A flashlight is a utilitarian object by definition. It turns on, it shines, it turns off. There is no way for it to be editorial, no way for it to have voice, no way for it to have style. A flashlight is a flashlight. That is the standard argument. Lanterna BLA disagrees. Most flashlight apps on the App Store have shown that the digital object turned into something else a long time ago. It turned into ad space, into a login request, into a disco mode, into Premium on monthly subscription. Calling that a flashlight is being generous. Lanterna BLA is what is left when you remove all of it and keep only the light. From there, you can do editorial work on top of what remains.
The first decision is what is NOT there. No ads, in any format. No login, not even to save a preference. No data collection, not even anonymous. No subscription, not monthly, not yearly, not with a trial. No usage tracking. No analytics. No call to a proprietary server, because there is no proprietary server. The only permission the app asks for is camera, and it is used exclusively to control the iPhone’s rear flash, which is the only way Apple offers for a flashlight app to work. No image is captured at any moment. The rule is simple. BLA apps only ask for what they need to work, and Lanterna BLA needs camera. Nothing else.
The second decision is the curation of the presets. A common flashlight offers fifty modes with no criterion, from a disco strobe to a random SOS to a simulated UV light. Lanterna BLA offers six. Late-night bathroom, minimal brightness, warm amber light, so you can go and come back without waking the house. Don’t wake anyone, low red light for whoever has someone sleeping nearby, a baby in the crib, a partner on a different schedule. Looking for something, firm soft white light for finding the dropped key or rummaging through a suitcase in an unfamiliar room. Dark room, warm and calm, for low reading before bed or crossing the house without turning on the ceiling. Emergency, everything at maximum, camera and screen on, for when you need light, not elegance. SOS, which blinks in international Morse code so you can be seen from far away. Six concrete scenes, each with brightness, color and duration thought through for real use. You tap, the light comes on. Tap again, it goes off. The names are not decoration. Each one was written to say where that light fits.
The third decision is the SOS. Most flashlight apps have an SOS mode that blinks at random, in a decorative rhythm, with no relation to real Morse code. Lanterna BLA does not. The SOS is three short, three long, three short, in the international Morse code pattern, with the timing of ITU-R M.1677-1, in loop. Rescue workers recognize it. Military personnel recognize it. Pilots recognize it. Sailors recognize it. People who have never seen it learn it. In a real emergency, the detail matters. In a non-real situation, it also matters, because a flashlight app that does a real SOS is an app that respects what it is doing.
The fourth decision is the fixed night theme. The other apps in the BLA family have three selectable themes in Settings: Areia BLA, Tinta, Papel. The flashlight does not have that choice. The background is charcoal, in the night color defined in BLA’s palette, in every situation. When the light is off, the app is charcoal. When the light is on in screen mode, the background becomes the color of the preset, in warm tones that preserve night vision. When the light is on in camera mode, the background stays charcoal, because the light is coming from the iPhone’s rear flash, not from the screen. There is no light theme option. Turning on a white screen at night becomes a headlight in your face. The decision is single, and it is firm.
The fifth decision is the model. No subscription, no recurring charges, no in-app purchases. You download. You use. No renewal pop-up, no trial timer, no hidden paywall, no ads funding it underneath. Lanterna does not need to charge you or squeeze you: BLA makes custom apps for companies, from zero to the store, and its own apps are the showcase of that. You use it, and the app asks nothing else of you.
The sentence that organizes everything is Ivan Grycuk’s, founder and director of BLA. Lanterna BLA is a nighttime flashlight for iPhone that turns on fast and does not wake anyone up. The five decisions above are direct consequences of that sentence. Turning on fast means opening the app with no onboarding, no login, no permission box in the way. Not waking anyone means a fixed night theme, presets curated for silence, no victory sound, no flashy haptic, no notification. Every piece of the app sits where it sits to answer that sentence. Every piece that was left out, was left out for the same reason.
Lanterna BLA is on the App Store, at bla.vc/apps/lanterna. You download. You open. You tap. The light comes on in two seconds. One more tap, it goes off. There are widgets for the Lock Screen and the Home Screen, to turn the light on without opening the app. There is a timer to shut itself off. There is intensity adjustable when the device supports it. That is it. Everything in charcoal, everything in silence, everything to keep you from waking anyone up. A flashlight without noise.
