I mentioned in my last post that I bought a Light Phone II.
It is rare that I buy hardware these days, but I was wanting
to get away from my smartphone... and I did not have a good
experience with the Nokia bar phone I tried a few years back
or the KaiOS phone I tried after that (before I went back to
my Nexus 5x). I had known about the Light Phone for years.
It had always seemed to expensive for what it was, and they
used a pre-order model... which I was too impatient for.
When I looked into it, and a few other options (Punkt,
Mudita Pure, Minimal Phone), I saw that they had some in
stock. After doing a bit more research to see how the system
had evolved in the past few years I ended up ordering one,
along with a screen protector (they were sold out of the
case).
I thought I'd share some thoughts on the first day or two
with the device and the software it ships with:
For those that don't know, the phone features a small eInk
touchscreen and four physical buttons (power/screen-on,
volume up, volume down, menu). The phone is 2.25" x 3.75"
in total and about 0.25" thick. The shell is hard plastic.
It feels... alright. I had heard that it feels cheap, but
that is not my assessment. It feels like what it is, but
I would say it is a solid and reasonably well built phone.
The screen is about as responsive as my Kobo ereader. Which
I use a lot and have grown used to. The refresh rate may be
too slow for many peple (I believe it to be around 2fps),
but if you are used to an ereader you should know what to
expect.
The software, which the call LightOS, is not an OS. You
could maybe call it a shell (similar to GnomeShell in terms
of my usage of the word) or maybe a launcher (to use more
android oriented terms), though it may dig just a bit deeper
than a launcher into the guts of the system. It is a fully
text based interface, with a few symbols. It supports a
decent sized subset of emoji, ascii text, and some extended
characters for input. For display, I believe it has full
utf-8 support.
LightOS is a React Native system built on top of Android
(ASOP) with some custom modifications done to allow their
shell to deal with low level android stuff that is not
usually allowed by third party software.
I have found the system very usable. They use a web based
dashboard on their website for some things that the phone
does not let you modify on it directly, but most of the
core functionality is available on the phone.
Out of the box it comes with "phone" (which includes both
calls and texting in an inline stream, and a contact book),
"alarm", and "settings". It has no web browser (a core part
of the appeal for me). It supports BlueTooth, WiFi, and GPS.
It supports 4G/LTE.
From the web dashboard you can add more tools (think apps):
- Directions, turn by turn/maps
- Directory, look up hours, address, and phone number of
various places
- Calculator
- Notes, take notes locally (you can sync them w/ the web
dashboard as well)
- Calendar, can sync with remote calendars
- Hotspot
- Music, a funky music player (I'll talk about it below)
- Timer
- Podcasts, a podcast player, subscriptions are handled via
the web dash, but episodes will autodownload to the
device once subscribed. They use the Apple podcasts
index. I don't listen to podcasts, so I did not install
this and cannot comment on it further.
Everything has worked well, with the exception of the directions.
I cannot seem to get it to navigate reliably to places outside
of my local area.
The directory has worked well. I got the hours of a local
place, and was able to call to ask a question. You can call
direct from the directory app (or kick the address to the
directions app).
The calculator works as you would expect. Nothing special,
but more or less does the job when you need it.
For the music tool, it is a single playlist. It supports
shuffle. You cannot really sort the songs. You also cannot
sideload them. You have to upload them through the web
dashboard. They convert to MP3 and in some cases may down-
sample. Then they get synced over to the device. This is not
a good system. It works, but really annoys me. I will be
trying to figure out how to sideload music directly. The
speaker on the phone sounds surprisingly good for its size.
The phone has a headphone jack or can use bluetooth to go
to headphones.
I have not really used the calendar yet, so cannot comment.
The timer lets you set timers. Pretty basic.
The hotspot is just a quick menu item to turn on the hot
spot. You do not have to install the tool to do this, but
you would have to dig through settings menus otherwise.
The alarm is a little basic. You can set any number of
alarms. The can be one-offs or daily, but you cannot set
certain days and not others. This is annoying, but not
a deal breaker.
The contacts/phone are fine. They work well. If you do not
want to type them all in on the phone itself you can use the
web dashboard to import contacts from various sysems or you
can manually enter them on the phone or the dashbaord. They
sync regularly (I think every 4 hours).
So far I really like it. I already feel less of a pull to
take out my phone all the time. I like the small form factor.
I like the eink screen (super readable, and supports color
invert if you want to read white on black instead of black
on white). The screen has a backlight available that can be
set to "auto" to just sense how much light is available.
The phone charges using micro usb, rather than usb c. I'm
okay with this, but some will be annoyed. The battery life
is not as long as you'd think given the screen and other
specs, but has no problem lasting a day or two of reasonably
regular use (calls/texts), less if you are playing music
and getting gps nav all the time.
Let's talk privacy: the company definitely has it in mind, at
least as a marketing point, but it feels mixed. They use HERE
for their directions app and the GooglePlaces api for their
directory app. In both cases they are paying for it, not the
user, so you query LightPhone (the company) and they query
on your behalf for the data. I know this is supposed to be
anonymized, if that exists in the world (I do not believe it
does, there is no suchthing as anonymous data, at least in
this type of situation), but it feels... suboptimal, but maybe
understandable. It is something at least.
I do not like at all that they have this "dashboard" setup.
I do not want to back up/sync things to them. Even if their
privacy policy is solid and makes good attempts to support the
owner of the phone... it is an extra attack vector, and their
policies could always change. There is no need for my contacts
to sync to them, for my notes to sync to them, for my music to
go through them, etc. To their credit, there has been talk of
making a desktop application available that would allow you
to control all of this from your computer, rather than from
their servers. The question I have is: will it completely take
their system out of the equation? Or will it just be their
website loaded in an electron window? They seem aware of these
concerns and provide good customer support. I believe they are
a team of around 4-6, so when you e-mail and they e-mail back,
you are getting someone on the core team to answer you questions.
I like that, but it wont survive the sale of the company (if
they ever sell).
So, I have some concerns. They seem aware of them, and other
folks seem to have voiced them as well. I am hopeful that they
continue to update their system and eventually provide a way to
handle all of these things without needing to interact with them
once you purchase the phone. They have been good about sticking by
the phone and providing regular system updates/upgrades that do
seem to improve the phone consistently. They have a new model
coming out soon that includes a camera and an oled screen... which
just isn't for me. I don't want a camera, then people expect me
to take pictures (something I am not naturally inclined to do). I
imagine that that version of the phone will end up more popular.
They have stated a commitment to continued updates and support for
the LightPhone II. Fingers crossed.
So, is it worth the $299 that I paid for it? I suppose that really
depends on your financial situation. They are a small company
trying to do something a bit different/niche. Their production
runs are likely smallish and I do not believe they are likely to
have huge margins on these devices. We have been trained to think
of price in terms of companies that can produce at scale, and then
skew the whole market by that ability. I think it is maybe a little
bit expensive. $150-$180 feels like it would be a better sweet spot.
This turned into much more of a "product review" than I had intended.
I mostly wanted to say that I think it is a cool phone and I am
enjoying it. I am not trying to shill for them, and do not care one
way or the other whether anyone reading this buys one.
Oh! I use MintMobile (US) as my carrier, but found out while looking
into this phone that US Mobile has a plan that would be suitable for
this phone for $8/mo! Super cheap. Neat!
