Good thing, that I was fast enough to perform some ugly tests - I took one of my N900's, set insane duty cycle of 500 ms ON and 50 ms OFF, max power lvl (320 mA) - then left it running for ~10 hours (until battery run out, due to lower power - it was almost full dual-scud). Then, I repeated this step with power from charger, for 48 hours straight.

Results - no oddities in LED's working, no visible change in color temperature. They were just a little warm (just like after running torch mode for few hours).
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Of course, it doesn't mean I don't agree with pichlo about safe limits etc. He is absolutely right. It's just that, from practice, manufacturers tend to put much more powerful LEDs, than their chips could drive - to avoid tons of free replacements during 2 years guaranty period. Our diodes are, probably (warning - just assumption, not based on anything) rated for at least 100 mA continuous current (if not even more), and torch being limited to 50 mA is effect of few independent layers of safety margins.

In Android world (where, I do agree, device safety isn't top priority, nor usual level of expertise), it's common practice to run camera leds at 2x or 4x "standard" current continuously, just after throwing a little warning. None of my sources ever reported any led damaged due to that (although, I must agree, at first I was very wary, too).

Heck, judging by (subjective observations, not measured by any scientific means) brightness level, Nokia's closed source camera application - in darkest environments - uses more current than this 320 mA upper limit. At least, it's flash seems brighter, than strobe produced by Lanterne on max power level. I wouldn't be surprised, if they would pump there that "unofficial" (in FOSS drivers) 500 mA max current.
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This post isn't aimed at convincing anyone to risk own device safety - but, i think, that limiting duty cycle to 25% is a little too far. It would be silly, if Lanterne would have to get "fork" for every release ("LED Destroyer" sounds like a good name? ), with only one change being removal of safety limits. Not that it would be anything bad - just silly, a little.
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Nevertheless, thanks for another bunch of great updates!

/Estel