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.