Agreed toddcshoe. I am after features to do with light…not other crap that is going to drain the battery. I am into hypermiling battery life.
Maybe a grip safety like 1911’s have. A safety that we have to turn off but is easily and quickly accomplished. Grip safety on a 1911 is just one of the safety’s but it is in a place that we have to purposely grip to fire that weapon.
Could an inductive switch be used that monitors the impedance or other parameters and be able to tell when we grip it. That would be cool, the light couldn’t come on at all until held by a human hand.
With LEDs now available for 95-98 CRI we’re getting pretty close to optimal in one of my favorite aspects.
There is nothing in the pipeline regarding any radically new battery technology, so don’t hold your breath for that.
What’s left (regarding what I think really matters) is heat management. Why are there so few new lights with active cooling? Being able to maintain really high output for more than seconds should be #1 in development priorities.
Strongly disagree, dedoming the LH351D makes the tint (and IMO temp too) much better and gives a throwier profile that many are looking for. SST-40 and XHP50B gain quite a bit of throw from dedoming too AFAIK. All three are very easy to slice. I am very glad to be seeing far more stock domeless emitters though.
I doubt we’ll see battery improvements anywhere near that in flashlight-size cells anytime soon. Lots of R&D has already gone into li-ion tech for mobile electronics over the last 20 years, and there are physical limits to the energy density.
Agree 1000% with tint/CRI/beam over raw output. It’ll be a while till the less “enthusiast” market catches up (Olight, Klarus, etc) but LED manufacturers are REALLY advancing in this area due to demand for retail and grocery stores, etc.
The problem I see with that is it could limit how you hold the light, I use some really funky grips with my side switch lights and I could see that being a problem. Maybe it would have a “time limit” where you could activate the light within X seconds of pressing the safety?
I think something like one of these:
would be easy to design, especially for bigger lights where size/profile of the cover isn’t an issue. Would be a simple matter to make them easily removable too for people that don’t want them.
Really.
Battery size ans capacity. Are the only real improvements left.
Everything else. Unless there’s a real breakthrough anywhere.
are all just incremental little twitches here and there.
I go from the Astrolux AO1 and a coupla $2.50 Pencil lights. up to
The Convoy L2/L6 and a SkyRay King 9 x LED.
With a few in between.
Apart from the massive spreaders and throwers.
There’s nothing really that does anything different.
and are more the specialist ranges.
Convoy. Astrolux. Sofurn, and a coupla others.
Quality and reliability is virtually as good as any on the market.
Regardless of price.
They all give warranty nowadays.
I’ve kept around 20/22. All the others.
I’ve either binned or gave away.
Those I kept.
MORE than cover the usage of 97% of people’s needs.
With multiples of each range.
Here in Aust. Torches are NOT a usual collectors item.
Most just look at me when I mention them.
WHAT?.
Even knives are the same.
They more into the Kitchen blades here “King of Knives”
stock is. 99.1% Kitchen. Remainder work/pocket/sheath.
Plus the few hunters nowadays.
That would be funny!
Why the flashlight industry and the off road lighting industry have not collided yet is beyond me. I am always on the look out for smaller much brighter off road lights without paying for Rigid or Baja Designs prices. Could you imagine the internals from the Imalent MS18W in a light bar that was only 18’’ long. How hard would it be to design a driver for a 12V vehicle system? 18 to 20 XHP emitters with an Anduril UI and a plug and play switch cord. You could have a flashlights UI ability combined with the light bars cooling capability. 100K?, 300K? of lighting all in a small package made by Astrolux or Sofirn. Or what about a remote magnetic search light with mad power and stable cooling. I’d pay 500+ for a budget 12V light bar that blew everything on the market away. I am currently working on a 6 100W emitter 12V to 32V drivers from Amazon and 6 parabolic reflectors from Stratusleds that are 114mm wide, I think its 63 dollars for three reflectors now. The output from each emitter is over 13000 lumens at around 29.5 volts. It’s been a year long gathering supplies and materials and when said and done should cost me 700 to 800 dollars. I figure for longevity to turn down the volts till I hit 12000 on each emitter with a total of 72,000 lumens of light. Way more then any light bar on the market that I know of. I was playing around and hooked one up to my Yetti 1000 while holding it against my workroom window and was shocked just how much light came from one emitter and parabolic reflector. I saw a You Tube Video of Stratusleds with something like 18 of there lights on top of a truck and the light output and range was just jaw dropping amazing so I decided to try and build a light bar with 6 0f then. I still cant figure out what to do for the housing but I’ll get there eventually.
Glycol or ammonia cooling radiators.
I always have a bottle of isopropyl/rubbing alcohol on hand at work and spray it on my lights when using them long enough to heat them up lol, for evaporative cooling it cant’ be beat!
“Why does my flashlight want to know my wifi password?”
Has everyone forgotten the fasttech custom t08 that had bluetooth? While i can imagine uses for a flashlight that has wifi, there are too many thing s that make it undesireable. It would be nice to have the ability to update new firmwares over usb, hut at this point that is moot since we have pretty much settled on standard driver sizes, so tat its even easier for us to just design new ones and do the driver swap
On-board power generation via mini fusion reactor, in a AA size light. (Might have to wait a decade or so.) 
So you want a steam powered flashlight?
Well we already have the HydraLight so this would simply be an evolution of that.
I expect more led efficiency and output
I see your point. Guess that might not be the wisest idea. Didn’t even think about different grip options. Doesn’t matter the gun, the firing hand has to grip every gun (modern pistols) about the same. I reckon flashlights have so many different ways to grip it that you couldn’t use a pistol safety as a comparison.
We could install a Clapper in the light. 
Anyone remember those? I imagine they still make them.
I’m fine with output and runtime of modern flashlights. I wish UIs were likewise satisfying as hardware and specs. Thinking of the Nitecore Tube, it has crappy hardware but an excellent UI that fits flashlight and purpose perfectly. Ramping, momentary, direct Lo and Hi, all easy to operate between thumb and pointer. At the same time there are f/l a thousand times brighter with not so well hidden strobe or impossible to find extra features(*) like beacon and other weak spots. Hate when you have to press a stiff button for a second to get that damn light off? I do. It feels as if companies have excellent hardware engineers and a similarily excellent facility manager that hates flashlights but does f/l concepts and UIs in his spare time at work because he was told to do so.
(*) Utorch S1 Mini: Love it, but you need to access Moon mode (long press from off) to jump to blinkies mode group and go through strobe and SOS to finally reach the beacon, imo the most useful blink-mode a flashlight could have (for e.g. securing accident spots)
I would like to see emitter technology grow but I do agree UI is also what makes or busts a light for me.
Toykeeper has done a fantastic job with Andúril and it’s by far my favourite software followed by narsil. Almost everything is so good with Andúril that it makes all other software painful to use.
My MF04s for example was a great light output wise but the ui was just clunky. You had to hold the power button for a second to turn it off and I hated it. I then bought a driver from Lexel and swapped it so the light now runs on Andúril and I love it.
The only things I’d wish to see change about Andúril is the time it takes to lockout and unlock a light but that comes with its own hurdles. A configurable sleep timer and fast aux led changes would make it even better.
LEP is going to get better my first W30 had a greenish tint. 6 months later my new one has a much much better tint.
PLB 26650 was for a while both the highest discharge and highest capacity cell of its size.
Same with Yong Deli 18350, its quality is lower than it was before but it’s still the king.
OK, there is simply not much competition at these sizes.
But 21700 for example?
Molicel M50A is clearly a high capacity cell but is 20A continuous discharge something to sneeze at?