Smartphones are distractions and they can become addictive. Our gadgets have become our best companions and this is at the detriment of our real life relationships. I talked about the NoPhone and described it as the world’s most useless phone aimed at curing your smartphone addiction. If you don’t really buy the idea of carrying a non-functional phone around, the Light Phone may be exactly what you need.
This isn’t your regular phone. As a matter of fact, we call it the smartphone killer because it is meant to render your smartphone less useful. Well, that’s if you’re willing.
The Light Phone looks exactly as it sounds. It is light in the sense that it’s just about the size of a credit card and also, there’s no NFC, no Bluetooth, no Facebook app, no Twitter, no email app, no SMS… It’s meant basically to make and receive calls. Period.
This Kickstarter project took off last year and backers have already pledged over $415,000. The device is estimated to start shipping by May and it costs only $100. Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang are the creators and the phone was created at Google’s 30 weeks incubator. According to Hollier:
We started building this because it became very clear that true happiness means being present. This has been written about by so many of the smartest minds since Seneca. So much of our days are spent connected and staring at screens that we are losing that presence in so many situations. We built the Light Phone as a way for people to find balance with their connectedness. It’s not that we think people should never connect again, it’s just that taking a break is extremely healthy in every sense of the word.
This phone doubles as a flashlight and the battery can last up to 20 days on a full charge. The streamlined designed allows the phone to be used as little as possible. It lacks all the distractions smartphones offer. It has a SIM slot and it can work with your existing line. If you choose to use it as a second phone, there’s an app you can install on your smartphone that forwards your calls from the smartphone to the Light Phone.