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Light Phone 2: A simple 4G phone with e-ink
- shakehar 8y agoWhy 4G? Wouldn't 3G use less power and let it run for longer?
- iodiniemetra 8y agoDifference in power usage isn't that great, and carriers are provisioning 4g capability - in areas where 3g is over-used, it's not being improved.
- TYPE_FASTER 8y agoVerizon is shutting down their 3G network at the end of 2019
- petecox 8y agoLongevity. I live in a country where they have shut off the 2G network. 3G may well suffer the same fate within a few years, as carriers migrate to 5G.
- iodiniemetra 8y agoThe biggest benefit this could have is a smart-ish phone with multiple days of active use battery life. Instead they specced a 500mah battery Also it's $3-400. Insane. I can get a commodity android phone for $150, remove all of the apps, and with a little self control have the same thing. It looks good, though.
- VikingCoder 8y agoWith an eink display, shoudn't 500 mAh get you quite a bit? Kindle Paperwhite is 1420 mAh...
- chrismorgan 8y ago> Battery: 5 days standby; A few hours talk time.
- petecox 8y agoIt's the same Qualcomm chip as in smartwatches. Unlike a watch, calls will drain the battery.
- polshaw 8y agoAs soon as you tackle the display, the problem becomes android, and the need for connectivity, ie radios that are always/often on
- com2kid 8y ago> The biggest benefit this could have is a smart-ish phone with multiple days of active use battery life. Instead they specced a 500mah battery Take any Android phone, uninstall all messaging apps, disable all other forms of background transfers and sync (increasingly hard to do as Google adds more and more of their services to the OS). Enjoy your 3 to 4 day battery life. You said active use, but this phone doesn't have any active uses, by design. Standby time on modern smart phones isn't half bad, if you get rid of everything that wakes up the device!
- nullify88 8y agoThis. Go to Settings / Battery and you can prevent or minimise a applications background cpu usage. Then go to your Data usage, from there you can prevent or minimize background data transfer. This has greatly improved battery life on my phone.
- iainmerrick 8y agoTurn off data and just use it for calls and SMS and it’ll last even longer (just like old Nokia phones used to). Android used to let you disable 3G/4G data and just limit the phone to 2G data - - low bandwidth but adequate for syncing email and other tasks, much lower power usage. Unfortunately that option seems to have been removed.
- izacus 8y agoThat's because 2G networks are shutting down (together with 3G ones) and 4G/LTE ones are moved to lower, more efficient, frequencies previously taken by GSM. Disabling 4G these days can often be counter productive for signal strength and battery life.
- iainmerrick 8y agoHuh! That never occurred to me, but it makes perfect sense. Oh well. :/
- 8y ago
- ddeck 8y agoThere doesn't even seem to be anything smart-ish about it, except that it uses the same form factor. >It brings a few essential tools to the Light Phone, like messaging, an alarm clock, or a ride home And yet further down it says that these are not even definite features, but "some features that we might explore". Clearly the appearance is the selling point. From a utility perspective flip/button phones make a lot more sense if you're only using them as phones. $300 seems quite a stretch when there are a huge variety of dirt cheap dumb phones around. How about a Jenny TV 2.8 [1] with 175 hours standby for $30 at Amazon? Or a Nokia 130 with up to a month of standby, which sells for around $25 in India. [2] [1] http://bluproducts.com/jenny-tv-2-8 http://bluproducts.com/jenny-tv-2-8 [2] https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-130 https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-130
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoIf this one actually launches and gets a small following, I'm sure there will be copycats that are able to create and release better versions. I don't think this will be a commercial success but it may inspire others.
- seba_dos1 8y agoI was initially interested some time ago, but couldn't find or get any information about software license, so I haven't backed it.
- nobodyshere 8y agoI couldn't care less about the licenses, however the pricing of that thing immediately means no to my purchase. Especially positioning $300 as an awesome discount from $400.
- whitepoplar 8y agoLooks cool, but I wish some phone maker could come up with a phone that's actually ergonomic. Remember how well old Nokias used to fit the hand? Now it seems like every phone on the market is a slippery glass rectangle.
- WalterSear 8y agoThe technical term is fondle-slab.
- always_good 8y agoRemember how beat up they eventually looked? You couldn't do anything about that. By detaching the case from modern phones, consumers could then swap the cases out. I think it was a move in the right direction. However ergonomic a Nokia was doesn't really matter to me when its functionality was vastly limited. I'll take a massive screen that supports many more applications over a text/call machine that has a better grip. Can you provide a phone that combines the two? At least here in Mexico you can still buy cheap brick phones if that's your preference.
- whitepoplar 8y agoiPhone 3G/3GS was ergonomic. It fit the hand really well.
- icebraining 8y agoRemember how beat up they eventually looked? You couldn't do anything about that. The old Nokias (since the 5110) were actually designed to always be used in a case (which would characteristically snap off when it hit the ground, reducing the impact). Don't you remember all the custom 3310 cases?
- joelrunyon 8y agoThey're coming back... https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/nokia-8110-4g-banana-phone-on-sale-price-specifications-1862890 https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/nokia-8110-4g-banana-p...
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- X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago300 seems WAY too expensive.
- jacknews 8y agoLooks cools, BUT... - People call you on your phone number, so you have to swap your sim card from smart-phone to this every time you want to "go light". Also phone-book sync, etc. - e-ink displays are incredibly fragile.
- cptskippy 8y agoT-Mobile allows you to have multiple devices with the same number.
- petecox 8y ago> you can leave behind your smartphone more often... or for good If I were spending $US300 on a phone, it ought to be my daily driver. So I would assume this is for people who, if they do want to access social media on iOS/Android then they do it from the comfort of a large screen device such as a wifi-only iPad, tethering to their 4G dumbphone. Oh and there's nothing preventing an e-ink device from using a cloud addressbook.
- acct1771 8y agoHotspot on that tiny battery...ew
- chibg10 8y agoThe phone number thing isn't an issue. On/off Call Forwarding is easy to set up on the first Light Phone. I can toggle it with a voice command to Google Assistant on my Pixel.
- lev99 8y agoMessaging could make phone numbers a big deal
- dragonmum 8y ago> - e-ink displays are incredibly fragile. hmm, i have the opposite impression. compared to lcd, eink displays seem pretty robust.
- kbumsik 8y agoI don’t think it is possible to keep the same design with a e-ink and a touchscreen. There must be a bezel.
- wincy 8y agoThe Kindle Voyage is e-ink and has a responsive touch screen. You can type stuff out without too much issue on it.
- lsc 8y agoboth the voyage and the oasis do have a bezel, if we're using the modern usage of the word, like the iphone 7 has a bezel and the iphone x is bezel-less. The paperwhite, voyage and oasis are all touch screen e-ink kindles that I've owned (I dunno if the base kindle is touchscreen these days, I haven't owned one.) I don't know if it's required or not, but I think previous poster was suggesting that the bezel was needed in e-ink displays, and all the kindles I know of have a bezel, even though that bezel is flush on the voyage and oasis models. Now, I personally think that poster is wrong, at least if we are using bezel in the sense that the iphone x is bezel-less; but the current crop of e-ink kindles are not bezel-less. Personally, I think typing is okay on the paperwhite and the second gen oasis... on the voyage and on the first gen oasis, the thing wasn't responsive enough to type comfortably, in my opinion. I dunno if that had anything to do with it being e-ink, though; It could have easily been an anemic processor.
- namibj 8y agoOnly if you need instant visual feedback regarding how good you hit the center of the key. For LCDs there are patents for compensating the distortion caused by haptic spherical caps on the touch screen based on a front camera doing eye-tracking. I do not know how good this might work for e-ink, but a consideration could be somehting similar to a screen protector that you place on the screen to enable better typing, and take off for better viewing. Maybe with a hardware button that re-adapts the distortion correction to the current gaze, so you'd press this after sitting comfortably in a chair or such, holding it the way you want to for the next few minutes or longer.
- passive 8y agoI like the look they are going for, but by April of next year, I'm confident Xiaomi could be selling something like this for $150.
- altpdr 8y agoI love e-ink screens and have been thinking about getting an arduino to play around with them. Where can you get e-ink screens like that? Or would it be manufactured in-house?
- brianherbert 8y agoYou can get some smaller ones at Adafruit which are good for tinkering. I have the PaPiRus Zero which was easy to add to a Raspi Zero and comes with lots of example code.
- godelski 8y agoYou can get some off of Alibaba. Been Krasnow's blog might help you a bit https://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/2017/10/fast-partial-refresh-on-42-e-paper.html?m=1 https://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/2017/10/fast-partial-refresh...
- leetbulb 8y agoI have a few Waveshare brand e-ink displays to play around with. They are really cool!
- dbuder 8y agoAliExpress
- nnash 8y agoFor what is supposed to be a simple, minimalist "unphone" they chose the absolute most boring form factor.
- gnode 8y agoI think it makes sense for something minimalist to not be an eccentric shape.
- MisterOctober 8y agoCompanies continually miss the mark when it comes to neo-dumbphones -- folks that want a dumbphone badly enough to seek one out, and I count myself in this category, want one that is small, very durable, foolproof, and inexpensive. These features were all common on old dumbphones like the previously-mentioned Nokia and some Motorolas [or Jitterbugs]. Whenever a 'hip' dumbphone is released, such as this one or the regrettably-named 'Punkt,' they look cool but fail miserably in two or more of those criteria.
- asherism 8y agoWhat's wrong with the name 'Punkt'? I quite like it.
- MisterOctober 8y agoDifferent strokes for different folks -- I find it pretty patronizing ["Hey hip kids! Dig our slang!"] but recognize that tastes very widely.
- Animats 8y agoThey're trying to sell flip-phone functionality for $300 by positioning this as a "lifestyle" purchase. "We call this experience 'going light'." That may work; it got their Kickstarter funded. A sunlight-readable ruggedized e-ink phone would be useful. But that's not their target market.
- lev99 8y agoThe first phone had even less features. Starting a hardware product by making a niche product and expanding the market and device complexity over iterations on the hardware is a proven success path. "Active" apps require third party buy in, which is hard for a new company to achieve.
- 0x445442 8y agoYeah, if there really is a "simplification" market why just built out a number of useful data services over SMS and encourage folks to buy old feature phones with just talk and text functionality.
- jsendros 8y agoThey should've just built a custom launcher for Android. Could've resulted in the exact same effect with zero hardware of manufacturing overhead.
- Yoric 8y agoWell, there's the small matter of e-ink, which should drive battery usage waaaay down.
- Mandatum 8y agoFor $300 I'd expect longer battery life and international band support. Old Nokia's were $50 and still usable in most of the world - this is a step backward. Look at the Galaxy Pocket Neo released for the African markets for instance, priced at less than $130 at release, had 3 days battery life and would be considered a modern smart phone. This on the other hand, has much less capability in a less robust form and costs double that.
- gruez 8y ago>For $300 I'd expect longer battery life and international band support. Old Nokia's were $50 and still usable in most of the world - this is a step backward. 2g/3g probably works around the world. notice how they mentioned band 1/2/3/whatever support, which isn't used to describe 2g/3g frequencies. i'm guessing the only reason your nokia could work anywhere around the world is because there are only a few bands for 2g/3g. whereas there are a few dozen for lte.
- stinos 8y agoLast Nokia (150, not sure) I have costs $30 or so and has a battery life of about 2 weeks with normal use. So yeah, I'd love e-Ink, but it should be worth it.
- joshwcomeau 8y agoI like how so many of these comments are claiming that this company is missing the mark / doing it wrong / out of touch, and yet the project is >600% funded.
- georgemcbay 8y agoMissing the mark and getting overly-crowdfunded aren't mutually exclusive. The Ouya comes to mind, it was an absolute hit on Kickstarter (904% funded) and completely missed the mark.
- MisterOctober 8y agoOr, say, the 'Reading Rainbow' kickstarter.
- Bakary 8y agoThe other commenter mentioned the Ouya but there are also outright scams that have been fully funded. This includes a device whose "creators" claimed it could allow you to breathe underwater.
- reshie 8y agoit's like a cellphone(dumb phone?) with a nice soft keyboard and display.
- joelrunyon 8y agoIn similar news - the banana phone is coming back https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/nokia-8110-4g-banana-phone-on-sale-price-specifications-1862890 https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/nokia-8110-4g-banana-p... About $100 too. Might just pick one up for fun to see how it goes.
- freekh 8y agoDoes anyone know if the banana phone has Spotify?
- r3bl 8y agoBanana phone runs Kai OS, which is not supported by Spotify. However, there are people requesting it: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Simplified-version-of-spotify-for-kaiOS/idi-p/4400024 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Simplified-versi... and https://community.spotify.com/t5/Other-Partners-Web-Player-etc/Nokia-8110-4G/td-p/4400818 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Other-Partners-Web-Player-e.... So the answer to your question is "no", but it might. FYI, I am not interested in this phone and it took me 30 seconds of searching the Internet to find this info. It took me longer to write this comment. It really doesn't seem like you've put in an effort of searching for such info.
- freekh 8y agoThanks! And sorry for replying so late, but just had to ask why on Earth you would go to the trouble of looking it up, writing this comment and then adding that FYI in there? Just strange (or is it some sort of display of superiority I don't understand), hence the question. Hope this comment is not offending I certainly did not mean it. Just felt that it would be polite to answer given that you took the time :)
- Nexxxeh 8y agoIf it had a "The Matrix" spring-loaded bit, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But no spring, no sale.
- hajile 8y ago
- m3kw9 8y agoEventually, it will diverge back to what you have today.
- BadassFractal 8y agoI would get it, but at $300 it's a pretty expensive luxury fashion statement.
- speps 8y agoNo Email app ever seems quite drastic for a $300 phone.
- usaphp 8y agoIt will be difficult to “go light” if you will have to carry a DSLR with you instead of having a camera in your phone. Nowadays camera in a phone is just as important as a phone capabilities itself, especially for families with kids.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoDepends on the person but even with my Smartphone I rarely use my camera if I had a eink phone it wouldn't be too different for me just that I wont be able to use Signal.
- stuntkite 8y agoIn the reality we live in now, I don't even have to photograph anything anymore because everyone else is already taking and sharing those photos. I basically gave up on photos last year. I don't like being in them anymore either. They don't feel commemorative, just transient social currency powering an odd ad machine that doesn't seem to have my interests in mind. I agree that the phone is expensive, but I like the design. It's funny that people are comparing it to $100 Android phones. Those already exist, you can get them in vending machines at the airport. This isn't that. It's hard to get anything simple with LTE without building it yourself. I'd pay money for what is not in this phone. I'm already $2k into my DIY dumbphone project and it's not reliably hanging out in my pocket making calls.
- chartflip 8y agoDo you have more info on your DIY dumbphone project? Would love to see!
- stuntkite 8y agoI try to keep my identity private online and like I mentioned, don't really take pictures anymore, but I can give you a general overview. I started with this arm platform called Firefly http://en.t-firefly.com/ http://en.t-firefly.com/ I really like how their coreboard are set up. The current version is about the size of an apple TV. I wanted to get away from actually needing a touch screen so I've been working with a dev unit of a low power laser projector that also does depth scanning to allow for optional alerts and gestural interfaces. The unit I'm using is from this company Microvision. They have a couple retail products, I don't know if they even have the production capacity to do their depth sensing units at scale, but they'll sell you dev units if you email them. http://www.microvision.com/technology/ http://www.microvision.com/technology/ People always want to use these things for watching movies or whatever, which they will make a 100" screen on the wall, but they are extremely low lumens, so I focus on short throw and an interface that only uses four colors. CYMK. Since it's a laser, it doesn't need to focus and blacks are absolute so it works pretty well. I just got an Intel Realsense the other day and I'm hoping to move to that for depth sensing and just use MV's projection module. And their tools are great even if brand new mostly and need some help. It's a cool platform. They bill the Firefly as good for AR installations and stuff and it has the ability to do synced stereo vision that is helpful for depth stuff, but I've found that to largely be a giant pain in my ass to pretend like I'm going to solve. That and mounting two CCDs really breaks my already pretty kludgy assembly. Using this unit as the pcie LTE modem. http://shop.t-firefly.com/goods.php?id=49 http://shop.t-firefly.com/goods.php?id=49 Funny thing about most LTE modems, there' sa good hackaday article on this problem, but even though they are capable of PCM audio on chip, they don't give you access, so if you wanna do voice, you're stuck with crazy hacks or VoIP. There is a neat 4 modem board availible that also supports virtual sims (which I didn't even know was a thing and sounds exploitable) but or some reason has an audio bus that works with a couple models of modems. I might be getting some of the details wrong on this problem, I'll see if I can find the hackaday article, but a quick google search didn't turn it up. Voice communication isn't my favorite thing anyway, so VoIP or XMPP/WebRTC is fine with me. For less hand waving interface I started with two of these power point mice that I got super cheap. They are bluetooth, have a reasonable accelerometer, a few buttons, and most importantly a thumb stick with a press mode so with two I've been working on a trainer to use the thumb sticks as a twiddler keyboard since there's enough combinations to do full querty and plus some. Now that I've tested that out, I'm designing a controller myself, still faster and more interactive to use two, but I'm working on a pattern for easy one handed text entry. I bought a set of Bone Conduction headphones that I liked except for their fidelity and how ugly they were so, I'm playing around with building something myself. Exciters are cheap and I think I can do better. What I like about bone conduction is that your ears are open and what you're hearing doesn't interrupt regular life. Ear buds are great for closing our the world, but that goes against what I want out of my "phone". Basically I'm annoyed and overloaded by all the crap that all the tech around me blasts at us all the time. I think it's inelegant, annoying, and motivated by bullshit sales and ad tracking exploitation. Because of that no one has improved on shit in 10 fucking years. From my tech I want it to give me less, work with me to provide communication, stay the hell out of my face, but also I want to own my platform and know what it's doing. Most importantly, I'd like it to actually be freaking cool. We are essentially using the exact same device as the first iphone. That isn't because we can't do better, it's because it works to keep us in line, vendor locked, and ready to shell out for the next one. So yeah, the "phone" is kind of big, especially with the battery, which is roughly the size of a Stephen King paperback, but it lasts forever and has an AC invert er which is handy sometimes. This prototype stuff isn't quite ready to be rugged and travel with me, but the goal is to get it down to something easy to even put in my back pocket, but at least in my backpack, but really all I'm interacting with is the twiddler and the headphones. If I'm working I can set the thing on my desk and I it can use color, motion, and clear, uncluttered text to share info with me. Because I'm doing weird point cloud depth scanning, starting with an ARM platform has been a giant pain in my ass. There have been some powerful and small x86 platforms that have come out recently like the LattePanda, so I'm eyeballing that as the next move to speed up the software side of stuff. Also I've been playing with the LimeSDR, it's technically capable of LTE and tons of other stuff. Their package manager isn't up to snuff yet, but the next gen will be capable of ranges up to 5G. The dream with this pile of techno garbage is some sort of open source, not awful, mesh network phone that still can use your t-mobile account until your friends get enough SDR radios that we can just say fuck it to the telcos. https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1727.html https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1727.html https://myriadrf.org/projects/limesdr/ https://myriadrf.org/projects/limesdr/ But to answer the question you probably have, my daily driver is an iPhone7 that I would be fine if it fell in the ocean. My brand new macbook pro had keys falling off and it's USB-C went out after 3 months, so I've left most of apple's ecosystem for good. All the parts for way cooler stuff is out there! We can totally just quit paying thousands of dollars for bullshit ad-slabs and take our communication back. Sorry, I guess that was quite the barf. I've been working on this off and on going on 3 years now but haven't looked at it in months because of a new job. I forgot how much was going on with it. hah.
- baby 8y agoOr get an iPhone and don't install addictive apps. Although the browser by itself is addictive...
- kall 8y agoThe browser can be either disabled or limited to certain sites easily in Settings > Restrictions. You can also disable the app store there (with automatic updates enabled) for good measure. Add dark mode aka "Smart Invert" to have less phone glow on the face. I‘m sure you can achieve the same stuff on any android phone. Buying yet another gadget, that you will likely play around a lot with in the beginning, seems kind of like the opposite of going light. As a gadget this looks really neat though and I kind of want to develop apps for it.
- baby 8y ago> Buying yet another gadget, that you will likely play around a lot with in the beginning, seems kind of like the opposite of going light. It's more than a gadget personally, I use these essential features all the time: * camera * payement (apple pay, starbucks, other cards) * banking (Monzo and Revolut only exist as apps) * plane tickets * access to important docs on dropbox anywhere * music (apple music) * reading (news feed, articles, papers, etc.)
- kall 8y agoYes, I think so to. I was referring to the light phone as the gadget. Setting up a smartphone with all features that you consider valuable and disabling everything else just seems more worthwhile if the goal is to get away from distracting phone (or gadget) use.
- baby 8y agoOh yeah, I guess we agree.
- holstvoogd 8y agoI like the concept, but the execution worries me. I bought the light phone (1), it's a complete piece of garbage. Controls & feels like some of the crappy stuff from around 2000. I tried to use it once, but it turned out to be unusable outside due to being white and reflecting more sunlight than it's leds/display could produce... (I did feel stupid at that point, yes). Hope they do a better job at this one & then, maybe, if they drop the price by 50% I'd consider it.
- dbuder 8y agoAn artist and a product designer...even a simple phone is a complex piece of hardware, they have no business producing a phone.
- pndy 8y agoIt's definitely looking outstanding and simple which is something I like but: there's no backlight even in old-fashioned electroluminescence form and there are situations where external light isn't enough. I'd like to know if company is collecting any data of device usage and how secure this LightOS is. There's only English language available which eliminates it as my mother's current HTC 8S replacement - while it's similar in size and simplicity of use, she would prefer seeing UI in native language. Are there any owners of previous model who could share their experience?
- lev99 8y agoI leave my phone behind and take my Apple Watch Series 3 with me sometimes. The watch is much less distracting than a smart phone while keeping basic connectivity. The Apple Watch Series 3 has almost all of the features of the Light Phone 2 (missing battery life), and is equally as non-distracting. The Light Phone 2 is missing several features of Apple Watch Series 3 like Health Kit and Apple Pay. Configuring call forwarding and message forwarding is much simpler with Apple Watch than it is for Light Phone. Preordering a Light Phone 2 costs $300 and and will ship next April. Buying an Apple Watch Series 3 costs $320 and you can pick you up today. If you have an iPhone I would recommend an Apple Watch to someone wanting to leave the phone behind from time to time instead of this. This might be more useful to spending days away from a charging station, someone without an iPhone, or someone that doesn't like wearing watches. I assume there is an Android Watch product with most of the big features of the Apple Watch too.
- tomxor 8y agoWhats the advantage of either vs a basic "nokia" phone for £50~ ? they aren't very big these days, and the most distracting they can be is actually receiving a call or text. I "downgraded" to one of these 6 years ago. Bonus features include up to 2 weeks battery, practically indestructible compared to smartphones (which means even less distracting)... it's the phone that literally makes me forget it exists until I actually get called, that has to be the least distracting possible while still having a phone.
- tomxor 8y agoThe only thing I like about this is the size... that makes it even easier to forget about. Yet this is still all about aesthetics for $300. Cheap basic credit card sized phones already exist [1], sure it doesn't last as long, but it's only £10 and doesn't require another smart phone to function properly. [1] http://www.imei.info/phonedatabase/87580-aiek-m5/ http://www.imei.info/phonedatabase/87580-aiek-m5/
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- deftturtle 8y agoI would like Apple to sell e-ink or Qualcomm's mirasol displays, so we could swap them and save power. Would be amazing. I generally have enough ambient light to see my screen. And I don't want to use my phone at night anyway. Everyone is whining about cost but ignoring the fact that someone is trying to innovate in this space. Who cares what it costs. They're pushing something out, and eventually if Apple and other major manufacturers offer low power displays, people will appreciate the option.
- jlebrech 8y agoRide Home: this could work with a minimal web browser. something like wap comes to mind.
- sigi45 8y agoI use my phone distraction free. I disable notifications i don't care / are not notificatin worthy. I remove myself from newsletters. I use the 'Do not disturb' mode. I don't need an 'light' phone. I need my phone as powerful as it is right now when i wanna use google maps, it should be fast and responsive and with great details.
- markatkinson 8y agoIt doesn't look like they are attempting to replace your powerful phone. It seems the Light Phone 2 is something you use alongside your main device. So I can already see how this device might be useful. If you are shooting out the house quickly to go surfing, climbing, trail running you can grab your light phone with a smaller physical footprint and only essential functionality. But at $300 not sure its worth it yet. The new Nokia 3310 offers most of the same for $55.
- wool_gather 8y agoMostly makes sense. What seems strange in this pitch is that there's no camera. I totally get why there's no camera, but in the "outdoor activity, minimal functions" scenario, I generally want one.
- thanatropism 8y agoI need a bossdad phone: such that only emails from my boss or whatsapp from my parents show up in the notifications.
- pasta 8y agoIsn't this a scam? All previews of the phone exclude e-ink. They are all fitted with bad quality LCD screens (which you can't read outside).
- TeMPOraL 8y agoI really want an e-ink phone. But not really that phone. It seems really just to be a fashion statement. I worry it'll have very little practical utility. The best implementation I've heard of so far was YotaPhone 2 - https://yotaphone.com/gb-en/ https://yotaphone.com/gb-en/. A proper smartphone with two screens - normal one on the front, an e-ink on the back. I was considering to buy it some time ago, but I discovered the product was abandoned. If someone could re-do this concept, but put the specs of ~Galaxy S7 inside, I'd buy that in a heartbeat, even at flagship prices. Or even better, I'd love if someone could make a proper e-ink tablet. Give me 12.3-inch e-ink touchscreen and a software stack that would let me read, browse, write e-mails and run a text editor on it, and it'll be my new go-to machine. If I could hook up a keyboard to it and run Emacs on it (even terminal Emacs via SSH), I'd be in heaven.
- polshaw 8y agoThe tablets exist, eg look at the onyx boox max 2. Runs android (6), and it also has HDMI input. Not cheap, naturally.
- specialist 8y agoI also coveted the YotaPhone. The best part of the Light Phone 2 is that pitch video. Showing how pervasive (invasive) smartphones have been become. Bullseye. As appealing as the Light Phone 2 is... Google Maps was the killer feature that got me to board the smartphone crazy train. Especially when traveling. The thought of forfeiting maps gives me pangs of separation anxiety.
- eat_veggies 8y agoThe remarkable [0] seems like what you're looking for. It runs Linux, and you get root + ssh access to it out of the box. [0] https://remarkable.com https://remarkable.com
- skykooler 8y agoI spent a while looking around that site and couldn't find any specs - what is the screen size?
- gnode 8y agoI like the look of the hardware, particularly the e-ink ink display, but can't say the software UX appeals to me. I agree that the modern smartphone experience by default is cognitively impairing (too many notifications), but that's something I'd like to have control over, rather than take it or leave it. I think making the software side extensible could make this a great phone for hackers.
- hjek 8y agoWhat's up with Indiegogo just showing nothing unless you have JavaScript enabled?
- iainmerrick 8y agoPlenty of sites do that, unfortunately. Why would you expect Indiegogo to handle disabled JS gracefully? (I'm not saying I like it -- I often disable JS myself. It works great for most news sites.)
- hjek 8y agoYes, they do. Well, I'd expect possibly not being able to sign up or donate or something, but not being able to read text I find a bit extreme, as if they've gone out of their way to actively break their web page when run w/o JS.
- rehemiau 8y agoI have JavaScript enabled but cookies disabled and it shows nothing for me too.
- sonaltr 8y agoI'd consider it if they had an SDK. While I agree that it's just android under the hood - a price of $300+ and not letting developers get in on the action is just too much for me.
- netsec_burn 8y agoWouldn't allowing apps defeat the purpose of having a phone like this? Allowing users to install more apps would get in the way of having a simple phone.
- argestes 8y agoIf you really want to control how your customers are allowed to use the thing you can put a limit like 3 or 4 apps maximum. For example I think this phone needs at least a way to read e-books but it's possibly not going to be implemented. IF there was an API I could write my own e-book reader for it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- TotempaaltJ 8y agoBut it would put control into the hands of the user and open up new customer bases. I love the concept, but for me this phone is entirely useless without WhatsApp: I don't think I've sent anyone an actual text since I lived in the States three years ago.
- matt_morgan 8y agoI'm agreed with everyone who's pointing out that self-control is a fine solution to the same problem. But this is a great-looking phone that's small. Skinny pants are still pretty in, and even smaller smartphones are too big for the pockets. You're using it for going out at night anywhere that stays warm in the evening. It needs to have that "ride home" feature, and probably "rides anywhere." If that works I might spend $300 on it just for the 12ish nights a year I would use it--it's a small cost compared to babysitter, restaurant, show, Lyfts, etc.
- hwc 8y agoI had a Motorola Fone years ago, but I ditched it because it did SMS so poorly.
- inieves 8y agoVery cool!
- milankragujevic 8y agoThis is too expensive for the features and the hardware, and I currently get everything, including a few days of battery life, with a Lumia 640 XL, and Windows Phone 8.1. I uninstalled all apps and made it a dumb phone with a big screen...
- tcfunk 8y agoI love the idea of a much simpler phone. However, I don't think I could ever give up the camera.
- bane 8y agoI...sorta get it. But seriously, if this is what you want, get a $50 feature phone and don't even bother with data fees.