The Light Phone 3 is a dumbphone that doesn’t look useless

Summary

• Dumbphones — or perhaps more aptly, minimalist phones — are making a comeback to help reduce distractions from smartphones.
• The newly announced Light Phone 3 is expected to offer simplicity with a modern touch, featuring an OLED screen, basic camera functions, and essential features.
• With a stripped-down version of Android, no app installations, and a special pre-order price of $399, the Light Phone 3 is a unique choice in a sea of smart slabs.

You know a category has become completely mature when there exist products to help reduce our usage of them. Smartphones are going through something similar now, where people find them too distracting (we don’t blame you) but also can’t live without them. This conundrum has given birth to the category of dumbphones or minimalist phones — smartphones with many features axed to make them less distracting.

The Light Phone 3, the third phone from Light (who would’ve guessed?) is the company’s new attempt at creating a simple device that does very little, to replace smartphones and let users be more productive. It comes almost 5 years after the launch of its predecessor and seems to get a lot more right, better balancing minimalism and utility.

This is a welcome change as users in the past have felt that such dumbphones take it too far and become useless. As The Verge recalls, the Light Phone 2 just made calls and sent texts.

At first glance, the Light Phone 3 looks almost like a Rabbit R1 with its plastic design, sharp corners, large buttons, and a scroll wheel. The best upgrade comes with the screen. Gone is the tiny e-ink panel in favor of an almost-square 3.92-inch black and white OLED screen. Light says that 50% of its users could not get used to the low refresh rate of e-ink.

It can also click pictures now, thanks to the new 50MP camera on the back and 8MP selfie shooter. In hopes of mimicking old film cameras, it also has a dedicated shutter button, but there’s no way to see the images shot in color on the Light Phone 3.

Other useful features include NFC, USB Type-C, a fingerprint scanner, IP54 rating, eSIM compatibility, a replaceable battery, etc., which should enable the Light Phone 3 to last longer. While its specs are strictly entry-level, considering how little the phone does, they should suffice — Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 processor, 6GB RAM, and 128GB storage. As for the operating system, it uses an extremely stripped-down version of Android called Light OS that doesn’t allow installing apps.

The Light Phone 3 is now available for pre-ordering for a special price of $399 until July 15, post which it will sell for $799. It comes in a single configuration and colorway. Deliveries are slated to start in January 2025.