Because NDT-forbid that every single light have it’s emitter driven to the ragged edge of it’s operating envelope.
An emitter’s output is a parabolic curve. As you increase output, it takes more and more energy to get the next lumen. It’s the law of diminishing returns. By using several emitters driven less harshly they can get a higher net efficiency from the torch, thus yielding a longer runtime for a given output setting.
I’m not an electronics expert, but could you even push any kind of real output from three emitters with 4 AA batteries? Even if you could, wouldn’t it be a pathetic run time? I for one like the idea of a decent balance between output and run time from a form factor like this one. Hopefully they aren’t driving them too hard.
All I can see is the introduction of a point of failure, whoops droped my torch Sh the screens broken, talk about the Iphone of torches, this for me is a definite unnecessary weak point, your paying extra for something less rugged, no way would I ever own one.
I’m with fartybum, it just seems a little too gimmiky to me, kind of cool to show off and a bit startrek looking but not something I’d like to use, anyone used a touch screen phone in the rain? it soon ends up in your pocket as the screen gets confused.
Ha, where I live, I have to go out of my way to hike in the rain. Out of thousands of backpacking miles, I've hiked fewer hours in the rain than I can count on both hands, and half of that is because I went out of the way to get the experience. The chance of me hiking in the rain while needing to use a flashlight is about as likely as a zombie apocalypse. I definitely wouldn't bring a light that huge out on long backpacking trips, and if I brought it on shorter trips or car camping, I'd probably have a couple other lights as backups. If that button on the other side controls on/off, then the light is good enough (on paper) for what I'd use a light that size for.
Modern phones use a capacitive multi-touch type touchscreen. The lights almost certainly use a old-style resistive touch screen… immune to wet screens and don’t require bare skin to activate.