The Light Phone 2 is here to try to save you from smartphone burnout

While most of the hype surrounding new phones has belonged to the usual suspects, there’s a lot of buzz around the new Light Phone 2, now available for pre-order.

If you’re wondering why there’s such chatter around a phone you may not have ever heard of before, it’s because of what the Light Phone 2 doesn’t have: namely, all the bells and whistles that make the newest iPhones or Galaxy Notes the hot ticket items they are. 

Light Phone creators Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang did that on purpose. As Tang recently told Wired, “The value of Light Phone is not just the object itself. The value is the experience that you break away from the internet, from social media, from all the manipulation. You’re free now. This is your life. What are you going to do?”

The Light Phone 2 — much like its predecessor, the  Light Phone (released in 2017), which could only make calls — is intended to be used, pretty much, as just a phone. The latest version can make and receive calls and texts and has a few additional features, like an alarm and a calculator. The concept is to make the phone feel like a tool and not an ongoing extension of your life with infinite scroll; the bare and spare Light 2 is intended to help break the smartphone addiction. 

As the makers themselves say on the phone’s website: “This philosophy is continued into the design of the hardware to reflect this with a small black and white screen that inherently limits its potential for ever becoming anything like a smartphone.”

Featuring zero cameras and a black-and-white e-ink screen similar to many e-readers, the Light 2 release follows a successful IndieGoGo campaign that raised $3.5 million in 2018. Backers of the phone’s crowdfunding campaign will get their phones soon; everyone else will have to wait until the end of October. 

The phone features a 4G LTE connection, is WiFi-enabled, is splash-resistant and, yes, comes with a headphone jack. Eventually, the phone will include a few other useful tools, like ride-share apps and a music player (no word as to which companies the phone will include for these particular features), but it will “never” feature social media tools or email.

Hollier and Tang have suggested to outlets like Fast Company and The Verge that they don’t necessarily expect Light Phone 2 owners to use only that phone. It might be a secondary phone for when people need to disconnect from the ongoing onslaught of information and connectivity smartphones provide. 

It’s an interesting idea, especially at a time when social media data privacy (or, rather, the lack thereof) is a hot-button issue, and we’re learning that, actually, our phones are listening to us. 

The Light Phone 2 comes with a price tag of $350. That’s a hell of a lot cheaper than even the least expensive iPhone, but it’s still a lot of money for a phone that, for now, only texts and calls. That’s especially true if the phone is only meant to serve as an occasional change of pace from someone’s iPhone or Note 10.

Even simplicity, it seems, has a price.