The Light Phone
thelightphone.com
thelightphone.com
Smartphones are popular because people want to do the things that they enable. You probably need to live in some sort of a niche social circle in order to justify $350 just to be able to tell people how your minimalist phone is not able to browse the Internet.
If you just wanted to have a basic phone that doesn't do a lot of things, you could buy a Nokia 3310 for $60. You just don't get to brag about your disconnected way of living since the Nokia 3310 can actually do those things.
2G 900/1800MHz bands and therefore doesn't work in the US. Got a suggestion that actually works here?
So, I’m very much in the market for what the Light Phone 2 is going for: not a phone that doesn’t do anything but make calls and text, but a phone with “the essentials”. The problem is that not everyone who wants such a phone has the same set of essentials.
The single biggest issue that I have with feature phones is that they lack a qwerty keyboard. I’ve tried a couple in the past few years, and I just can’t go back to texting on a numeric keypad. Texting today is very different from what it was in the 90s and early 2000s. So many conversations you would have today, you cannot meaningfully participate in with a numeric keypad. You find yourself immediately going back to the terseness that gave birth to the various forms of texting shorthand, because text input is so slow.
The second biggest issue is that I need a transit map. I live in NYC, and I’m not going to memorize all the different subway lines and stops and schedules. You can actually get Google Maps on a KaiOS phone, and it’s slow but it more or less works. Problem is, you’re still stuck with the numeric keypad. (You can use voice dictation via Google, but I don’t like using Google.)
Third, while I don’t need it often, I do sometimes need to use a ride-hailing app.
On top of all this, I don’t want a browser or social media apps or games or movies or music.
That’s just me, though. Someone else may want music, or a note taking app, or a calendar.
A lot of this stuff is on the roadmap for the Light Phone 2, but until it actually hits my set of essentials, it doesn’t work for me.
How long have you lived in the city? I lived there before smartphones and this is basically what people did.
Then I had a look at the subway map and I can see why one might refrain from memorising the various lines and relevant stops: There are few significant features for distinguishing the lines, even the colours are very similar in some cases, and the stops often have cryptic or very similar names.
The London Underground map on the other hand is incredibly well-designed: The colours for the different lines are optimised for recognisability to the point they're almost iconic. On seeing a pink colour on the underground for example you can immediately tell "Hammersmith & City".
The lines and stops usually have easily memorable, often quirky names, too. This of course is in part due to London's long history, rather than a deliberate design decision.
However, usability still seems to have played a role when individual stops were named. For example, "Elephant & Castle" could've been easily named a far less memorable "London Rd." as well.
I just wish they'd strictly adhere to matching the livery and the line colour, though. It's SUCH a good idea, but with trains sharing the same track on different lines, it causes no end of confusion!
2G 900/1800MHz bands and therefore doesn't work in the US. Got a suggestion that actually works here?
Literally the Nokia 3310
Source: me using the Nokia 3310 in the US on Ting
I didn't care that it no longer had a FB or Twitter client, or that I couldn't access other soc.nets.
But for a comms-centric device with a wonderful unified inbox, the fact that it no longer worked with WhatsApp, FB Messenger and so on was a killer. A phone that can't talk to them is not really a phone any more in C21.
I still think $350 is a lot, but when you have ADHD devices with a lot of features can be very detrimental to your productivity and your well-being.
My last dumb phone, which I bought to carry while cycling, cost me $30. Sure, it was ugly, but since the point is to not take it out of your pocket and play around with it, who cares?
This phone strikes me as the veganism of dumb phones. You want people to acknowledge the "sacrifice" you're making, so you're going to keep it visible, while you self-consciously don't interact with it.
I could speculate about personal insecurity issues, but instead will simply note that not everyone comes from the same place you do or share your particular concerns or needs. It is a big world, exploring it some might be good for you.
I miss nothing, actually feel good staying away from all the toxic comments on Twitter.
I did not need Light Phone or burn a hole in my pocket to achieve this. Plain simple determination.
Been around the world and found / That only stupid people are breeding / The cretins cloning and feeding / And I don't even own a TV
I might pay $350 for a phone that does only what I need, but I'm definitely not going to pay $350 extra for a second phone that only does what I need on top of a modern smartphone to leave at home that does lots of crap I don't.
The second Light Phone looks like it started moving towards being feasible as an only phone, but also piling on a strange set of features, for a phone designed to limit distractions. There's still SMS messaging but no encrypted messaging or email (and they brag it will never have these), but there is now music and ride hailing and so on.
So close, and yet so far! Any telco entrepreneurs out there: make me a little box that's only about communication with individuals I know (talk, text, popular encrypted chat, email), with modern interfaces (LTE, Wifi, USB-C), and I'll buy one. I bet my parents would, too.
$350 is not the problem -- service will still be the biggest cost in the long run. It's just not a useful device even for people looking to slim down and avoid distractions.
If you really want to minimize distraction that’s fine. The Bluetooth accessory can even limit logins (through TFA) by time and number (length would be complicated).
I miss those things. Shame they killed BIS in my country, so those are mostly unusable today.
I think the best way to achieve it all again is to create a set of interlocking apps who help you get things done instead of wooing you with animations for android and create your own distro with those apps pre-setup based on CyanogenMod/LineageOS/etc. This way you can use existing hardware, gain productivity and still be able to access tge appstore for everything someone needs for their personal work flow, like the tan generator of your bank.
I'd love to see a world where people talk to each other again rather than sit at lunch, dinner, watching TV, whatever, with their phones out and ignoring each other. There aren't a lot of phones in this space so backing something like this may help create the market I want to see. I don't want to "live disconnected", but I do want to limit my behaviors like "hey let me interrupt this conversation so you can watch while I google that random thing we'll forget about in a minute".
Previously I had an LG slider phone with a physical qwerty keyboard for 5-6 years before buying the Light Phone 2.
I also hate the size of current smart phones, they're just so big. I'm weird I know, but I actually liked the size of my iphone 3G.
As a software engineer I'm hoping they get the custom "tools" available soon so I can tinker with that. I'd like to experiment with making a 2FA tool like Authy or some kind of push notification.
All in all, the Light Phone 2 is kind of slow to use, but it works, and it's not red like my LG was, so it starts less conversations when I use it.
> These tools are currently being developed and will be released in the coming few months
These tools being the promised features of Music / Notes / Calculator / Directions / Ride hailing, and "coming months" being the end of 2019.
It's been almost two years since the launch, and the original light phone will soon celebrate it's 5th anniversary so I'm not sure I should hold my breath. If anybody from the team is reading this, I'd love to hear what's blocking the software development side.
So, yeah, Calculator is a pretty important feature.
I would say ask me anything but I’m in the middle of the Australian outback with virtually no mobile signal...!
What I can say is that working with Eink is rudimentary - we had to build everything from a custom kernel driver all the way up to the view layouts and UX. We expected Eink would give us sophisticated SDKs, but unfortunately a lot of wheels had to be reinvented. I have huge respect for the team behind the Yota Phone!
I’ve written a tear down of how it all works that I’ll be sharing soon on our company twitter if anyone is interested.
(not sent from a light phone)
We also couldn’t preempt the new features we’d like to add (directions, find my phone, etc), so full android felt like a safer option all things considered.
There are QMI as well as AT/RIL drivers in the works.
In very passive use (using airplane mode liberally), it can last 7+ days but realistically most users will see it last between 3 - 7.
Some more work can go into antenna tuning, however. We support two different markets (North America and Global) which have different bands. In areas with poor mobile service, devices usually spend a lot of battery power searching for signal. We’re hoping to improve on that in a future FOTA update!
I like the premise of E-Ink as smartphone display for anyone who uses the smartphone display for text, light static graphics consumption. I'm seeing more manufacturers trying to bring cheaper E-Ink smartphones to the market[1][2].
I understand the philosophy of Light Phone and thereby it not having Internet browser; but, HN on Kindle Oasis has always been a pleasant experience to me if the linked article website uses standard web development practices(cough TechCrunch).
[1]https://www.gizmochina.com/2019/10/24/hisense-a5-with-an-e-i...
[2]https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/kingrow-k1-the-healthy-ph...
A browser means instagram, facebook and email are all readily accessible. A lot of users like our device because it’s impossible to get to those platforms...
That said - grids of instagram selfies rendered to a 2.84” Eink screen would surely be an interesting art experiment, ha!
You can still accomplish a lot of what you need from a phone, and pair some AirPods and you have music, podcasts, easy hands free calling
iWatch + Airpods + dictation, my friend. It is amazing.
If only the apple watch could play audiobooks (on Audible) and music (on Spotify) without a phone nearby, it would be the perfect minimalist phone. Alas until that happens I have to continue to lug my phone around when sportsing.
You can download books to the Audible watch app but I've never gotten it to work. The connection just isn't stable enough.
The new WatchOS supposedly enables the API that Apple Music has been using to stream via LTE (from what I've heard), but it smells like Spotify has decided it's no longer worth the bother.
That said I quite like the combo in general. A big reason I went with apple music is the streaming. It is baffling to me that spotify hasn’t enabled lte streaming on the watch now that watchos 6 lets them.
“Can you get broccoli from the store? Oh also we need kill thompson’s party. I mean we need kale for the party. Damned apple watch”
You can either abandon the whole message, or repeat what you said to get it right. And include a disclaimer to show you didn’t mean the insane thing Siri wrote. On long messages it can get quite annoying to start over, as I find it hard to finish a long message without at least one oddly mangles phrase.
I've actually subscribed to Apple Music solely because Spotify (for which I have a subscription too) does not let me go running with only my watch...
It was amazing how easily I made friends in bars and cafes like this, simply by looking up and being alert to my environment.
The root problem is much deeper and I think it’s difficult to address without behavior change (which is hard). Making it very difficult to do is a good compromise while you’re also working on building self control. These phones take that difficulty to a new level so long as you’re away from your other devices.
I’ve found productive addictions include things like ear training, Duolingo, etc - they replace the tactile sensation and give you that quieter time to yourself but at least you’re learning.
It's still perfectly possible to just not open them/log in, obviously.
Typically, "uninstallable" apps can be disabled via adb commands if you don't want to (or can't) flash a custom ROM. Sometimes they can't however - for example, Amazon sells subsidized phones that display advertisements on the lock screen.
This isn't a problem if you have a rooted device, but root is difficult/impossible to obtain on certain devices (like Samsung's Galaxy 8 onward) due to enterprise level tamper-proofing.
Having said all that, I just got an unlocked Pixel 4 and it has zero of that bloat. If you happen to consider the Google services themselves bloat/tracking (they often are), rooting is fully supported which allows you to install an Android distribution without any Google services.
Watch series 540mm, sports band, gps + cellular: $659 AirPods and regular charging case: $219 Combo = $878
iPhone 11 = $979
You could pick different models to make either case true (eg. iPhone XR is $799, watch series 3 cellular is $429). But nonetheless watch + AirPods is pretty close to the price of a phone it seems!
I have a nice PC for everything else.
Edit: Yeah the flipping back and forth between landscape and portrait mode is pretty annoying. Devs if you're reading this please address in a future update.
1. Make it black and white. https://medium.com/better-humans/how-to-make-your-iphone-bla...
1b. If you're like me, and you like colors when looking at pics people send you, set up your phone to toggle to full-color mode when you triple-tap. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/accessibility-shortcu...
2. Delete the apps that aren't "basic functionality", then break your app store and browser. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304
Step 2 involves setting up a passcode. I recommend getting a friend to enter this passcode, then hide it away from you, since you obviously can't trust your junkie brain.
I did this and it is RAD. I still use a subset of communication-oriented social media, but my phone is kind of boring now, in a good way.
Screen time and other similar controls let you limit your usage of distracting apps. Or just don’t install them and learn some self control. Put your phone in your bag instead of your pocket, or maybe leave it at home sometimes.
A black and white phone missing basic features compared to a modern Nokia feature phone along with being currently unavailable to purchase without waiting is, overall, a shitty proposition.
And I didn’t even see the price before writing all that out. $350. No way. A KaiOS device seems way more sensible.
For my Firefox desktop I have written 5 extensions that blocks websites in various ways so to help me control my bad urges, but even then I just open up safari and use it from there.
Fact is just I can't control it, and I am willing to pay thousands of dollars for any solution that solves these problems without limiting the use of technology I actually want in my life.
In any case, the idea is to have a physical disconnection with your phone/the internet so that you can’t satisfy any urge to check Reddit. The start will be rough but over time your fear of missing out will disappear. I find that if I spend time traveling or with family (where browsing reddit or similar is not easy) I realise when coming back home that I haven’t missed anything. I used to browse Reddit a lot. Nowadays I just check /r/soccer once in a while and spend time doing a lot more of other things (music, coding, reading, nothing).
You just don't get it. Neither does anyone complaining about $350 for a brick. You're not the audience. This isn't for you.
This is for the people that both; value their time ($350 is less than an hour of work and consequently it would take me more than an hour to properly lockdown my phone) and are looking for absolutely no room for distraction.
I sympathize with the GP, becaue I am exactly like him. The basis for impulsivity is physiological. There is no pre-thought "Oh I want to do this, wait maybe I shouldn't" it's just a pure feeling that moves you to do.
I have had many social media accounts, I've made and deleted them many times. I also have many browser extensions and hosts files to stop myself from visiting known runaway triggers.
It's untenuable. Amphetamines/stimulants help, but the trade-offs are too great.
A week-long retreat can "disconnect" you, but that doesn't mean anything when you come back and jump right back into it.
I've gone so far as to buy a large amount of rural property, have a cabin with basic electricity, where I run a very barebones W500 OpenBSD ThinkPad with satellite internet (2Mbps/s). It can't do any kind of media processing (YouTube, movies, etc.).
It is by far the most productive environment I have ever been in, and I paid for all of this, because that's what I value.
I'm only posting this, because I impulsively turned off mt extensions and went into the HN rabbit hole.
From what I’m reading it seems like this Light Phone is missing basics that you’d get in a standard flip phone.
After a few days with mine I had to disable almost all the smart functionality.
But, not many can afford having their phone in DND mode all the time due to their job/family requirements(I do it and I've read few others on HN doing it). Then again, there are jobs which require you to install apps on your personal device or at-least communication apps like Slack, Teams etc.; In those case even Light Phone cannot be used.
P.S. Please don't mind the bland nature of my question.
I am considering switching back to a dumbphone because I miss being able to buy a phone for $100 and have it work, without fuss, more-or-less indefinitely. Throw a hotspot feature in there so I can get my $200 iPod Touch connected when I need to, and I've still got a decent enough way to listen to podcasts or catch up on my Instapaper feed while I'm waiting for the bus, or whatever, while saving a fair bit of money. It also theoretically lets me have all the apps and suchlike while still being able to mitigate distraction.
I like this phone in principle, but I'm afraid $350 price point is a bit tough to swallow. I assume that a big part of the price is the eInk display, which is a bit of a shame since it looks like it doesn't actually have any features that wouldn't also work just fine with a cheapo monochrome LCD.
Regarding the battery health issue, I have found the biggest factor to be not recharging soon enough. Don't let your battery drop too low and you will have substantially better battery health.
EDIT: The moto e6 retails for $99.
Updates? No.
Unlocked bootloader? No,it's Lenovo.
Security in chinese phone? LOL, I even not started talking about company who sold laptops with crapware in BIOS.
> Updates?
Motorola usually provides 2 Android updates beyond the year each model was released. Not always a rule but you can see for yourself here: https://www.getdroidtips.com/list-of-android-10-q-supported-...
no, you just buy a model 2 years after its on the market and you pay a fraction of the initial price.
No more software updates isn't such a big deal on dumbphones with limited capabilities, but, on a smartphone, I really do want to be getting those security patches.
Did i miss something?
edit: Yes, yes, i had many tabs open already, but seriously: LIGHT?
You can get unlimited minutes/SMS and several GB for $10-20/mo from various MVNOs nowadays. Why they would bother marketing a plan that is $30/mo with no data is beyond me.
- make calls
- text messages
- calculator
- navigation
- plays music and podcasts
- and can track my heart rate and speed when I am running.
It lets me leave my phone when I don’t want distractions. When I need something more full featured, I have my phone. When I want something full featured with a larger screen, I have an iPad. Calls and text messages go to all three devices and things are synced where appropriate.
If the point is to be reachable by a loved one in an emergency and nothing else, this seems like a reasonable option.
If the point is to be reachable by a loved one in an emergency and nothing else, I can think of a hundred other options that don't cost $350. I think that's what you meant.
My grandmother uses an Android phone I've very heavily customised (deleted apps with adb, put a Windows Phone-like launcher with flashing icons for notifications, compiled custom versions of OSS apps for SMS and calls, etc.). This Light Phone seems perfect for her.
Not even close. You can get a basic phone plus sim card for like $40 or less and then pay a few dollars (or less) a month on prepay to keep it connected to the network.
This is a toy secondary phone for those with disposable income, not a valid low-income alternative.
$350 is not a reasonable option to be reachable by a loved one when a brand new Nokia 3310 is like $60 and can do standby for like 3-4 weeks with a single charge.
The organic foods industry has these sorts of seemingly niche products which are more expensive but become quite trendy because of what they represent for the customer and their peers. Not sure how well it applies here though.
I know at least 5 people - a large percentage of my close network ;) - who would be interested in this device. I'm sure there's a big enough market for it if the execution is right. Though I'm personally waiting for Librem for the security/privacy aspects.
Not saying that's a large market, but I do think it exists. At the 350$ price point though it seems more like it would be for wealthier people looking to signal that they're part of a sort of "offline" movement.
you can treat your smart phone as old boring phone by using it like a old boring phone.
If I want a phone that allows me to make phone calls and send texts and otherwise not distract me, there are a billion £30 feature phones that will do that, and have a week+ battery life.
If I want a phone that does anything "smart" but doesn't distract me, what I consider "smart" but not "distracting" is going to be different to everyone else, to the point where you need an app store to manage all that difference. Which is why the only real option is to just manage what apps you install, manage how it interacts with you (eg notification and noise settings), regulate how you interact with it (ie stop picking it up, leave it in a different room etc), and do all that with a normal smart phone.
This seems like an oversight
Then there is this aspect: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=thelightphone.com
Which does kinda make you wonder many things, more so, that price. Everything else seems to of been already covered in past discussions over the many many years.
It's interesting to see exactly that happening in the comments here - "if it only had X, Y and Z I would buy it".
The classic response of anyone not financially invested in a product. Hopefully they follow through with their intention not to throw in the kitchen sink rather than burn all their resources trying to attract a picky customer base that has no intention of ever actually buying the phone.
Text is asynchronous and thus the other party can respond when it's convenient. I resent voice calls as an intrusion and rarely answer them.
The smaller screen absolutely destroy all gaming and even Internet browsing experience. The UX is so bad you dont want to use it, but still give you the choice should there be a need. While retaining all the essential such as Email, WhatsApp, Calling, Uber, And Music etc.
A lot of these same people Apple to release an updated version of the iPhone SE form-factor. Many of these people are on Hacker News; search for earlier threads about the iPhone SE being discontinued to see just how many.
* Sent from my iPhone SE
The phone has been a mix of good and bad. The software is still somewhat buggy. I think the hardest thing is that the eInk screen ghosts a lot and has a very long refresh cycle, which really can get in the way of using it. There are times when you just can’t read the screen because it has so much ghosting. Emoji work but are so tiny they are hard to read.
Overall - I still like it and hope it gets updated software to add the missing features (music, for example). But the screen is a pretty big compromise. I’d probably be happier if they used a standard LCD screen.
I had a Nokia candy bar phone with 4G(!) which was reasonable if you wanted to win an argument using Wikipedia, but Maps was unusable because the ancient Opera browser couldn't cope. All I wanted was the ability to get the text directions between two places without having to load all the intervening javascript. Hacker News worked well, as did BBC news.
There are several modern "dumb" phones which are actually quite capable and have absurd battery life (I'd get a week plus out of that thing, with 4G on), but there are so few websites that provide no-frills output.
>I can pair my Huawei FreeBuds 3 with the Nokia 800 Tough, install a bunch of music on it, and jump on my bike. Google Maps navigation provides turn-by-turn instructions at a glance while I’m listening to some good riding music. I’ve got no concerns about the battery running out or the phone falling out of my pocket. I can ask the Google Assistant questions to avoid typing queries into the browser. And if I need to, I can stay in touch with everyone via WhatsApp voice messages. The list of benefits goes on and on.
https://www.androidauthority.com/nokia-800-tough-review-1063...
As an added benefit, you can probably bludgeon someone to death with it after losing an argument.
Dual SIM is nice. If it could tether I'd buy that next time I go on a long holiday (edit - it does!). Non removable battery is a pity too, but I've never actually needed that.
I've been tempted by the CAT S60/61 though.
I wonder, would it be worth making a service that works over voice calls, not the Internet? For example have a phone at home that automatically picks up and relays your call into an Alexa or something, then you can hear the response. Minutes are so cheap it might actually work.
The interesting conceptual design of the Light Phone is that it is a dedicated dumbphone with e-ink, like a Kobo reader is a dedicated e-reader with e-ink. E-ink works if the page stays static, as you read a book. A smartphone, and dumbphone to lesser extend, have higher screen refreshes. The trend on smartphones is that the screen Hz is going up from 60 to 90/120 and higher. Which has battery impact, but as long as the battery is empty each day, it is acceptable for a lot of people. Now, if my device (be it smartphone, smartwatch, whatever) is empty every day then I hook it up every day. If it is empty every week I hook it up weekly (e.g. on Sunday) but every 3 days is kinda inconvenient.
Just sharing some random thoughts...
The light phone looks good, but I do actually want some of the smartphone features. I was very unhappy when Amazon nerfed 3G on Kindle, I used to use it for paper like maps when traveling in foreign cities. Google Maps worked very well.
Everything on the same physical device has its own pros/cons.
The FLIR One comes in a USB C model, I've played with that on my Pixel. Works great although I think you have to use the sdk to get any kind of useful information out of the camera (eg if you want raw data).
My group specialises in drone imaging and often it's useful to have ground footage so you can compare simultaneously, for example during biodiversity surveys. The problem with the plug in solution is the risk of it getting lost in the field, and it's not rugged enough. We recently did some surveys on a lake, so an IP rated phone with everything integrated would be ideal.
How do you type numbers you have to call? Do you rotate them phone and type the numbers?
What about music? The thing that people use the phones most for other than calls and messages would be music, considering the fact that there aren’t that many dedicated music players around a phone without a music player makes a lot less sense
Maybe still too early to rule it out entirely.
Then you can donate the remaining USD 250 to a more worthy cause.
Someone could compete with these guys by buying low-end phones in bulk and reconfiguring them that way. Sell it for $49.
[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Plum-Compass-Unlocked-4G-GSM-Smar...
"People who want to get rich" are a significant subset of the HN population, and they are downvoting you because they remember Dropbox. You'll recall that Dropbox was met by "people who want useful products" saying "oh, I can do 90% of that with rsync".
Your solution is probably excellent for someone who knows what they are doing, but it won't make a lot of money, and it won't sell to the kind of status-conscious fanatic minimalist who always needs a new toy to prove their minimalism.
In fact, there are lots of caution signs around this product's website indicating that they aren't actually very good at the technical parts. I wouldn't be at all surprised to read a teardown showing that this is a low-end Android phone with an e-Ink display running a single shell program around the underlying dialer, SMS and alarm functions.
I could see a low-end product which shares the phone number of the bigger phone. Something carriers could offer as a promotional item and a backup. "What do you do when your iPhone is in the shop for a broken screen?"
The amazing thing is that you can get 4 processors, a screen, 8GB, and a camera for $49.
Can you please elaborate on what/how to do this? I'd love to spend 49 bucks for a basic phone + maps, without crapware.
- Get a phone in its no Google account state. - When it demands that you log into Google, choose "Later". - Delete Google First time app. This prevents the registration thing from coming up again. - Download F-Droid. - Use F-Droid to download Fennic, which is a version of Firestorm. - Deactivae most Google apps, Play Store, etc. Play Store Services may have to stay. - Use F-Droid to download other stuff as required.
You now have a useful Android phone with no Google account.
The battery life was terrible, even with a battery case, it lasted 2-3 hours.
I'd love a phone like that which had a proper battery life.
I truly enjoy the sentiment and message behind this product. IMO though, at the rate they're going and in the direction they're headed, a consumer is better off with existing products that have been offering what Light II does for decades.
https://www.amazon.com/Snapfon-Senior-Unlocked-Hearing-Compa...
At 950 mAh that would be just over 24 days. I would expect an improvement in battery life with E-ink.
There's a reason Linux is not ruling the desktop, and that there is it.
Though to your point it did take me a bit of ducking to figure this out. Seems extremely straightforward once you know it exists.
1. Needs a bigger screen so that texting in portrait is possible / texting in landscape allows you to see the convo. 2. Needs data and basic data-driven apps - google maps, spotify. Any apps that aren't addictive and are used every day seem like they should be in any modern phone, even those intended to be minimalist.
I "need" things like banking on my phone, as well as email realistically.
Literally all I want from a phone is the ability to call / text for coordinating near-term meetups with people, and the ability to receive / send calls in emergency situations.
Unfortunately, they don't make phones like that anymore.
I have my new phone set in battery saver mode with everything deactivated except the calling app, the texting app, and Facebook Messenger. The battery can last four or five days with this configuration, which pleasantly surprised me. Still can't match the two weeks I'd get out of my old dumb phone though.
Also, I have no fucking idea when you say that "they don't make phones like that anymore", since Nokia still makes the 3310. Costs like 20% of what the Light Phone costs, does phone calls, text messages (and probably Facebook Messenger since it has a Facebook app) and has a 3-4 week standby battery life.
As others have mentioned, most of the phones that do fit the criteria of a modern dumb phone don't work on Verizon. I had plans to buy the 3310 if they ever released a 4g version.
> Sounds like you aren't the target market either, since you want a phone that only does phone calls, text messages and Facebook Messenger, the latter of which the Light Phone does not do
I would happily go without Facebook Messenger, but since my phone supports it, it's a convenient thing to have access to. But you are right, I am probably not the target market for this phone.
There's the Nokia 8110 4G (€49), the Nokia 800 Tough (€119) and the Nokia 2720 Flip (€99).
"Something went wrong"
Sorry then I do not want to read your content, because this is wrong on your side.
We had a Nexus 4, IIRC, for our on call sysadmins, that would be always connected to the network but mostly sleeping, as it only was waiting for push notifications. It lasted around 4 or 5 days without charging! No software installed except for Pushover, of course.
The battery life of the Light Phone II is approximately 1-3 days of 'light' regular usage.
I'm the perfect customer for this phone (had a Nokia 3310 3g recently) but this is perhaps a little too minimal for even me. Still looking for a replacement for my iPhone SE someday.
I’d love to leave it docked on my desk while it scrolled through useful displays, such as calendar, time, weather etc.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
I agree there’s definitely some virtue signaling by having a high-cost secondary device like this. There’s chatter upthread with a comparison to other forms of virtue signaling that some people do.
All I want is a phone I can call, text, and listen to audiobooks.
Can’t imagine who’s buying it for $350. Either fuck you money or virtue signaling?
But really: if you buy aforementioned device, don't sign into google play, get your apps from f-droid, enable b/w-mode and disable the browser you've got yourself another light phone for 40USD+1h of your net income.
Just buy a flip phone.
I settled with Samsung's mid range line released this year. The Galaxy a20, a30 and a50 are great value for the price when rooted and stripped of all the bloatware.
Congratulations. This is why dumb phones don’t exist. Nobody actually wants them.
I believe you know better than the multiple investors putting 80m into KaiOS to enable whatsapp, facebook messenger and hopefully spotify on features phones.
People smart phones, they just can't afford them.
Homepage requires multiple 3rd party JS libraries to work.
Helloooooo hypocrisy!