SOLVED: Samsung S3 Android 4.3 Camera Flashes on New Email or Phone Calls

If you have upgraded your Android device (in my case a Samsung S3) to Android 4.3 you likely have found that the camera flash goes off randomly.  Well, it is not so random after all; I found that on the 4 Galaxy S3’s that I experienced this problem, the camera would flash on inbound phone calls and emails.  This got me to thinking about notifications… ya, its not there.  However it IS under ACCESSIBILITY OPTIONS.  This makes sense, if you are near blind or deaf or … having a flash go off when the phone rings might be very useful.

Oddly, in all of my 4 cases the FLASH NOTIFICATION setting was turned OFF, so I clicked it on and then immediately clicked it off and BINGO, the problem was solved.  I did not even have to reboot.

FIX:

1. Swipe down from the top of your device to bring up the status window
2. Click the round cog near the top right corner of the screen
3. Click the MY DEVICE button at the top right corner of the screen
   1. Scroll to the very bottom of this list
4. Click ACCESSIBILITY (in the middle of the screen on my Samsung Galaxy S3)
   1. Scroll to the very bottom of this list
5. Click FLASH NOTIFICATION so that it has a check mark  (i.e. turn it on… .ie. the opposite of what you would expect)
6. Click FLASH NOTIFICATION so that it does NOT have a check mark (i.e. turn if off… i.e. what you expect)
7. Have a nice day