I loved this feature on my flashlight and used it exclusively on candle mode. There's a lot of thought that goes into it like PWM speed or direct drive for LEDs that may or may not cause flickering and a tradeoff between battery life and the electronics available.
I'd rather they didn't, I recently upgraded our household flashlights and was pleased to be able to get 3-mode rather than the ridiculous 5 and 7 mode that they were replacing, no more having to loop through 'SOS' and several ridiculous flash patterns, a half-dozen brightness settings and so on to get to the 'full brightness, no flashing' setting that was needed 100% of the time.
Maybe I misunderstood you, but Anduril doesn't include strobe modes on the main cycle, and it lets you configure how many brightness steps you want (or hold for continuous ramping). So it sounds to me like you should want people to check out Anduril, since it addresses the two issues you mentioned with your old flashlights.
https://github.com/ToyKeeper/anduril
https://toykeeper.net/
I loved this feature on my flashlight and used it exclusively on candle mode. There's a lot of thought that goes into it like PWM speed or direct drive for LEDs that may or may not cause flickering and a tradeoff between battery life and the electronics available.