Hi,
I got a very prompt response from Bryan at Photon:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR> To my knowledge, only the new purple Photon 3's and the infrared & ultraviolet
P3's are currently shipping with the new chip. The easiest way to tell the
difference is by checking the printed text on the back of the circuit board
(inside the battery compartment). The new chip should read "2002" instead of
"2001". In answer to your question about SOS, yes the new P3 chip replaces the
slow strobe with an SOS sequence strobe.
It sounds like it may be a while yet before all of the colors of P3's are
available with the new chip, and of course it will be longer before all of the
distributors and retailers have the new lights. The distribution "pipe" can be
very long. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
So it looks like the P3 MIII will be worth waiting for.
Much better ergonomics and SOS mode. The problem is, nobody knows how long the wait will be ...
Aragon - I see your point, but just a little hint about battery life on the P3 - I leave mine in the most dim mode and when I need extra, I just press the front to overide. That way you can get lots of life from the 2 2016 batteries. Now I hope Craig does not mind (Please let me know if you do), but see his Photon 3 battery graph (aka
"Battery Porn") for the dim mode - almost constant output for 20+ hours!
EDIT - removed image to help save bandwidth usage (see
I am stunned )
2nd EDIT - loading images from another site has no impact on bandwidth usage (other than simply the overhead involved in loading the html text defining the image), so here it is again: