As mentioned in a recent blog post regarding my app download numbers, the app Flashlight is one of my most successful ones (in terms of download numbers).

I am not particularly proud of that fact, since I basically wrote and submitted this app to the Windows Phone Store within two hours or so. The reason for that was an app development contest held by Microsoft Austria in which people submitting the most apps within a given time frame could win stuff. Taking part in this contest, I created a couple of apps and won a Nokia Lumia 800 (which was a totally awesome phone, I would probably still use if it had not been for the Windows Phone 7.8 / 8 fiasco).

Long story short: Flashlight was a quick and easy app, I usually wouldn’t bother mentioning any more. But since it got downloaded quite often, I thought it finally deserved some love and provided an update for it.

So here’s what changed in version 2.0.

Application Icon

Every decent Windows Phone app should have an icon which fits into this ecosystem (meaning: metro style). The icon I was using for version 1 clearly did not satisfy that condition:

So I switched to a newer and nicer metro style icon:

Colors and Shapes

Version 1 of Flashlight had only one option: Dimming a white screen to black and vice versa. I thought it would be fun to add a touch of color there and added a selection feature for the actual flashlight color. There is also some pretty neat animation going on when this color selection menu pops up or closes. This is done using a custom control I developed called TileMenu, which I will introduce it in a later blog post.

Additionally, you can also select from a variety of shapes to put on top of these colorful backgrounds (like stencils).

This feature allows you for example to … call Batman when in danger … or express your love :-)

Keeping it Real

Most importantly, Flashlight is still a plain and simple app, doing exactly what it should do. No adverts, no internet connection or geo location necessary, no BS – just a flashlight!