Everyone is staring at their phones. All the time.

You’ve probably seen it many times before, especially in public transportation.

Crane neck and the ubiquitous thumb-swipe. At the same time it looks as if everyone is doing something important. Keeping busy. Swiping away.

People communicate with one another via text a lot more than any other form. Actually calling someone now meets with a surprised reaction.

People get dopamine hikes from notification bubbles, followed by a mood swinging like a pendulum in the other direction. We’re miserable and we’re falling deeper into that hole.

Hacking my phone use

I decided to try a more minimal, disconnected approach for a while, leaving my iPhone at home when going out. It was a nightmare initially with the reflex of reaching into the pocket without any reason being way too common.

After a while however I realised I genuinely feel better and have a better recollection of meeting people. All those meetings suddenly seemed „more fun”. I remembered what was discussed!

This is when the idea of “going light” came to my head first. Combined with a bit of luck (finding the Light Phone 2 indiegogo campaign) I made the purchase.

The Light Phone II

Finally received my device in mid November and have been using it as my main phone ever since.

Keep in mind that I often have my LTE iPad Pro or my Macbook Pro in my backpack. So it’s not about fully disconnecting from the various things that I’m doing in my business. Doing that would be business suicide in many cases.

But the main difference is that I need to make a conscious effort to pull that secondary device out of the backpack, open it’s carrying case and use it.

That meant no more bathroom phone reading, and obviously I’m not taking my larger devices when going out in the evenings at all.

It wasn’t super easy at first, but the Light Phone started to grow on me. Of course it was a conversation starter (and a hero of many instagram stories) but after a time it simply became a tool.

Just as the LightHQ guys envisioned, tools are there to be used for specific tasks and then put away.

I’m sticking with the Light Phone at least until Mudita Pure comes out next year, and after that I’ll see which one I like better. Don’t plan on coming back to my iPhoneX as I genuinely feel happier now. More alive and in the world.

The big win with this phone is definitely reclaiming your life again. It’s also a lot easier now to understand how unnecessary „feeds” are. At first it can be a bit painful, especially with some of my medium articles started getting traction, but the time and joy of being alive is something that slowly faded away starting in 2008–2009.

Fun stuff

When during a meeting my friends take out their phones unconsciusly and start scrolling, I take my lightphone out, turn it on and say:

So what’s happening on the internet? Oh, it’s 9:44!

And pocket the phone again.

The problems?

There are however some downsides to the device. Luckily most of them can be fixed in software.

One that cannot be solved is how my wife hates this device. She can’t send me photos or links and it took a while to adjust to sending those to my computer / iPad instead.

The software is not complete

The most important tools are there. You can call someone, receive a call and send text messages. There’s also an alarm clock.

However on a couple of occasions I wanted to quickly order an Uber and couldn’t which may have opened an adventure of public transit to me, but wasted over an hour because of that.

I also couldn’t rent electric scooters, but that wasn’t much of an issue.

Music?

I wasn’t missing music so much, since I repaired my old iPods — it’s actually cool to use them in 2020! 🙂

The interface

There are some little UI elements that I’d do differently however, starting with the alignment of the top navigation. My example of this interface on the right. The middle screen shows a different grid with the screen title aligned to the arrow. I also made the switches bigger and placed them at the same spacing on both sides.

The flow itself is also a tiny bit confusing as turning the phone on could have the same menu as the menu button shows. Here’s how I’d see it.

The alarm clock setting could be improved and have predefined alarms.

The ability to delete phone/sms threads would also be awesome to have that coveted inbox zero feel on the minimalist device 😉 Right now you can’t remove anything on-device.

If it wouldn’t kill the battery too much, the clock with a 1 minute refresh would be awesome to be visible all the time on the screen. Since it’s e-ink maybe it could somehow selectively refresh every minute. Or even every hour saying something like 10PM + to have the rough time available. But I don’t wear a watch so that may be only a minor issue for those with nothing on their wrists.

I have quite a lot of ideas so Light-guys if you’re reading this get in touch — maybe I can help with the UI’s — after all that’s what I do and that’s what this device allowed me to do even more of.

But overall

I started using the Light Phone on November 18th. It is January 18th right now and I’ve been using it as my main device for two months now. Not going back to my iPhone X. I may switch to the Mudita Pure (preordered it as one of the first 5 people on kickstarted 😉 but we’ll see which one fits me more.

Thanks Light!

I love how I can now focus on things I want to do with my day, instead of being interrupted by noise. And sure — you can remove most apps from your phone, but the knowledge how quickly you can reinstall them is still going to hang over your head.

I don’t have that problem anymore. It’s liberating.

Update 2025

Since then I left the LP2 and used the Mudita Pure for a while. Then left thet and just used my iPhone less.

For a few weeks now I’ve been exploring the Light Phone 3 and it seems to have solved most of the issues I had with the 2.