The iPhone 4 has an LED flash for use when snapping photos or shooting videos. So it didn’t take long for developers to come out with third party apps that can keep that LED light on indefinitely, turning it into a flashlight. We’ve seen similar apps for Android devices for a while now.
What’s interesting, as Engadget points out, is that Apple has a tendency to boot apps from the App Store if they come up with a way to use an iPhone’s hardware that Apple doesn’t explicitly support. But Apple seems to be cool with these flashlight apps.
Gizmodo has a roundup of several of the new flashlight apps. Some cost about a buck or so, while others are free and ad-supported. Meanwhile if you want to kill two birds with one stone and check out the new Apple iAds platform while you’re shining your light, you might want to check out LED Light for iPhone 4 Free from developer Jason Ting — who apparently made nearly $1400 in one day from this free, ad-supported app. Somehow I suspect the click-through rate and eCPM from iAds will start to decline once the platform ages a bit.
