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Comment by yaomtc | Hacker News Reader

> Even the simplest things, like a 'torch' are ad-supported on android these days.

This has a built-in feature on every smartphone for years now. These apps are a scam.

Is there a standard way to get at "turn the screen white and the brightness up"? I used to have a torch app that had that mode (presumably, lower power than driving the flash LED), along with a few others (like a night-vision-preserving red screen).

Hardly the most challenging app in the world, but it was worth the $.99 I paid for it. I probably could have written it myself, and while I personally would likely have made it free, I felt ok giving somebody a tiny tip for it.

There is http://www.openintents.org/flashlight/

And other apps in the OI family. Not sure whether they've been updated for current Android versions.

App stores should really prevent these type of no value add apps.

And after that you will say big giant tech companies controlling our businesses.

It's a tough problem. Unconstrained market is a cesspool. Somebody needs to set some limits - the question is, who and what.

App store monopoly and monopsony status is a seperate (albeit related) problem from app stores having no or shitty quality control. If a non-monop'y app store wants to control peoples' business... well, they can't; people will just use a different app store; that's the point.

I guess it was a mere rhetorical artifice to mean "if not useless, of very scarse added value".

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