ASUS Zenfone 8 - Flashlight not working

There seems to be a bug in ASUS Zenfone 8 / Android 13. The flashlight does sometimes not lit up when it is turned on.

The support basically tells the user to:

- Tap the flashlight button - obviously it does not work so no point doing that.

- Start in safe mode by long pressing the power button on the side and then long pressing the power off icon and then select safe mode and then when rebooted into safe mode try to turn on the flashlight. Which for me did not work.

- Factory reset the phone, which is something to be avoided if you are using the phone.

Findings - can be related to the automatic flash feature

The failure to start the flashlight is quite random. Sometimes it work, sometimes it don't.

I found that the flashlight turns on if the phone is lying down on a flat table, but not if it is held up.

Therefore it can be a bug related to the automatic flash feature.

Possible workaround: Before turning on the flashlight put the camera against a flat dark surface, then turn it on.