[lil ash]

how do you turn off the camera led mine is stuck on... I have no idea how i got it on but it has been on for 3 days

[Dan East]

Did you pull the battery to reset it?