In defence of the Light Phone
I didn’t spend $799 on my dumbphone, but that doesn’t mean no one should
YouTuber Linus Sebastian understands the appeal of the Light Phone III. “Just last night, I was playing ping pong with my youngest daughter and thinking, man, I need to put away the phone more often and just spend one-on-one time,” he says at the beginning of his review.
But when he actually gets his hands on the Light Phone III – a phone that, despite its $799 retail price, is more notable for what it can’t do than what it can – he doesn’t know what to make of it. No Spotify? No Uber? No Discord, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger? “I literally wouldn't be able to coordinate with my badminton group,” he says.
Lest you think I am picking on YouTubers, let’s take a look at a similar review in the New York Times. Tech journalist Brian X. Chen begins: “Dear readers, I have a confession: I am suffering from an ailment that the younger ones call ‘brain rot,’ the inability to think deeply after too much scrolling on my phone.” Chen’s self-diagnosed condition is so advanced that he finds it difficult to finish a book. He prefers that to life with the Light Phone.
Without a smartphone, Chen writes, “I suddenly found myself unable to get into a train station, look up the name of a new restaurant or control my garage door.” Reader, he was unable to get into the train station because he’d chosen to swap his physical transit pass for a digital one. He forgot the name of a new restaurant, so he went to a different one. His physical garage door opener had been broken for some time; the app he used instead was a work-around.
Chen acknowledges that these problems, such as they are, arise from a smartphone dependent society rather than the Light Phone itself. That doesn’t change his conclusion. “While I admire the goal of the Light Phone, my experience demonstrates there’s nothing we can realistically do or buy to bring us back to simpler times.” In this, he echoes Sebastian: “This really is the kind of product that I desperately want to be excited about, but then I think about it for more than two seconds and I'm like, how am I supposed to use this?”
Well, let’s think about it for more than two seconds.
To state the obvious: life predates the smartphone. People managed to eat at restaurants and play badminton before Steve Jobs got on stage to show us the device that would change our lives. Even in 2025, it is theoretically possible to live a full life without using a smartphone, a computer, or the internet at all. (In one of the more telling passages of Chen’s review, he says he “can’t think of many people” who don’t need email or Slack for work. Oh, to be a New York Times columnist with no proles for friends!)
Most people today do use a smartphone. Increasingly, companies, governments, friends and lovers assume you do. This can make life difficult if you don’t. You may find yourself asked to scan a QR code you can’t scan; given a place to go with no directions. You may find yourself excluded or, more often, inconvenienced. You are guaranteed to be, occasionally, bored.
I don’t mean to suggest that we lose nothing when we give up our smartphones. Rather, conveniences have consequences.
Sebastian wants more phone-free time with his daughter, but needs to respond to a group chat within five minutes. Chen feels his brain slipping away, but won’t put it back in his head. Is it possible he would find it easier to remember the name of a restaurant without constant cognitive offloading?
The discomfort we feel when we transition from a smartphone to a dumbphone – when we “go light” – is not an accident. It is not cause for a “so-so” review. It is the point. It is part of the process of regaining the abilities we have lost.
If we are living in a smartphone-dependent society, it is a society that we are building with every decision we make. A society that these men, more than most, are influencing.
Criticism of the Light Phone is more convincing when it focuses on price. Chen compares it to glamping: “paying a lot to have an artificially crummier experience.” The Light Phone III is $599 if preordered and $799 at retail price; the iPhone 16e is $599. (The Light Phone II is available for a more reasonable $299, but still.)
I paid approximately $60 for my Nokia 2780. After losing it over the bank holiday weekend, I purchased a cheaper model for £19.99. With much, much cheaper options available, why is Light charging close to $1,000 for a dumbphone?
It is possible there is a fat margin sitting greedily atop what could be a $100 Light Phone. Light’s founders offer another explanation.
Light is a small business. Apple is a massive corporation, with economies of scale a company with approximately 50 employees can only dream of.
Light’s business model is not subsidized. There is no app store, no carrier contracts, no data collection – all of which can be revenue streams for less scrupulous technology companies.
Light Phones are for life. If there is a Light Phone IV, it will not come out next year. The Light Phone III contains the hardware for future features: contactless payment, for example. Users will receive updates as they are available, at no extra cost. (According to Light, anyway.)
(Founders Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang discuss this in a conversation with Joe Briones. You can give it a listen and decide for yourself here.)
I do find this explanation convincing – in part, because I used to work for an artisan food company. The product we sold was often cheap; our version was not. Some people assumed the prices were set out of snobbery; to intentionally keep out the wrong sort of customer. They were wrong. The business operated on slim margins, prioritizing fair pay for farmers and a high quality final product. Once I understood why our product was so expensive, I started to wonder how the alternative could be so cheap.
My question isn’t just why is the Light Phone so expensive, but why is the iPhone so cheap? Why is it so easy to purchase a smartphone with credit? How do carriers, phone manufacturers, and social media companies converge to support the status quo?
It has become a cliché of anti-tech activism, but is it any less true? If you are not paying for it, you are the product.
Best analysis on chen et al i have read so far!