Summary
- Light Phone 3 is a minimalist, distraction-free phone with basic features & modern enhancements like NFC & 5G.
- Priced at $599, it has specs comparable to budget Android phones & is marketed for digital detox.
- Cheaper options, like Nokia feature phones, offer a similar basic user experience for less money.
Have you ever wished you could just swap out your phone full of apps and features and go back to the simpler times where you just texted or called people? Light has a product line that fulfills the exact purpose, and its latest phone, the Light 3, is as minimalist as it gets, but I’m honestly failing to see the long-term market vision here.
Light has just announced its latest “simple phone” entry, the Light Phone 3. The phone itself retains the core concept of its predecessors: it wants to be a distraction-free device focused on essential communication and utility. It maintains a minimalist design with a 3.92-inch black-and-white AMOLED display, replacing the e-paper screen of previous models. It retains features like calling, texting, navigation, alarms, hotspot capabilities, a calendar, and a music player—you can’t install apps on this, such as social media apps, so this phone just does the things it already does.
This generation does have some enhancements that bring the phone more “in-line” with a modern smartphone. We have an NFC chip, which would theoretically allow for things such as contactless payments to be added to the phone in the future. We also have a camera this time. There’s a 50-megapixel rear sensor and an 8-megapixel front sensor, which outputs 12-megapixel images. Light has also made the Light Phone III more user-friendly to repair, with the battery, screen, and USB-C port all now being accessible and replaceable. We also have an IP54 rating and 5G connectivity.
The device itself can be used either as a primary phone for those seeking a complete break from the digital noise or as a secondary device for intentional periods of disconnection. Light offers its own data plans, starting at $30 per month for 1GB of data, but the phone is also sold unlocked, allowing you to choose your own carrier. The latter might be the better option—1GB is probably more than enough for a phone that can barely connect to the Internet, but taking that into account, there are tons of other, much cheaper options.
We certainly understand why someone would buy a phone like this one. But it doesn’t mean you need to buy this one. It features overkill specifications such as 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 SoC (which, by the way, are specifications that you can also find on a budget Android phone under $300—stay tuned for the pricing of this phone). The battery is also a measly 1,800 mAh, and while I’m sure that’s plenty for a “simple” smartphone, phones with these specs tend to have at least 4,000 mAh batteries on the Android side.
This new model is set to release on March 27th. The phone will be available for $599 for a limited time, before eventually rising to $799. This phone probably has no right being this expensive considering the specs and the set of features, but it’s also not uncommon pricing for some of these niche phone makers. Still, if you really want a digital detox and to get rid of your smartphone, there are way cheaper ways to do so—Nokia/HMD’s feature phones are way more sensibly priced and are as basic as they get while still supporting modern networks such as 4G LTE.
Source: TechCrunch