We get on very well with the Light Phone III, a beautifully engineered touchscreen phone that wasn’t afraid to act a little dumb. The III eschewed the app-flashed frenzy of the modern home screen in favour of minimal text and even more minimal functionality; using the device means cutting a lot from your life, from social media to online banking, WhatsApp and much, much more.
That, however, is very much the point. At a time of growing evidence about the nefarious tricks of the algorithmic trade – let alone the damage wrought by feeds that run amok in an age of deliberate misinformation.
Light Phone Flip
Now Light is back, shining its focus on a new sector. Welcome to the Light Phone Flip, the company’s fourth device and its first-ever flip phone. As we’ve often observed, the contemporary flip phone sits within a weird evolutionary niche. On the one hand, there’s the folding screen models typified by Motorola’s razr series or the Samsung Z Flip7 or the Honor Magic V Flip2.
None of these clever pieces of tech does anything to solve the attention issue. To really dig into the disavowal of modern mobile culture, you need to switch to something like HMD’s 2660 Flip 4G, a self-proclaimed dose of digital detox.
Light Phone Flip
Light thinks differently, taking inspiration from each corner and finding itself with an original offering as a result. Founded by Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang, the company has quietly garnered more and more interest as our collective attention spans implode through abuse.
Step one was to make the Light Phone Flip more affordable (the III, with its solid metal case, is $699, soon rising to $899 due to chip shortages). The Flip can be yours for $300, with a contract offering of $39/month for 24 months. The company functions as a virtual operator in the US, UK and Canada, another way of making the device cheaper.
Light Phone Flip
As a result, the company is cultivating an active developer community, with a freshy open-sourced operating system and a burgeoning list of apps developed to add specific layers of functionality. As with many esoteric electronic devices, getting under the hood is half the fun for users, many of whom pride themselves on their tech savviness and don’t find any rewards in the padlocked walled gardens owned by Apple and Google.
Light Phone Flip
Step two is to grow the Light community. One of the instigating events behind the design of the Light Phone Flip was the founders’ experience of The Luddite Club, a joking-not-joking organisation originally founded by a group of Brooklyn teens angry at the corporate overreach into mental health and community via the pervasive and intrusive dominance of the smartphone.
Light Phone III was already making inroads in the community, but the flip format still retained a certain cachet – close the phone, close off all digital communication.
Light Phone Flip
It’s been 20 years since the original Motorola Razr made flip phones into fashion objects. Kai Tang just happened to be a member of the original design team behind the Razr, so effectively the form factor has come full circle. Light Phone Flip doubles down on what Hollier calls the ‘symbolic closure’ of the phone, with a hefty reinforced hinge and a deliberate lack of external screens (save for a single notification light).
‘We felt there was a huge opportunity [for a flip phone] with our OS and eco-system,’ says Hollier. ‘We’re uniquely positioned with our experience.’ Decrying the flimsy, often toy-like nature of many contemporary flips, Light has charged itself with shaping a solid device that offers more without feeling like less.
Light Phone Flip
Hollier calls Light’s Flip a ‘cousin’ to the III. The basic functionality and OS are the same, with a slightly lighter feature set. There’s no NFC sensor or forward-facing selfie camera, for example, nor is the screen touch operated. Instead, there’s a traditional number pad and D-pad controller, with old-school T9 text input. In short, it really prioritises phone calls above all else.
‘Gen Z feel like they were robbed by big tech,’ Hollier explains. ‘Even III feels a bit too much like a smartphone. They tell us that AI is seeping into every aspect of their lives and they hate it.’ (No prizes at all to HMD for recently launching four ‘dumb phones’ with dedicated AI assistant buttons.)
Light Phone Flip
Hence the ongoing quest for the deliberate friction created by earlier device generations, from CD players and wired headphones to digital cameras. It’s this anti-AI generation that has driven Light to pursue the flip format. ‘We were convinced by our young users, people who have never had smartphones, avoiding all the drama of social media,’ says Tang.
Light Phone Flip
Light Phone Flip users won’t be cutting themselves off completely from the world. The latest version of Light’s custom Android OS, LightOS, provides navigation, messaging, photo management, note-taking and a media player (the phone reintroduces the beloved 3.5-inch headphone jacket).
‘When you close the phone it’s all matte,’ Tang says. ‘There’s nothing other than the speaker grille and a notification light.’ In short, it’s not continually trying to lure you back into rambling back and forth conversation or a doomscrolling session.
Light Phone Flip
In a nod to youth and fashion, the Flip is available in six colours, yellow, red, grey, dark blue, pink and white. Made from plastic, with a replaceable battery, Light Phone Flip is more accessible in every way. ‘We cut no corners with III,’ Hollier admits. This new phone has been engineered to reach a wider, younger audience.
This is all the better for expanding the community. ‘Over the last five years, we’ve had so many users who are also developers,’ Hollier says. ‘We realised that these people are aligned with us. It reminds me of the early days of the internet.’
Light Phone Flip
As mentioned earlier, this community is building new tools, emboldened by the open source OS, further embedding Light Phone into a movement for change. ‘The open source mentality really aligns with our approach,’ Tang acknowledges. ‘It helps eliminate the nagging attention economy of every single modern app.’
Accompanying the launch of the Flip is a biweekly newsletter, Flip Your Life, that taps into the community spirit and helps those who want to make the (perhaps daunting) journey away from a social media world.
Light Phone Flip
‘When we originally launched, people didn’t get it,’ Hollier says. ‘Now, they do. But they say, “I wish I could [switch to Light], but….’ So we want to help them.’
‘It’s a process, not a one-time thing,’ Tang acknowledges. ‘Quitting addiction is not an easy process.’
The backlash against an always-online society is slow but steady. Light has made an excellent tool that’s sure to help hurry things along.
Light Phone Flip
Light Phone Flip, details at TheLightPhone.com, @TheLightPhone