12 apps · 2,314 reviews held · 735 negative · 2026-09-02 snapshot
Mostly solved: billing. 9 of 9 apps run below the store’s typical rate on it, while 12 of 12 still carry ads complaints.
Shares of this market’s 735 negative reviews.
29.5% vs 10.2% typical store-wide.
Counted in 217 reviews · 12 of 12 apps · 2.0star mean
Flashlight — My flashlight does not work anymore. Either the lights do weak you can’t see it or all I get are ads.
Flashlight — Way to many interrupting by stupid ads!!!
Why Ads — I don’t like Ads blocking my light
The tick marks the store-typical rate. A review can mention more than one theme, so these sum past 100%.
What Apple and Google complete after flashlight app, in their order.
Marked App Store phrases are searched, but no app in this market says them in its name. Audiences are what Apple and Google complete after “flashlight app for”, with the query stripped.
People the apps here do not serve, and what they asked for.
Counted in 1 to 4 star reviews. The small numbers are how many reviews named each thing. What they wrote is in the free trial.
All 12 apps counted in this market · 2026-09-02.
Installs are Google's own count. None of these apps has an Android listing we could match yet.
Prices from Apple’s public pages; the share counts payment-mechanics language only.
| App | Price | Tiers | Money complaints |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flashlight Ⓞfree | free | 1.7% of 175 | |
| Flashlight for iPhone + iPad$0.99–$7.99 · 10 tiers | $0.99–$7.99 | 0% of 102 | |
| Best Flash Light - Flashlight$0.99–$1.99 · 2 tiers | $0.99–$1.99 | 0% of 63 | |
| Flashlight ⊜$4.99–$4.99 · 1 tiers | $4.99–$4.99 | 0% of 40 | |
| Flashlight ×$5.99–$19.99 · 3 tiers | $5.99–$19.99 | 0% of 114 | |
| Flashlight ∎$4.99–$4.99 · 1 tiers | $4.99–$4.99 | 0% of 50 | |
| Flashlight ◯$7.99–$7.99 · 1 tiers | $7.99–$7.99 | 0% of 8 | |
| Flashlight •$0.99–$0.99 · 1 tiers | $0.99–$0.99 | 0% of 20 |
Owns. Largest captured sample; 133,271 ratings — real reach
Exposed. 67% negative; ads interrupt and kill the light mid-use
Owns. 30,637 ratings; no IAP so no paywall friction
Exposed. 60% negative; reliability failures, scam redirects reported
Owns. 43,789 ratings; relatively lower 25% negative
Exposed. Ads eventually degraded brightness and caused falls per receipts
Owns. Lite branding signals free-tier clarity
Exposed. 76% negative — highest anger; ads fire every 5 seconds over controls
Owns. 98,701 ratings; lowest negative rate at 7%
Exposed. Secondary-feature positioning (clock/night light) may explain tolerance — not a pure torch winner
Each rival’s exposed weakness, what not to build, and the call, argued from the same reviews counted above.
Read the Deep ReportEvery app we count, with the complaint it runs furthest above the store’s typical rate.
Open the app library12 apps compete on this shelf, holding 2,314 App Store reviews. And the widest unfixed complaint, ads, runs in 12 of 12 of them at 29.5% of negative reviews against 10.2% typical. Those are counts, not a verdict. The page shows what is unfixed, not whether to build.
1. Ads: in 12 of 12 apps, 29.5% of negative reviews.
2,314 US App Store reviews across 12 apps, 735 of them negative. Counted on the 2026-09-02 snapshot, never estimated.
We give each market a mark out of 100 for seven things (nobody's fixed it 20 · above the norm 15 · how angry 10 · room to build 15 · room to enter 15 · getting bigger 20 · willingness to pay 5). Then we multiply the marks together. We do not average them.
Averaging lets a market hide one bad problem behind good numbers. Multiplying means one bad mark pulls the whole score down. That is the point. A market you cannot win is still a market you cannot win, however badly it is served.
Each mark has a fixed rule. Nobody’s fixed it and willingness to pay are plain shares. Above the norm maxes out at 4 times the store’s usual rate. How angry runs from star3.0 down to star1.5. Room to enter is what the biggest app does not own. Getting bigger hits 100 at 10% growth. Room to build is different. It is a sweet spot, not a size. A market can be too small to live on, or too big to break into.
If we cannot count something, we leave it out. We never guess it. The score only sorts this list. Every other number you see on a market is counted.
Every number is arithmetic over the reviews we hold, re-counted weekly: nothing modelled, nothing scored. Themes come from a frozen pattern classifier rather than a model reading reviews, so the same review always lands in the same bucket. A market rate is pooled across every app here; the store rate is the same count across 12,728 apps. A complaint is only called a gap when at least half the market carries it, at least 20 reviews are behind it, and the market’s rate is elevated above the store’s, the same cutoff used everywhere on this site, because a problem concentrated in one app is that app’s bug, and a problem every app on the store shares is nobody’s gap.