Regarding the preferences of Sofirn:
I have some history in negotiating designs with Sofirn, and despite them being one of the more innovative flashlight companies, they have a very strong preference for what technology they already have in-house. You can not blame them because developing new things is high risk for a small company. But a very important part is that Sofirn does not have a real clue what features are valuable and which are unimportant, they are afraid to develop stuff that may not sell. Unlike Emisar that has a flashoholic overseeing the designs (Hank), and I expect Nightwatch to get feedback from Neal, Sofirn does not have an inhouse flashlight fanatic that sees the value of design decisions.
But they did build the lantern which has many completely new concepts for Sofirn. This has worked because the long-term determination of DBSAR and a huge interest list convinced them to do so. Now that they have acquired the new technology they will use it elsewhere, so afterwards they do see the advantage of development.
Now about the hidden USB port: I bugged them about that before for use in a âgrandma lightâ (18650, both USB-C-charging and a magnetic ring UI), and I got the same message: difficult and expensive. What they do not know is that if they manage to design it in a proper way (robust, elegant and convenient), they have a winner in house: very useful and flashoholics will love it.
(same goes for magnetic ring control of small flashlights, they use it on their diving lights but it needs to be made smaller for use on EDCâs, infinite variable is not even needed to make it very popular. Sofirn is very hesitant to go that way)
So my advice is not to always listen to what Sofirn thinks is feasable, if as a flashoholic you (and BLF) are sure that a feature is a very good idea, keep convincing them that it is the right thing to do; they will not have the knowledge to judge how important the design features are, you will have to point that out for them: which feature is an unimportant wish, which one is desirable but negotiable, and which features are essential no matter what. And maybe they need time and a long interest list to be pushed over the edge.
If Sofirn gets their way too much, a compromise flashlight will result (the SP70) that is in between pretty nice and meh. But if they get constant feedback and redirection by someone or a skilled team that knows what they are doing, you get very good new products.