Light Phone III assessment: a number of new options for the smartphone different

What are the important options of a smartphone? That’s not a rhetorical query, and it’s truly a helpful train: if I had been to remove the whole lot however the belongings you really want in your telephone, what would these issues be? And how may you work together together with your telephone in another way if these issues had been all you had?

The $599 Light Phone III is one try to reply these questions. The Light Phone III is considerably extra highly effective, useful, and smartphone-ish than something Light has shipped earlier than. (It’s additionally considerably dearer.) It has a digicam now, and a quick and colourful touchscreen. It connects to Fifth Generation networks on all three main US carriers and plenty of others world wide.

It’s a smarter telephone than the earlier Light Phones, however it’s nonetheless not a smartphone. It has no app retailer, no social media, no net browser, not one of the issues we do on our telephones all day. That is, after all, the entire level: Light envisions the system as both a no-frills, nights-and-weekends complement to your smartphone or a wholesale substitute for anybody on the lookout for a lot much less display time. More just lately, it has caught on as a tool for youths — a college in Massachusetts made information a number of years in the past by banning smartphones and giving college students Light Phones as a substitute.

The Light Phone III comes tantalizingly near being my supreme minimalist telephone with out getting fairly there. Part of the issue is that the telephone’s not fairly completed: its NFC sensor, video chat characteristic, and fingerprint reader aren’t but lively, all of which might add some helpful new prospects to the system. Light is engaged on integrations that can go a great distance towards absolutely satisfying my very own listing of important telephone issues, too. And there are a number of interface and value issues that make it arduous to reside the Light life.

The Light Phone II obtained considerably higher within the years it was on sale, and the Light crew says this one will, too. It received’t ever be the fitting system for everybody, however I’m awfully charmed by it.

Light Phones have all the time been properly designed, however the latest mannequin is my favourite but. The all-black-everything design makes the Phone III really feel a bit like one thing a spy may carry, and the sharp-edged boxiness sort of makes it really feel like a weapon. (It weighs 124 grams and is 12mm thick — mainly, think about you set a case on an iPhone 16, chop the entire thing in two proper above the amount buttons, and the underside bit is a Light Phone. That won’t be useful.) I actually like the best way the Phone III appears to be like, although the highest edge does dig into my ear a bit after I’m on lengthy calls.

Instead of a small, slow-refreshing E Ink display that stands out towards massive bezels, this one has a 3.92-inch, 1080 x 1240 AMOLED panel that blends actually properly into the system’s… nonetheless fairly massive bezels. This might be the most important {hardware} improve on the telephone: Light CEO Kaiwei Tang tells me the gradual and blocky E Ink display was beforehand the primary motive folks bailed on their Light Phone. The AMOLED is far more conscious of scrolling and swiping and, particularly, is far more nice to kind on.

The tradeoff, after all, is that the display is a bit tougher on a battery and lots brighter to have a look at — however Light designs round each of these issues fairly effectively. The telephone’s interface remains to be practically all black and white: it’s nearly jarring once you open up the digicam and the whole lot’s instantly in full coloration, as a result of Light works so arduous to maintain issues monochrome and unenticing all over the place else.

There are not any spectacular specs to be discovered on the Phone III. It has a Qualcomm SM 4450 chip, 128GB of storage, and 6GB of RAM. The (replaceable!) 1,800mAh battery is small however nonetheless sufficient to maintain this factor operating for 2 or three days at a clip in my testing. Remember: this telephone is explicitly designed not to be highly effective. It can’t do a lot, and it’s not imagined to.

Here is an entire listing of the whole lot the Light Phone III can do, ordered by how I arrange my telephone. Light calls them “Tools,” however they’re basically simply apps. A few them come in-built, and also you add the remainder by accessing an internet dashboard from another system. (If you get a Light Phone, be ready to spend so much of time in that dashboard, as a result of you possibly can’t do a lot tinkering on the telephone itself.) Anyway, right here’s the listing:

That’s the longest the listing has ever been for a Light Phone, and it does most of its jobs rather well. But I think most individuals will assume it’s lacking no less than one factor. For me, the most important one is Spotify, which Tang, Light’s CEO, tells me the corporate is engaged on. I’d additionally actually like some sort of fundamental studying app and a few extra messaging choices — going with a Light Phone means ditching WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, and the whole lot else that isn’t SMS. (RCS: additionally apparently coming quickly.) For most individuals, that alone is both annoying or deal-breaking.

While I’m making an inventory of stuff that’s lacking, listed below are a number of extra. The Light Phone III connects simply and reliably to Bluetooth headphones, however I can’t use my headphones to manage playback on the telephone. I like the texture of the devoted button and scroll wheel on the left aspect, so why don’t they do greater than activate the flashlight and dial display brightness? (Tang says extra choices are coming.) I like that I can sync my Google Calendar to the telephone; why can’t I do the identical with contacts? And oh, right here’s a bizarre one: I actually, actually, actually miss CarPlay and Android Auto.

Still, I used to be stunned how rapidly I tailored to most of life with the Light Phone. It took a couple of day to cease instinctively swiping as much as get to a homescreen and as a substitute hit the button on the aspect to modify Tools — or simply flip the display off. I spent 20 minutes subscribing to all my podcasts, and the Phone III grew to become the factor I tote from room to room blaring The Rewatchables. I didn’t even attempt to swap away from iMessage and WhatsApp, to be trustworthy — I simply despatched some SMSes and did the remainder of my texting from my laptop. All my studying, YouTube-ing, and senseless scrolling had been shunted to a different system, too. (In this case, largely an iPad.)

My finest recommendation for the Light Phone is to attend. The firm has a terrific monitor report for sustaining and enhancing its units, and I’ve each confidence that it’ll ultimately activate the NFC chip and add a digital pockets, simplify login and cost with the fingerprint reader, add video chat with the front-facing digicam, and construct the integrations — like Lyft and Spotify — it has promised. But The Verge’s long-standing coverage is to assessment solely what’s within the field, and for now, the telephone is unfinished.

There’s one different factor stopping Light from actually attaining its objectives, and that’s wi-fi carriers. In an ideal world, you’d be capable of swap between a smartphone and a Light Phone with a few faucets — transfer the e-SIM over right here, flip it on, performed and performed. In actuality, except you’ve gotten a really particular and costly plan, there’s merely no approach to simply and repeatedly transfer your stuff and your service between units. (That’s far much less true in Europe and elsewhere, for what it’s price.) I don’t need to ditch my iPhone totally, however I’d love to have the ability to flip backwards and forwards between units, and it’s not likely possible to take action.

Still, there’s no different telephone fairly just like the Light Phone III, and I think it should attraction to many individuals. The thought of the Light Phone is to show “utilizing your telephone” right into a factor you do on goal, not absentmindedly at any time when your mind is unoccupied for 3 seconds. Having immediate, always-on entry to the whole lot shouldn’t be a superb factor, and the Light Phone takes it away. I’ve used the Light Phone III lower than some other telephone I’ve ever reviewed, and that could be a great point.

I’ve lengthy believed within the thought behind the Light Phone, and I consider on this telephone, too. I simply want it had WhatsApp.

Photography by David Pierce / The Verge