from Hacker News

The Light Phone III

by kk6mrp on 6/11/24, 3:10 PM with 64 comments

• by jrexilius on 6/11/24, 6:54 PM

  I bought the last version and ran it for a while. The one huge red flag is that they have access to all your contacts and messages via their servers. You can't upload your contacts directly to the phone from a USB cable or import them from a loccal file. You have to go to their website and upload your contacts and then they push them to your phone. The way MMS works is that the messages gets relayed to their servers, which then email it to you. It's an absolute security and privacy disater. Which is really sad, because almost everything else about the phone is pretty good and it's filling a need in the market.

  [edit to add] as others mentioned, no TOTP auth app was the other requirement missing

• by RadiozRadioz on 6/11/24, 6:30 PM

  I'd buy this purely to support a company making phones held together with screws.

  Oh how I long and wish that my phone had screws. This glued-shut brittle glass box with a puffy time bomb inside makes me sad.

  It's sad that the concept of a phone with screws makes me so happy.

• by janice1999 on 6/11/24, 6:19 PM

  Shipping Jan 2025, normally $799 retail (does not include tax or shipping).

  For a phone that's almost certainly running Android under the hood, not having the ability to install Signal or Messenger or anything else just makes it dead on arrival imho.

• by christiangenco on 6/11/24, 6:21 PM

  > We’ve also added a camera, but… in our own way. Taking inspiration from our favorite point-and-shoot film cameras, it has a dedicated two-step shutter button, with center focus and a fixed focal length.

  I'm most curious about this feature. It sounds like there's no preview of your photo? How do you get the pictures off the phone? Is the quality any good?

  I love the ideals of this this company ("stop using your phone as a way to scratch every tiny itch of boredom and frustration") but I feel like I can get there with any ol' phone and an hour of deleting all the apps I don't actually want to be using. So much work has been put into modern smart phone cameras that it'd be undesirable for me to give that up.

  Also, regular smartphones have a long tail of really useful edge cases: AirBnB checkin instructions, boarding pass QR codes, unlocking scooters, paying for parking, etc.

• by SahAssar on 6/11/24, 7:06 PM

  If it's not eink and it's not smaller than other small-ish phones then I don't really see the point of using this besides skinning an existing phone and just not installing apps you don't need.

  Get an iphone mini, don't install any apps, turn on greyscale mode. There you have a cheaper version of this, and if you have any apps that you actually need for identification or banks or similar you can actually still use them without needing a second phone.

• by sockbot on 6/11/24, 6:46 PM

  So many services now, including government, are requiring phones for "two step" authentication. There are technically alternatives like receiving a phone call or a secret word lookup table, but those are so impractical to use that I need my phone to be a TOTP device. I was close to putting in a preorder but I will need to see TOTP supported before I can drop my regular smart phone.

• by RIMR on 6/11/24, 6:35 PM

  It's interesting seeing the attempts to make a phone that only does what you want it to do, and not be a huge distraction. I totally understand the desire for this too, modern phones are a rabbit hole of content, and after enough apps get installed you end up with a phone in a hard-to-use state.

  But I have a lot of trouble seeing a new piece of hardware being the solution. Sure, this thing only does a handful of things, and that's it. There's no temptation to install the latest game, or a bunch of different messaging and social apps, because there's only so much you can actually do with the phone. It's basically a "dumb phone" with a few extra features to make it more palatable.

  But there's a problem with this simplicity. If you have a need that the phone doesn't meet, you're screwed. The only way to get this phone up-to-spec with other phones is to have a marketplace full of apps, each providing the functionality you desire, and at that point you're just another iOS or Android platform with the same problems.

  Just get a phone without much bloat, like a Pixel, Nothing, OnePlus, or Fairphone, and consider putting a custom ROM on it to further scale it down. Then just do regular app maintenance - remove apps you don't want or need anymore, and go through your notification history and shut up every app that you don't need to hear from.

  You're not going to be able to have the superpowers of a smartphone without also needing to do some amount of housekeeping. With the power of having a personal computer in your pocket comes the responsibility of taking care of it.

• by CobrastanJorji on 6/11/24, 6:24 PM

  Light Phone dudes, if your whole thing is going to be future-proofing and "planned obsolescence remains an outrage to us," maybe don't stick III at the end of your product's name.

• by jrsdav on 6/11/24, 6:41 PM

  I am in the camp that sees themselves getting rid of a smart phone in the future. Right now I've been on the "defanged iPhone" warpath, whittling down my apps to just the necessities. It's been working well, perhaps made easier by giving up social media and news years ago (feeds are harder...I've managed a 1+yr HN fasts a few times, but get sucked back in because of how intellectually stimulating it can be here).

  I really want to like this phone, and applaud what they are doing. But...it's still a "phone". Aside from the obvious, how is this fundamentally different (or better) than a defanged iPhone/smartphone? When are we going to rethink this problem of how we integrate networked technology into our daily lives in a way that's healthier for us?

• by husam212 on 6/11/24, 6:19 PM

  I would rather get a cheap Android phone with LineageOS and just remove anything I don't want.

• by SamBam on 6/11/24, 6:36 PM

  This is looking better and better, and I really want to try it, but am unable to make the full leap.

  Has anyone had experience switching between the Light Phone and their daily phone on a day-by-day basis? My daily phone is Android, I don't know if that's relevant.

  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work with Google Fi, but I could possibly switch carriers if it came to it.

• by harryvederci on 6/11/24, 6:15 PM

  Are these hackable?

  If I recall correctly v1 and 2 were completely closed, not sure though.

• by jauntywundrkind on 6/11/24, 6:56 PM

  It's be interesting to know what's under the hood, software and spec wise. I'd speculate it's probably fairly lightly modified Android, alike the Rabbit.

  There's already a Hisense A9 Pro for e-ink phones. $500 and Android 11 are two huge turn-offs though. Trustability is also up there.

  This phone looks a bit boxy but overall dimensions seem maybe a bit shorter than most? I keep thinking of the reading experience; when I read on my phone, I turn off the bottom 1/2 of my screen, since I don't need my eyes to be looking down as much. I keep thinking it'd be very neat to have a very small screen device that still has good e-reading. But you'd likely need a companion device for navigation, if you need to jump around or take notes.

• by Rumudiez on 6/11/24, 6:59 PM

  I really want to make the switch, but I still need a web browser for a minimum viable replacement. I don’t want to manage 2 phones just for the occasional restaurant that makes you order from a QR code or parking meter with a busted display

• by _heimdall on 6/11/24, 6:50 PM

  Oh they seem to have done a really nice job with this, at least based on specs and mockups.

  I've been interested in the Light Phone for years but never could commit myself to dealing with so many tradeoffs of the second version.

  This is very tempting. Signal would be the one app I miss, other than that basic navigation and a podcast player is really all I use anyway.

• by soganess on 6/11/24, 7:50 PM

  I know everyone and their mom is doing it now, but I still love the teenage engineering design proportions (assuming this isn't straight up designed by TE) + razer phone cues this is taking. Also, screws are cool and no one can convince me otherwise.

  I would totally just buy it for the shape and hope-to-gosh I can install Lineage on it.

• by insane_dreamer on 6/12/24, 5:40 PM

  I've been following Light since their first model, and I do like the idea of a minimalist phone. But considering it would have to be my second phone, used outside of work, at $800 it's very hard to see how they expect to make a dent with this.

  Edit: They should have added Signal.

• by cynosure_north on 6/11/24, 6:26 PM

  As others have said, by the time it's flexible enough to have all the apps I need, it's flexible enough to have all the apps I don't want.

  It's a shame they got rid of the eink display, that was one of the key selling points of the previous model for me.

• by neilv on 6/11/24, 6:21 PM

  With those corners being rounded only in 2 dimensions, will the 3rd be rough on pockets?

  (The only pocket photo is the phone half-inserted into what looks like the non-tight front of a paint-splattered heavy denim work apron, pulled away.)

• by smokracek on 6/11/24, 6:31 PM

  I know some are mourning the loss of the eink, but as someone who tried to make the LP2 work for a few months, I think this higher price point and better display and build will ultimately serve them better. The LP2 was too underpowered, felt cheap, and frankly unreliable (alarms straight-up not working were a big part of me ditching it). 5G, NFC, a camera, a good screen, etc. all make this a much more appealing product. I don't think the increased capabilities will cause "app creep" and negate the original intent of the project.

• by thatguymike on 6/11/24, 7:13 PM

  It's very attractive, but even as a 100% distraction-pilled person, my phone really needs Whatsapp, Signal and Spotify to be viable. Much of a phone is unhealthy mind garbage but not all of it.

• by krunck on 6/11/24, 6:27 PM

  It would be nice to know what services they use to provide the navigation data. And in addition they should provide some sort of full disclosure of what happens to your data.

• by svlasov on 6/11/24, 6:47 PM

  They couldn't fit a 3.5mm audio jack.

• by seam_carver on 6/11/24, 6:39 PM

  I think an eink phone running full android is the perfect compromise between a dumb phone and a smartphone. Shame the light phone is losing the eink screen.

  Here’s a video of me using various popular android apps on an eink Hisense A9 smartphone. https://youtu.be/dvO9ScTdwz8

  TLDR: Great for reading/text/messaging/hacker news, terrible for video and scrolling.

• by CodeWriter23 on 6/11/24, 6:51 PM

  Interesting. Inability to use Consumer Cellular is a dealbreaker for me unfortunately.

• by jfvinueza on 6/11/24, 6:33 PM

  Yeah, you can buy a cheap android and uninstall everything, except the thing will still be huge and google will still be in your pocket. They're all made for media production/consumption, and there are very few adequate devices available.

• by iuiz on 6/13/24, 7:06 AM

  I did not find anything about their software. Is it open source? Is there an SDK? Can I use WhatsApp / Telegram / Signal?

  How can I develop my own apps?

  For me this is currently a hard no, because even though I like the UX, I will not buy a closed software product, as even Android is modable.