We have reviewed in the past both the Tesla LED and the Tiny Flashlight apps made by TeslaCoil Software and Nikolay Ananiev respectively. Now it is time to put them to the challenge and pick a winner among the two.
First, note that the version of Tesla LED reviewed earlier is 2.0.4. The app suffered some big improvements and is now at version 3.0.1. We will be referring to the latest (3.0.1) in this article. The other one – Tiny Flashlight – is the current (3.9.9.4).
Widgets
Both apps have a widget available that simply turns on the flash LED. They are both 1×1 in size. Both can be customized to look differently (they have a preset number of icons available). The only important difference is that the Tesla widget can be set to toggle (default), timed and strobe.
App feature differences
Compared to Tiny Flashlight, Tesla LED has the following:
- the LED can be set to strobe
- the LED can be set to turn off after a predefined time
- the LED can mimic Morse code (by default SOS, but can be set to transmit any message)
- it does not have any advertisements
Compared to Tesla LED, Tiny Flashlight has the following:
- warning lights
- displays the remaining battery
- can display a certain color and brightness across the screen
Handling and usefulness
These are utility apps, therefore the main thing they do (turn on the LED) must be done right and other features (such as warning lights, police lights) are of little importance.
A plus for Tesla LED is the notification message that appears when the LED is turned on. This allows you to turn on the light and be able to turn it off regardless of the app you are using. On Tiny Flashlight there is no such notification so if you turn your LED on, you can only turn it off by reaching the widget or opening the application again.
Tiny Flashlight is a little snappier when turning on the LED via the widget. Tesla has a little lag (probably because of the notification feature).
Turning off the phone’s screen (locking) to preserve the battery has different results on both apps: on Tesla, the LED turns off for about 1 second and then turns on again. Unfortunately, on Tiny Flashlight it turns off and stays off. The best thing would logically be to keep it on constantly.
Conclusion
The winner among these two apps is in our opinion Tesla LED.
We did not find any use for the warning lights, police lights or other colors so we ignored those. The notification message used by Tesla LED is a useful feature, also the fact that the LED is kept on if we turn the screen off is also good. Tiny Flashlight + LED, apart from being a little faster when turning on the LED does not have anything else above Tesla. And it has ads.