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Light Phone 2 — Beautiful phone designed to be used as little as possible
The Light Phone 2 is a 4G phone with a beautiful black & white matte E-ink display. It's a more reliable, durable, and practical phone, now featuring essential tools like messaging, an alarm clock, the ability to get a ride-share home or a list of simple directions. All so you can leave your smartphone behind more often.
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If it has Google maps (or at least open street maps) + live directions, then it's gonna be great. Otherwise no :) love e-ink and its battery saving
Two years later, no Google Maps and non of the extra functionality advertised before lunch. The price is therefore not justifiable.
If I weren't so caught up with useless tech junk, this would be my phone! Minimalism is great, I just wish my cluttered lifestyle will one day evolve to the point where I can become a minimalist haha.
Hey PH,
I’m Joe! We’re pretty excited to hear from everyone here, stoked to be on the platform.
It’s been almost three years since we introduced the first Light Phone campaign. Having shared our phone with over 10,000 users around the world, collected feedback and learned from our mistakes, we're really excited about the potential of Light Phone 2.
One thing that we believe in now more than ever is the power of ‘going light’, it is an amazing experience, one that feels profound in a time when we have become so accustom to our existence only through hyper-connectivity. Our goal with the Light Phone 2 is to make a more reliable, durable and practical device that makes it easier to go light more often… or for good!
So, you’re probably asking, what’s new?
Light Phone 2 is a 4G LTE phone with a custom black-and-white E-Ink display. It has an aluminum casing, a larger speaker, microphone & battery, and the addition of a proximity sensor, headphone jack and physical buttons for navigation.
The Light Phone 2 also introduces a new operating system and functionality. Light's OS uses a few thoughtfully implemented tools, with physical buttons to scroll through your customized 'toolbox'. The typographic-based interface is a pleasure to use.
We will be adding messaging as well, the most requested addition by our users. We also want to include an alarm clock, so you can leave the smartphone outside the bedroom.
Other tools will be possible to explore thanks to the 4G connectivity, and we will be working closely with our backers to bring the tools that make the most sense to the Light Phone 2; maybe the ability to get simple directions or to call a ride-share home. These are tools, not feeds or notifications.
We are launching the Indiegogo campaign this morning at 10am EST! A $250 donation will get you one of the very first Light Phone 2s, which we expect to ship in about a year, April 2019. We would be honored to have you as a backer and to work together over the next year to make this the best possible phone for everyone’s needs.
You can find much more details on the campaign page: lightphone2.com
Thank you for following along with our project, this is an exciting next chapter for us as we continue to provide a refreshing alternative to the tech monopolies that are fighting ever more aggressively for our attention. Remember, our time is their money.
Much love,
Joe & Kai
@joehollier Any plan to open the platform to developers to build minimalistic apps?
@joehollier @teapot This needs to happen. Firm guidelines, Javascript based SDK and you've a winner on your hands.
I really, really like this product.
I think it'd be cool to challenge myself to go at least one day a week with something like the Light Phone in my pocket instead of my smartphone.
I wonder what the founders at the Center for Humane Technology think of this phone?
Wow! This is stellar and comes in perfect timing! I just cracked my thousandth (more like 5th) phone and I blame that it is because I am on it too much. This would be perfect. Just #need WhatsApp capability for it to be a real purchase for me. Is that looking possible?
The need for tools to live a more digitally minimal life is becoming more acute each year. I have already last year disabled all notifications on all devices and removed social media apps from my phone. These have been first aid to my addictive phone usage and light phone 2 could be the next step. Adding bluetooth to the final configuration much welcome move.
You say it will be able to message people. But what app wil it support? What's App? iMessage? Telegram?
OMG! I was a big supporter of Light Phone 1. I remember arguing with my friends over why this is very important today. Still, I felt the light phone could do a bit more.
Now you have done it. Get the message across everybody. I hope this becomes available everywhere.
#NeedoftheCentury
@joehollier I'm curious about the decision to drop shipping a SIM with the Light Phone 2. From what I read about the first Light Phone launch, it had its own SIM card and maintained your smartphone number. I have Verizon, which does not allow duplicate SIMs, so it is pretty much out of the question to buy a whole secondary phone plan specifically for the Light Phone 2. Really like the concept though.
@eric_miller Hi Eric, thanks for checking it out. I completely see where you are coming from. We do actually plan to offer a few SIM options to LP2 users, which will be sharing in a few months time as we learn a little bit more about our users so we can tailor the plans and development to meet their needs. We are considering still offering the call forwarding/masking platform, the biggest hurdle for us was that it is currently not possible to forward/mask messages so the experience would be pretty confusing as it stands and we felt that it would make more sense to launch the campaign as unlocked phone and to over the next few months offer a variety of options for different ways to integrate it into your lifestyle. I will also admit, that we were never able to bring that platform internationally and in speaking with those users, the lack of same number was actually way less of a hurdle than we initially anticipated. People sometimes enjoyed have a second 'light' number. You can still call forward to it, and set up an auto-reply with a link to text your new light number perhaps, or just share that light number with closest friends and family. Obviously it's not seamless, but I guess my point is just that it wasn't a deal breaker for everyone. Also, although Verizon may not have such a feature yet, I'm pretty sure they have been working on one for a while to compete with the ATT NUmber Sync and TMobile Digits platforms. As smartwatches with SIMs and IPads with SIMs become more popular, users will expect that feature and only the carriers are able to solve it in a fully seamless way. The final side of the picture is that our speciality is in hardware and UX, the cloud platform was an ambitious task that delayed our launch by 6 months initially and in a way we want to focus on what we know how to do best. Hope some of that makes sense!
@joehollier Thanks for the response Joe! You make a great point, I suppose I could actually setup a Google Voice number for LP2... I'll have to look into Verizon more if they've got some new stuff brewing for secondary SIMs. That actually makes a pretty great case for picking up a LP2 as a secondary phone akin to owning an apple watch w/ cellular. I personally would find the LP2 more useful and beneficial than apple watch. :) 🙌
I absolutely LOVE this...and yet I’ll never get it. Because either I can’t risk not having a camera on me anymore or if I really decide to go without I’ll go even more minimal and leave the house with a cellular Apple Watch + AirPods.
Maybe this needs an Apple Watch app to receive notifications for non-cellular Watch owners (but that base will shrink in the next few years) or bundle it with a tiny camera!
Or maybe I’m wrong and a smart watch will actually make people more likely to leave the fully featured phone at home and get yours as a minimal screen to have just in case 🤷🏻♂️
I've been wanting exactly this as a "detox" weekend phone. I'm constantly on backlit screens and bombarded with notifications. I'm looking for a simple, yet beautiful detox phone that's around $100. Oh, I just saw the price on Indiegogo and it's a bit pricey at $400! :\
Beautiful. Sick. Disgusting, even, how well executed. I wish I were the human being capable of "downgrading" to the phone to reduce clutter, but alas, I don't think I could right now as I need some apps for work connectivity (2FA). If I could request anything, it would be some sort of two factor authentication support, but that would be very difficult to implement and water down the product. Very nice.
I enjoy the intent, as I already don’t use notifications, etc.; but I think it’s misguided not to include a few more basic functions. I’m aware of feature creep, but no documents at all? I’m not going to bring this and an e-reader to the beach, say. I would buy one (when it’s actually a real product) if it included basic e-reader functionality.
@joehollier Love the concept behind the phone. Would love to showcase the product in our Retail As A Service initiative in Dubai.
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Pros:E-ink is a great screen for reading stuff and the battery should last for weeks
Cons:E-ink is relatively slow and there will never be apps as good as in other phones, besides R2L languages will probably not be supported.
ntwrk