There were torches, flammable material on one end of a short rod long before flashlights. They were dangerous, and often could not put light where you needed it most, and if wind blew it out, it was hard to relight.
So there are a number of important reasons for regrarding "flashlight" as a better descriptive term.
Incidentally, a lot of users are stupid about extending battery life by not shutting it off quickly when they can see where they are going without it.
And now that there are natural gas torches for plumbing, etc, "torch" alone is ambiquous.