Quoting Garrett:
I love my photon 2 becuase I can turn it on and it stays on. Does the 3 do that? From what I read on the package it doesnt do that.
Yes, the 3 does that (turn on & stay on), in all 7 modes: bright, medium, & low constant on, fast, medium & slow strobe/flash, and 1-minute auto-off. The auto-off feature has a bit of strobing which acts as a battery life indicator.
If you've only examined one in the package, you won't be able to check out anything but the momentary-on option, because the constant-on switch is disabled by a plastic pull-tab that must be removed before use.
The switch has two pressure pads: the forward one is momentary on at full power; the rear is microprocessor controlled, and is an on-off-mode select switch.
I have one P3Covert (has a shield around the LED to reduce side flare), two P1s, and about half a dozen P2s. I prefer the P2. It follows the KISS rule, though the 4 screws are a pain when it's time to change the batteries--the P1 & P3 cases are better in that respect, IMHO. They're also more "water resistant", though the P2 I've carried daily for 3 years once came unclipped from my keys while loading kids into carseats, & spent a rainy night in a puddle in a parking lot. 24 hours later, when I retrieved it, it still worked just fine, and there were only a couple of drops of water inside the case when I opened it.
I've had all variants turn on while in my pocket--enough pressure from keys or other contents will make it happen. The P1s will turn off when the pressure is released, and so will the P2 & P3 (if the momentary switch is pressed), but both the P2 & P3 have also stayed on when the constant-on switches got hit just right while in pocket.
LRI's customer service has been outstanding, as well.
Check out their web site at:
http://www.photonlight.com/index2.htmlDavid