I’ll be up front right away: I’m not interested in trying to talk you into this, justify why it’s good, or outline what’s wrong with our “smart” addictions. I’m simply going to outline my experience and what I’ve noticed. If you’re interested, reading Light’s Manifesto gives a good view into what is driving the company creating LightPhone.
The LightPhone
The LightPhone, put plainly, is often considered to be a “dumb” phone. I find this a bit of a misnomer since it does do more than a flip phone, but not as much as a traditional smartphone. To me, it’s a balanced phone.
My LightPhone History
The Intro
I originally became aware of it (specifically, the LightPhone II) through a friend who had purchased one. It seemed like an intriguing idea and I loved the concept but couldn’t quite bring myself to giving up all the other features I enjoyed on my existing smartphone. Over the following year or two I played around with various efforts to be smarter about my smartphone usage. I tried uninstalling apps, customizing notifications, configuring app limits, monitoring app usage, and even trying out custom minimal launchers (when on Android) designed to reduce temptations.
At some point I hit a bit of a breaking point with stress mixed with being constantly connected and at everyone’s beck and call. For about 2 weeks I would completely power down my smartphone at the start of the day and leave it in my car while I was out and not power it back up until the end of the day and it was time to go home. I found myself strangely calm and focused. A few days I would go out to my car at lunch and check in just to make sure I wasn’t “missing” anything. I believe this tempered any withdrawal or cold-turkey symptoms.
Immediately following this experiment we went on a family vacation. I took my Kindle with me and read for a few hours each day, continuing the trend of powering down my smartphone for extended periods of the day. It was while I was enjoying this truly rejuvenating time that I decided to order myself a LightPhone.
At this point I think it’s important to highlight that I don’t believe that my smartphone was bad per se. I just really struggled with effectively using it and maintaining balance in my life. It wasn’t the source of anxiety in my life but it sure was an avenue for anxiety to flood into my life, and at that point I needed to do something.
It was on back order for a month or two, so I needed to wait a bit. It finally arrived and I immediately loved it. Shortly after this, one of my kids’ phone broke a few short weeks before leaving for college so I happily passed on my “old” (flagship - don’t feel bad for them!) smartphone and committed myself to living a LightLife.
A Few Bumps
After a period of time successfully using it, I needed to make a work trip to Brooklyn for a few days. I brought my old digital SLR camera with me and figured I was all set. This is where the bumps began.
For photographs, I had become rather spoiled by the point and shoot ease of a smartphone. My SLR skills were pretty rusty and I found myself tinkering more than capturing enjoyable moments. I wouldn’t blame this on the lack of a smartphone, but it does highlight the need to be practiced and prepared for this like this and I simply wasn’t.
The Directions tool on LightPhone let me down. I had trouble getting and keeping a GPS lock. The directions themselves seemed sluggish and I ended up making more than a few wrong turns. I could write this off as an experience in exploration but let’s be honest, when you ask for directions you expect them to be accurate. By the end of the trip I also needed an Uber/Lyft ride, so I paired my tablet with the LightPhone and installed the apps to get me going. It was clunky but worked.
My company makes use of 2FA for logging in to our various systems. This works fine when you have a smartphone to run the app but … not much more to say here. I did end up finding a workaround that I’ll outline in the Augmentations section below.
The Regression
After that work trip experience I lost a bit of my enthusiasm for the LightPhone. I still firmly believed in the idea and mission but started to second guess it’s feasibility for me. I don’t fully recall how I came to the conclusion that I needed to return to smartphone-land, but I did and I ordered another shiny toy. I couldn’t bring myself to sell the LightPhone so it sat on my desk, temping me to charge and use it but not much more.
The Prodigal Phone User
Fast forward to this past December: my kid came back from college and reported that their phone had been acting up with connectivity troubles. Ironically (or not) my wife was experiencing the same issues on her smartphone as well. I was able to get my wife’s smartphone replaced under warranty but my kid’s phone was out of warranty so once again, I passed on my smartphone knowing I could quickly charge my LightPhone and make everyone whole again.
The end of year holiday season is stressful to begin with for many people and I am no exception. Layer on never-ending tech support issues at home and a round of layoffs at work (I made it through, though was left with a lot of additional stress and turmoil), I again found myself looking for the peace of a segmented life. What I first thought may be a temporary phone switch is evolving into an admission that this really is a good fit for me.
The Pain of Mainstream
I usually take some time off between Christmas and New Years. This year I had already been back on the LightPhone a bit, and when my last day of work hit I closed the lid on my company-issued Macbook vowing to not open it again until the New Year. I’m happy to say I made good on that goal.
What stands out is my first day back to work in January. I had spent the break with the LightPhone, my Kindle, some shows/movies (without any commercials), and my personal laptop. It’s important to note that my personal laptop runs a flavor of Linux and I have a rather un-colorful and minimal theme on it. When I first opened the lid on my Macbook I was greeted by all the windows and tabs I had left open. Colorful icons were screaming for attention. Animated gifs and emojis in Slack were screaming back. I started to sift through everything that needed my attention and was reminded of the mess of post-layoff-life that I still needed to sort out. It was a very unexpected culture shock.
I was immediately and completely overwhelmed.
I closed all of my applications and closed the lid again. After cleaning off my desk I re-opened the lid and restricted myself to only one or two open windows at a time. I started chipping away at my task list with a newfound commitment to keeping life as simple as I could, knowing the world would always throw as much as it could my way as long as I would let it. I could tell the LighPhone would be remaining in my life for awhile.
The Toolbox
So for all the attention LightPhone gets around what it can’t or doesn’t do, what does it do?
Phone
It makes calls and lets me talk to people. The speakerphone works quite well. What more does this feature need?
Calendar
I have my work and personal calendars set up on it. There’s a calming chime 10 mins before each meeting. It keeps me on schedule and informed for planning.
Notes
This feature technically works, but is made truly useful due to the voice-to-text aspect. I don’t make heavy use of this feature, though it’s a great backup to keep a running list of things I don’t want to forget when I’m out and about. Things I previously would search immediately and then 5 clicks later wonder how I’m down that rabbit hole instead get logged in a note and I look it up later when timing is more appropriate. I find things like shopping lists just work better in my small pocket-able notebook. This is a great backup in case I’ve left that notebook at home or it’s just not within reach.
Music
Upload some music files, listen to them on the go - that’s really about it. It’s very limited, so I don’t actually have this tool enabled on my phone. I’ve found a better solution for my tastes. More on this in the Workarounds section below.
Podcasts
This works pretty well, actually. I have a small number of podcasts configured on it. Sometimes I use earbuds, sometimes I’ll just turn on the speakerphone setting and set it on the desk or table next to me. This tool is also the saving grace to my music solution.
Calculator
It crunches numbers. I don’t need it often. It’s nice to have.
Alarm
I actually don’t personally need an alarm very often. When I do, this does exactly what you would expect it to. Set an alarm time and repeat schedule and it will chime to wake you up (or alert you that some time has arrived).
Hotspot
I’ve used this a few times, actually. It’s not super fast but works in a pinch. I’ve paired my laptop to it or even my my wife’s/kid’s phone to it when they were experiencing their connectivity issues mentioned above.
Directions
I had hopes for this tool but it’s just not quite reliable enough for me. At some point I would like to give it another shot since I know the LightPhone team is constantly making upgrades and improvements to the platform overall. More on this in the Augmentations section below.
Augmentations
Internet & Connectivity
The big one here is my laptop. Sure, there’s a convenience to having an internet-connected computer in your pocket at all times, however I’ve been able to ask myself what is truly necessary about that? Usually, it’s simply immediate gratification. If I’m doing something I should just be present and do it. If I want to browse online, look up trivia, etc, I still let myself do those things. The difference now is that I’m purposeful about doing those things. When that time is over I close the lid on my laptop and move entirely to something else. Much less split attention, much more involvement and enjoyment.
Home Automation
Another augmentation is Google Home. I’m not thrilled about this one yet, and I still have some more contemplation to do about it, but as for now it’s filling a void. I have most of the lights in my house along with some other automations all controlled via Home Assistant. Without a smartphone I have a need to somehow operate all of those things. I’ve set up a few Nest speakers around the house and use them to trigger the various actions I need to throughout the day. I have a few thoughts about how to make this better and compatible with my goals, but that’s a topic for another day and another post.
GPS & Directions
My car does have TomTom directions in it, so I’ve started relying on that more. The only thing I really don’t get from that is live traffic reports. If it’s really important for time-sensitive travel I’ll check traffic before I leave the house. Otherwise, I’ve been trying to take a deep breath and remind myself in Bruce Lee be-like-water fasion that so much road rage comes from impatience. It’s been an enlightening experience to take a deep breath and feel calmness while I watch the drivers around me rage on. The extra 90 seconds I spend getting somewhere is well worth the lowered heartrate I’ve gained.
What about during travel, especially when I’m not driving? I do still have my old smartphone laying around. For the Tool concert I went to last week I needed the Ticketmaster app to get in anyway, so I downloaded offline maps for NYC while I was still on Wifi at home. From there it acted pretty much like in ye olden days when you’d have a paper map (or MapQuest printout!) in your bag or back pocket. We’ll see, maybe I’ll play around with printing temporary maps again also.
2FA
Many 2FA systems for personal usage support sending a text as the second factor. Obviously that works fine on LightPhone. Fortunately for me, my workplace also supports using Yubikey in addition to a smartphone app. I got myself set up with a Yubikey and am able to access all my work related systems securely as well.
Camera
While I have a few older digital SLRs and am even considering it a potential start of a collection, I do still want the ability to snap photographs quickly when I’m out and about. I recently ordered a used point and shoot camera (Pentax Optio VS20) from eBay that I can pocket easily. It’s rather small and has a 20x optical zoom which I expect to be quite luxurious. I anticipate it will be more finicky in low-light situations so we’ll see how it works out.
Notebook
I take notes in a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook. What I’m referring to here is a smaller moleskine-style pocket notebook for shopping lists, capturing ideas, etc. Basically, this is how I externalize my fleeting thoughts and short-term tasks so I don’t need to worry about forgetting them.
Workarounds
Music
The only true workaround I’ve employed is for music. The music tool on LightPhone is understandably lackluster. I wouldn’t necessarily want a full-featured solution here as use cases can vary so much from user to user and I appreciate the simplicity of the phone overall.
For my specific use case, I host all my media on a Jellyfin server at home. I haven’t used any music streaming services in years. This actually works to my benefit here. I wrote a quick few snippets of PHP exposes all of my playlists as podcast feeds that I can plug into the LightPhone Podcasts tool. This means I can actually have multiple playlists (not supported in the Music tool), I can modify the playlists without manually syncing files around, and I’m not limited by the storage capacity of the LightPhone itself. I even built in a self-updating shuffle functionality so I don’t have to listen to the same starting tracks every time. If you’re interested I’ve made the project available on Github.
What I’ve Noticed
I’ve noticed that I’ll be the only person in the room not starting at a piece of glass. Sometimes it’s in my living room with my family, other times it’s at a doctor’s office, waiting room, or in line at the grocery store. I’ve started to notice more detail in the world around me instead of numbing myself to the “pain” of waiting. Part of this can be lonely but I’m realizing that you’ll be lonely either way. It’s better to be aware of it and be able to do something about it than it is to feel lonely and drained and not know why or even realize it.
I’ve actually begun to appreciate the need to think about things a bit more purposefully. I can’t just bounce through life without thinking ahead and have it work out. I suppose “work out” is a relative statement - more like “get away with it”.
I’ve noticed the pointless tinkering and fidgeting I no longer succumb to (or do so much less). When I act I act with a bit more conviction and purpose.
Finally, I’ve noticed that I didn’t actually need to give anything up. I’m not forever disconnected from the internet. I can still check the weather, check my email and messages. I still send ludicrous gifs to my friends and watch videos on topics that are interesting to me. The only think I really gave up was the ability for those things to push into my life via active notifications or passive allure. I didn’t give up my ability to chose them when they suit me.
That’s why I consider this a balanced phone.