I emailed Light to ask about picture and video messaging. They responded letting me know that you will be able to view your photos in color and view pictures and video messages sent to you on the device without having to go to your email. You will be able to send photos and videos as MMS.
I think the point and increased price of the lightphone III is simply about texting and the camera. The bigger screen and price is about fast, uninterrupted texting and a camera that can shoot pictures and video. They are probably the two biggest features that've kept people from getting lightphone II and neither of them compromise the underlying ethos of the product.
I am someone who is interested in dumb phones but could not get into the LP2 due to the horrendous texting ability and slow display. I also couldn’t see myself with a flip phone as I personally just wanted a nice premium feel. Even though I’ll be using the LP3 much less, I still care about it not feeling like a pack of gum in my pocket. I’ve dumbed down my iPhone a lot and I am happy with my ~2 hours of screen time (down from around 5-8 hours). The LP3 phone plan will hopefully be much cheaper than my current $50/month plan, as you mentioned. Very hopeful for the LP3 to be good and to also roll out some of the updated software on LightOS that you mentioned like a rudimentary weather app. I personally would love to see texting that is up to speed, ie being able to “react” to messages and to reply to certain ones in a group chat. Being under 30, texting is the main way my friends and family communicate, although I personally prefer to make phone calls for any sort of serious discussion. Would love to see an LP3 full review from you when you get one!
This is a very refreshing outlook on the model 3, thank you. You try to balance the pros and cons, with a good mix of personal / subjective and objective reasons. I am now a subscriber :) I pre-ordered LP3 after a month-long thought process. I do not own LP2. The main concern for me was the price, which, even at 400, seems like too much, let alone the 800 tag they are proposing for msrp. One more thought on the price, I can possibly just justify the 400 tag, because I can understand the nuances of trying to build a new device and global procurement / marketing costs etc. LP compnay is stating this is not a replacement of LP2, which will continue being supported, if not even produced. It is a successor only in terms of "time"; the time it is being brought to the market. Self-restraint / discipline is, what convinced me to pre-order LP3. To be more precise, lack of those qualities. I could uninstall the apps from my smartphone, but as you say, I would re-install them later. If not on the same day, there will be an instance when I need a browser, or other app, will find that it is not installed on my smartphone, and resort to installing and using the app. It is a vicious cycle which I have been unable to beat for many years since smartphones changed how I (we?) live our life. I like the idea of LP company being the curator. I do not want that power myself, because I am not strong enough. Right now at least. The downside is that by leaving this decision to LP, the company may make decisions that adversely affect me. Like say, introducing an app I would rather not have. But LP has by now, a good record track so, I feel I can trust them in their current line-up. After I pre-ordered LP3, I swapped my sim card from my smartphone into a big-buttoned dumbphone I had lying around. I went cold turkey as you say, to see how it felt. I could not wait till January 2025 for the cold shower. It was a good experience, and I certainly saw the benefit of it for my, ahem, mental health. Then, my son, who is on the autism spectrum and suffers from ADHD, wanted internet on his device, and I found myself I could not serve him any with my dumbphone. So the sim had to go back to my smartphone, until LP3 comes and can provide the hotspot feature. I use Niagara launcher which is less distracting then the default launcher on my device. I plan to use LP3 as my daily driver, and opting to do as yourself with keeping my smartphone around for those features and apps that I cannot "simply" live without. There is always the risk and temptation to revert to the smartphone, but my solution to that is to identify the situations when the smartphone can stay home in a faraday bag, and I go out and live my day with the LP3. For those instances where I am out with just the LP3 and need a smartphone, I will have to live the moment as it comes. This sits well with my brain. The device being sturdy, and "sophisticated" (subjective) are other plus-points for me. I love the design language for this model, which is similar to a DAP. The conversation-starter is also something I look forward to. Not to feel important or impose my opinions. But I think that talking to people about the benefits of living with less distractions is important. I am not going to start a conversation on the matter myself, so the LP3 doing that step is good, for me. If using a dumbphone makes me feel better, I would like that others feel better too. Have a good one!
Thanks for typing this up. It touches on a few things I've thought about but didn't include in the video. LP company is continuing to support the LP2 and thus not "replacing" it, but they are describing LP3 as "everything you already love about the Light Phone, done a little bit better." At the risk of getting pedantic about marketing copy: if this was positioned more as an alternative than a direct upgrade, I might think about it differently. e.g., how it appeals to smartphone users who were uninterested in the LP2. If they make a second line of products that's closer to a smartphone, then so be it, but if the "LP3" is more like a smartphone, then the company is "moving in that direction," if that makes sense. Parenthood seems like it would be a big factor in the LP's viability. It's a lot easier to live with the inconvenience of the LP2 when I don't have a wife and kids. It's one thing to say "I'll look at it later" when someone sends you an article, and it's another when your kid is injured and your wife is trying to send you a photo. Or if you're all in the car and need to find a nearby restaurant or hotel (I still use a Garmin, believe it or not). I wouldn't be surprised if schools, clubs, teams etc all expect you to install an app nowadays too. Lastly, I hope I didn't come off as too judgemental on the self-control front. I spend a lot of time at home with access to my computer, so I'm certainly not a role model of all-around digital minimalism. Many people use their phones as their primary computers and so it's a much bigger change for them than it was for me. I also shouldn't pretend like I don't enjoy the conversation-starter aspect. It can break the ice and give someone a good laugh, which feels good to do.
I didn't even know about the Light Phone II and honestly, seems neat! But for everything that seems neat about the II, you would simultaneously say the III shirks. Bizarre! Great stuff.
Great thoughts and feedback on the 3. I’ve also preordered as I’ve been wanting to upgrade a bit from the 2. Don’t mind if most apps remain black and white but having colored maps for the gps would definitely help visually while driving. I’ve saved so much wasted time since dumping my smart phone. I call it my electronic checkbook now.
Jose Briones did a long livstream 4 weeks ago where they (joe and Kaiwei) talked about the headphone jack (yes, with an adapter) and screen (color) and a lot more stuff too....
It’s an oled colour screen. I too have preordered and wanted to know what I am getting into so I asked. It’s a colour screen which is good because you don’t have to move the pictures you took on the light phone 3 to your pc to check how it came out. However this colour screen is limited to photos only and everything else will be B/W including navigations. Also, they are working on RMS support which is good but it won’t be available anytime soon.
@DI-JY, quoting you from another comment, _"I'm not arguing that it should run stock android. My point was that the Light Phone 2 was a weird little e-ink phone only capable of running a few basic apps - and the Light Phone 3 is basically a smartphone pretending it can only run a few basic apps. It's a weird product to make and charge $800 for."_ I am asking honestly if you know the technical limitations of LightOS, as a fork of AOSP in LP3 (which I believe I heard was going to be based on Android 14?)? I do not. I don't know what happens when you created an AOSP ROM and decouple everything Google related from it. It has a midrange smartphone processor (Qualcomm Snapdragon 4 Gen 2), but does the processor alone make it, "basically a smartphone"? If the ROM has built in limitations that make it basically not a smart phone? If I bought a Corvette engine and put it in a 2000 Honda Civic, the Honda Civic would not basically be a Corvette, because even though it has a Corvette engine, none of the rest of the parts are Corvette parts. And again, I have no idea if LightOS is a "CorvetteOS" that is fully capable of taking advantage of Qualcom SM4450, but the little I have seen of Light Phone (LP2 was on my radar for a while, but I just preordered LP3 and don't know much technical stuff about LightOS yet), I am guessing, maybe not? The $800 price would be more shocking if Light Phone was a company like Unihurtz. Their $300 Titan Slim comes Android 11, and it arrives with the August 2022 security updates, and Unihertz support says there's currently no plan for an update. LP2 started shipping in 2019 and 5 years later, it is still being updated. And when Light Phone launched their new phone, they said they wouldn't abandon LP2 users. I could be wrong, but I don't think Unihurtz thinks twice about whoever it is that is making their phones and under what conditions they are being made in or how people during the manufacturing process are treated, or whether or not they are being compensated fairly. I also don't believe Unihurtz tries to source their materials responsibly. They build a cheap phone as cheap as they can and sell that cheap phone for the greatest possible profit and then put that profit in their CEO's (and other executives) pockets. Whether Light Phone is true to their ethos or not I do not know, but they say that they are trying to be mindful of how thier employees are treated and how the people that build their hardware are treated and the conditions that they work in. They also try to source their materials more responsibly (utilizing recycled material). All of that makes their product more expensive to manufacture. So, it is more expensive for us to buy. But it's an expense that one can feel better about than say, buying an Apple product. Anyways, that is just me talking. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the phone.
I'm sorry for taking so long to respond to you. I bookmarked the notification and then forgot about it. In case you still care: No, I'm not qualified to understand the technical differences of the software. I casually talked about porting open source apps (e.g. weather) in the video, but I acknowledge I'm sure it's not as simple as it sounds. I disagree with the basis of your car analogy, though. The rest of the LP3 hardware (screen, wifi chip, camera, etc.) seems equally mid-range as the processor - they just aren't being fully utilized by the software. The analogy I'd make is a brand new Toyota, but the touchscreen only lets you control the radio. You know there's a backup camera, but there's no option on the touchscreen to display the video. The LP3's processor and screen are more than capable of displaying a QR code for a plane ticket, but the user has no way of making it happen. I hope I didn't come off as endorsing Unihertz. The lack of software updates was exactly the reason I didn't consider buying one. I believe I mentioned Fairphone in the video as well, and they seem to be the better comparison. It's ~$600 with its own ethical/sustainable/repairable ethos and is committed to software updates through 2031. They likely need to do less software development than Light (I believe the Fairphone is pretty vanilla android), but the point of this vid was basically to argue this is a self-created problem for Light with limited benefit. The LP2 was a unique piece of hardware that necessitated its own OS. The LP3 hardware is similar enough to standard smartphones that the custom OS starts to seem unnecessary to me. All that being said, I still bought it! I'm hoping it'll be good! I just would've been very nervous to bet the company on it if I was Light CEO.
If it were to run Android in full, with the ability to download apps, then that would defeat the purpose of this phone, and I’d cancel my order immediately if it was able too. 🏴
To be clear, I'm not arguing that it should run stock android. My point was that the Light Phone 2 was a weird little e-ink phone only capable of running a few basic apps - and the Light Phone 3 is basically a smartphone pretending it can only run a few basic apps. It's a weird product to make and charge $800 for.
@@DI-JY@DI-JY ya, I also got the lp3, although I do have similar reservations. i feel the e ink screen was a major part of the "dumb" aspect of the device and the slow texting experience was deliberate ("man, I dont want to text this all out I'm just gonna call them..." and all that pro-social jazz). Now with the OLED screen it does kind of seem like a phone that deliberately limits itself rather than a phone that does what it can with the added benefit of the limitations.
I don't think I framed it as much of an issue in the video. I was listing all the changes from the model 2 to 3 and spent 5 seconds on how that one affects me personally.
I emailed Light to ask about picture and video messaging. They responded letting me know that you will be able to view your photos in color and view pictures and video messages sent to you on the device without having to go to your email. You will be able to send photos and videos as MMS.
I think the point and increased price of the lightphone III is simply about texting and the camera. The bigger screen and price is about fast, uninterrupted texting and a camera that can shoot pictures and video. They are probably the two biggest features that've kept people from getting lightphone II and neither of them compromise the underlying ethos of the product.
I am someone who is interested in dumb phones but could not get into the LP2 due to the horrendous texting ability and slow display. I also couldn’t see myself with a flip phone as I personally just wanted a nice premium feel. Even though I’ll be using the LP3 much less, I still care about it not feeling like a pack of gum in my pocket. I’ve dumbed down my iPhone a lot and I am happy with my ~2 hours of screen time (down from around 5-8 hours). The LP3 phone plan will hopefully be much cheaper than my current $50/month plan, as you mentioned. Very hopeful for the LP3 to be good and to also roll out some of the updated software on LightOS that you mentioned like a rudimentary weather app. I personally would love to see texting that is up to speed, ie being able to “react” to messages and to reply to certain ones in a group chat. Being under 30, texting is the main way my friends and family communicate, although I personally prefer to make phone calls for any sort of serious discussion. Would love to see an LP3 full review from you when you get one!
Hey, keep doing videos. It's so refreshing to listen to a smart person on TH-cam. It's a rarity.
This is a very refreshing outlook on the model 3, thank you. You try to balance the pros and cons, with a good mix of personal / subjective and objective reasons. I am now a subscriber :)
I pre-ordered LP3 after a month-long thought process. I do not own LP2. The main concern for me was the price, which, even at 400, seems like too much, let alone the 800 tag they are proposing for msrp. One more thought on the price, I can possibly just justify the 400 tag, because I can understand the nuances of trying to build a new device and global procurement / marketing costs etc.
LP compnay is stating this is not a replacement of LP2, which will continue being supported, if not even produced. It is a successor only in terms of "time"; the time it is being brought to the market.
Self-restraint / discipline is, what convinced me to pre-order LP3. To be more precise, lack of those qualities. I could uninstall the apps from my smartphone, but as you say, I would re-install them later. If not on the same day, there will be an instance when I need a browser, or other app, will find that it is not installed on my smartphone, and resort to installing and using the app. It is a vicious cycle which I have been unable to beat for many years since smartphones changed how I (we?) live our life.
I like the idea of LP company being the curator. I do not want that power myself, because I am not strong enough. Right now at least. The downside is that by leaving this decision to LP, the company may make decisions that adversely affect me. Like say, introducing an app I would rather not have. But LP has by now, a good record track so, I feel I can trust them in their current line-up.
After I pre-ordered LP3, I swapped my sim card from my smartphone into a big-buttoned dumbphone I had lying around. I went cold turkey as you say, to see how it felt. I could not wait till January 2025 for the cold shower. It was a good experience, and I certainly saw the benefit of it for my, ahem, mental health.
Then, my son, who is on the autism spectrum and suffers from ADHD, wanted internet on his device, and I found myself I could not serve him any with my dumbphone. So the sim had to go back to my smartphone, until LP3 comes and can provide the hotspot feature. I use Niagara launcher which is less distracting then the default launcher on my device.
I plan to use LP3 as my daily driver, and opting to do as yourself with keeping my smartphone around for those features and apps that I cannot "simply" live without. There is always the risk and temptation to revert to the smartphone, but my solution to that is to identify the situations when the smartphone can stay home in a faraday bag, and I go out and live my day with the LP3. For those instances where I am out with just the LP3 and need a smartphone, I will have to live the moment as it comes. This sits well with my brain.
The device being sturdy, and "sophisticated" (subjective) are other plus-points for me. I love the design language for this model, which is similar to a DAP. The conversation-starter is also something I look forward to. Not to feel important or impose my opinions. But I think that talking to people about the benefits of living with less distractions is important. I am not going to start a conversation on the matter myself, so the LP3 doing that step is good, for me. If using a dumbphone makes me feel better, I would like that others feel better too.
Have a good one!
Thanks for typing this up. It touches on a few things I've thought about but didn't include in the video.
LP company is continuing to support the LP2 and thus not "replacing" it, but they are describing LP3 as "everything you already love about the Light Phone, done a little bit better." At the risk of getting pedantic about marketing copy: if this was positioned more as an alternative than a direct upgrade, I might think about it differently. e.g., how it appeals to smartphone users who were uninterested in the LP2. If they make a second line of products that's closer to a smartphone, then so be it, but if the "LP3" is more like a smartphone, then the company is "moving in that direction," if that makes sense.
Parenthood seems like it would be a big factor in the LP's viability. It's a lot easier to live with the inconvenience of the LP2 when I don't have a wife and kids. It's one thing to say "I'll look at it later" when someone sends you an article, and it's another when your kid is injured and your wife is trying to send you a photo. Or if you're all in the car and need to find a nearby restaurant or hotel (I still use a Garmin, believe it or not). I wouldn't be surprised if schools, clubs, teams etc all expect you to install an app nowadays too.
Lastly, I hope I didn't come off as too judgemental on the self-control front. I spend a lot of time at home with access to my computer, so I'm certainly not a role model of all-around digital minimalism. Many people use their phones as their primary computers and so it's a much bigger change for them than it was for me. I also shouldn't pretend like I don't enjoy the conversation-starter aspect. It can break the ice and give someone a good laugh, which feels good to do.
The LP2 already has Hotspot capability albeit only tops out at 4G though
The LP2 hotspot works better than my iPhone 13 hotspot for some reason. I preordered the LP3. I sort of collect phones though. 🤷🏻♀️
I didn't even know about the Light Phone II and honestly, seems neat! But for everything that seems neat about the II, you would simultaneously say the III shirks. Bizarre! Great stuff.
I pre-ordered mine a week ago… I like the changes especially the camera. Looking forward to getting mine 🏴
Great thoughts and feedback on the 3. I’ve also preordered as I’ve been wanting to upgrade a bit from the 2.
Don’t mind if most apps remain black and white but having colored maps for the gps would definitely help visually while driving.
I’ve saved so much wasted time since dumping my smart phone. I call it my electronic checkbook now.
I always do speech to text on my lp2 phones
Jose Briones did a long livstream 4 weeks ago where they (joe and Kaiwei) talked about the headphone jack (yes, with an adapter) and screen (color) and a lot more stuff too....
It’s an oled colour screen. I too have preordered and wanted to know what I am getting into so I asked. It’s a colour screen which is good because you don’t have to move the pictures you took on the light phone 3 to your pc to check how it came out. However this colour screen is limited to photos only and everything else will be B/W including navigations. Also, they are working on RMS support which is good but it won’t be available anytime soon.
@DI-JY, quoting you from another comment, _"I'm not arguing that it should run stock android. My point was that the Light Phone 2 was a weird little e-ink phone only capable of running a few basic apps - and the Light Phone 3 is basically a smartphone pretending it can only run a few basic apps. It's a weird product to make and charge $800 for."_
I am asking honestly if you know the technical limitations of LightOS, as a fork of AOSP in LP3 (which I believe I heard was going to be based on Android 14?)? I do not. I don't know what happens when you created an AOSP ROM and decouple everything Google related from it. It has a midrange smartphone processor (Qualcomm Snapdragon 4 Gen 2), but does the processor alone make it, "basically a smartphone"? If the ROM has built in limitations that make it basically not a smart phone? If I bought a Corvette engine and put it in a 2000 Honda Civic, the Honda Civic would not basically be a Corvette, because even though it has a Corvette engine, none of the rest of the parts are Corvette parts. And again, I have no idea if LightOS is a "CorvetteOS" that is fully capable of taking advantage of Qualcom SM4450, but the little I have seen of Light Phone (LP2 was on my radar for a while, but I just preordered LP3 and don't know much technical stuff about LightOS yet), I am guessing, maybe not?
The $800 price would be more shocking if Light Phone was a company like Unihurtz. Their $300 Titan Slim comes Android 11, and it arrives with the August 2022 security updates, and Unihertz support says there's currently no plan for an update. LP2 started shipping in 2019 and 5 years later, it is still being updated. And when Light Phone launched their new phone, they said they wouldn't abandon LP2 users. I could be wrong, but I don't think Unihurtz thinks twice about whoever it is that is making their phones and under what conditions they are being made in or how people during the manufacturing process are treated, or whether or not they are being compensated fairly. I also don't believe Unihurtz tries to source their materials responsibly. They build a cheap phone as cheap as they can and sell that cheap phone for the greatest possible profit and then put that profit in their CEO's (and other executives) pockets. Whether Light Phone is true to their ethos or not I do not know, but they say that they are trying to be mindful of how thier employees are treated and how the people that build their hardware are treated and the conditions that they work in. They also try to source their materials more responsibly (utilizing recycled material). All of that makes their product more expensive to manufacture. So, it is more expensive for us to buy. But it's an expense that one can feel better about than say, buying an Apple product.
Anyways, that is just me talking.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the phone.
I'm sorry for taking so long to respond to you. I bookmarked the notification and then forgot about it. In case you still care:
No, I'm not qualified to understand the technical differences of the software. I casually talked about porting open source apps (e.g. weather) in the video, but I acknowledge I'm sure it's not as simple as it sounds. I disagree with the basis of your car analogy, though. The rest of the LP3 hardware (screen, wifi chip, camera, etc.) seems equally mid-range as the processor - they just aren't being fully utilized by the software. The analogy I'd make is a brand new Toyota, but the touchscreen only lets you control the radio. You know there's a backup camera, but there's no option on the touchscreen to display the video. The LP3's processor and screen are more than capable of displaying a QR code for a plane ticket, but the user has no way of making it happen.
I hope I didn't come off as endorsing Unihertz. The lack of software updates was exactly the reason I didn't consider buying one. I believe I mentioned Fairphone in the video as well, and they seem to be the better comparison. It's ~$600 with its own ethical/sustainable/repairable ethos and is committed to software updates through 2031. They likely need to do less software development than Light (I believe the Fairphone is pretty vanilla android), but the point of this vid was basically to argue this is a self-created problem for Light with limited benefit. The LP2 was a unique piece of hardware that necessitated its own OS. The LP3 hardware is similar enough to standard smartphones that the custom OS starts to seem unnecessary to me.
All that being said, I still bought it! I'm hoping it'll be good! I just would've been very nervous to bet the company on it if I was Light CEO.
If it were to run Android in full, with the ability to download apps, then that would defeat the purpose of this phone, and I’d cancel my order immediately if it was able too. 🏴
To be clear, I'm not arguing that it should run stock android. My point was that the Light Phone 2 was a weird little e-ink phone only capable of running a few basic apps - and the Light Phone 3 is basically a smartphone pretending it can only run a few basic apps. It's a weird product to make and charge $800 for.
@@DI-JY@DI-JY ya, I also got the lp3, although I do have similar reservations. i feel the e ink screen was a major part of the "dumb" aspect of the device and the slow texting experience was deliberate ("man, I dont want to text this all out I'm just gonna call them..." and all that pro-social jazz). Now with the OLED screen it does kind of seem like a phone that deliberately limits itself rather than a phone that does what it can with the added benefit of the limitations.
Parental control on Android is actually pretty easy to handle. And quite effective.
Dude USB c headphones are $19 on apple. You can get whatever you want. The headphone jack is a non issue.
I don't think I framed it as much of an issue in the video. I was listing all the changes from the model 2 to 3 and spent 5 seconds on how that one affects me personally.
yes I do have it cuz it's more posh than some ghetto dumb phone