Minimalism stretched to the purpose...

Like untold thousands and thousands of smartphone customers, I’ve a little bit of an issue. I’ve been attempting, with middling success, to be extra aware about how I take advantage of my cellphone. I’ll usually uninstall numerous social media apps (however reinstall them later), and I’ve disconnected all my work instruments except I’m touring particularly for the job. I don’t play video games with out intention or doomscroll very a lot. However I nonetheless discover myself mindlessly reaching for it when there’s a second to fill, and I don’t love that behavior. I don’t assume I’m utterly hooked on my iPhone; my Display screen Time stats put day by day utilization round two to 3 hours. That’s lower than I’ve seen lots of people publish on social media, however it’s nonetheless important.

I’ve been intrigued by the Light Phone III since I first noticed some previews for it final yr. Because the identify suggests, it’s the third cellphone by Brooklyn-based startup Mild, and the ethos stays the identical. It has no “infinite scroll” apps like electronic mail, social media, an internet browser or most all the pieces else that defines a contemporary smartphone. It’s designed for fast interactions so you may decide it up, reply to a name or message, perhaps get instructions or placed on a tune after which get again to life. Nonetheless, there are loads of enhancements in comparison with prior Mild Telephones that made it really feel much more viable to me. Particularly, there’s a digicam, the display screen is OLED as an alternative of E Ink and the broader, extra responsive show is healthier suited to textual content enter. It additionally appears to be like cool in a minimalist method, and has some properly responsive bodily buttons in a world when these have gotten more and more uncommon.

I’ve been utilizing the $599 Mild Cellphone III since late March, and my plan was to completely decide to it — however the practicality of doing so was surprisingly troublesome. Based mostly on my expertise, it’s going to be a tricky promote for lots of people who use a smartphone for fundamentals or issues solely particular apps can ship. The Mild Cellphone III isn’t fairly able to be most individuals’s solely system, however I want it could possibly be.

The Mild philosophy

Typically, the Mild Cellphone III jogs my memory a bit of little bit of the very first iPhone — a tool with perhaps 16 built-in apps and nothing else. In fact, the iPhone had time-wasters like YouTube, an electronic mail shopper and an internet browser, however that system was not almost the attention-hog that trendy smartphones are. In the identical method, Mild picked particular instruments that it feels most individuals will want whereas protecting all the pieces as easy and bare-bones as attainable. The concept is that as an alternative of a tool crammed with apps always notifying you and attempting to seize your consideration, the Mild Cellphone is concentrated on intentional use so that you aren’t always selecting up your cellphone.

That reveals up in quite a lot of methods, from the essential block kind issue to the truth that LightOS (based mostly on Android, however you’d by no means comprehend it) is actually white textual content on a black background. The one time you see colour is if you happen to open the digicam or take a look at pictures. However a very powerful factor is the extraordinarily primary set of instruments you may set up on the system. Right here’s a full record along with the settings and cellphone / textual content messages apps:

• Alarm

• Album

• Calculator

• Calendar

• Digicam

• Instructions

• Listing

• Hotspot

• Music

• Notes

• Podcasts

• Timer

If you would like, you may actually simply have the cellphone app, which additionally contains your contacts record and textual content messages. In 2025, that’s wildly sparse. And you may see by the above record that none of those are stuff you’re going to lose plenty of time utilizing. The austere method doesn’t simply apply to the restricted set of instruments, both — it reveals up in how every one is designed. For instance, the Alarm software doesn’t have a sleep button. When you’re utilizing it as a get up name, you had higher stand up when it goes off.

{Hardware}

Earlier than digging into what utilizing this odd little system is like, let’s run by its minimalist {hardware}. The Mild Cellphone III is a chunky rectangle of a cellphone that’s considerably shorter and thicker than what I’m used to. It’s 12mm thick, in comparison with 7.8mm for the iPhone 16e or about 10mm for the Pixel 9a. However whereas the Mild Cellphone III is about the identical width as a contemporary iPhone, it’s solely 106mm tall, which is shorter than, say, the iPhone 16e (147mm). That makes the cellphone look quite a bit bigger in photos than it’s in actuality, as a result of we’re used to assuming a cellphone features a 6-ish inch show. That’s not the case right here.

The entrance is dominated by the display screen, however I haven’t used a cellphone with a show this small in years. It’s a 3.92-inch AMOLED panel with matte glass and 1,080 x 1,240 decision, and the remainder of the entrance is stuffed out by two giant bezels. The highest one homes an earpiece and selfie digicam, whereas the underside has a surprisingly solid-sounding speaker. On the again, you’ll discover the modest 5-megapixel digicam with a flash; the underside 60 % is the place the user-replaceable battery lives.

One other factor that makes the Mild Cellphone stand out is its plethora of buttons, which is a rarity within the trendy period. There’s an influence button with a fingerprint sensor on the highest proper nook, however sadly that sensor hasn’t but been activated in LightOS. The appropriate aspect has a house button, with round quantity up and down keys surrounding it. Close to the underside proper edge is a two-stage digicam button, which is a somewhat stunning inclusion. Urgent it opens the digicam app it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, and you’ll push it midway all the way down to activate the middle focus level earlier than miserable all of it the best way to take your image. Lastly, on the higher left nook is a button that activates the flashlight; it’s surrounded by a dial you may flip to regulate display screen brightness. I’ve by no means felt like I wanted my cellphone’s flashlight sufficient for it to have a devoted button, and of all of the buttons that is the one I by chance activated essentially the most. However, the dial for display screen brightness is fairly helpful.

The Mild Cellphone is powered by Qualcomm’s SM 4450 processor with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of inside storage. It additionally helps 5G networks along with LTE, and the cellphone is rounded out with the same old array of sensors: GPS, Bluetooth 5.0 and NFC. And, after all, there’s a USB-C port on the backside for charging and restricted connectivity with a pc.

For the reason that Mild Cellphone’s battery is detachable, it’s not almost as giant as those you’ll discover in most trendy smartphones. You’ll naturally be doing quite a bit much less with this cellphone, although, so it’s not an enormous downside. I simply acquired a number of days of use from the Mild Cellphone except I used to be utilizing navigation quite a bit. That drained the battery fairly shortly, so if you happen to intend on utilizing it to your GPS on an extended automotive journey, be sure you have a charging port for it whilst you drive.

Going Mild

Organising a Mild Cellphone III entails going to a web based dashboard the place you’ll activate your cellphone. As soon as that’s accomplished, that is additionally the place you may configure numerous instruments and do issues like add music and podcasts. There are minimal settings to fiddle with on the cellphone itself — you may alter quantity for numerous notifications just like the cellphone ringer, alarms or media, or flip the hotspot on or off. There are the same old choices for managing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections or updating the software program, however it’s a far slimmer menu than you’ll discover on an iPhone or Android system.

From the dashboard, I added the entire Mild Cellphone’s out there instruments and dug into the method of shifting contacts and music over. I hoped that the cellphone would simply present up as a USB system once I plugged it into my laptop so I might drag some MP3s over, however, alas, that’s not the case. Managing content material on the Mild Cellphone requires utilizing the dashboard; it reveals each software you’ve got put in and clicking on them helps you to add songs or import contacts.

This was the place I hit my first main friction level. I really like music and am a bit obsessive over it, so having the ability to play songs on the go is totally essential to me. I nonetheless purchase music on Bandcamp generally and now have a giant library of MP3s from the pre-streaming days, so I had loads of tunes so as to add to my Mild Cellphone. Certain, it wouldn’t be the identical as getting access to the thousands and thousands of songs on Apple Music or Spotify, however I used to be okay with a little bit of a philosophical change. In any case, what number of songs do you actually need at a time?

Seems the massive subject isn’t having fewer songs — it’s how minimal each the music participant and tune uploader are. On the dashboard, you may add songs out of your laptop, however all of them get dumped in a single big playlist. You’ll be able to re-order issues there, however that’s the one semblance of group. I had hoped that the Mild Cellphone’s music participant would have an iPod type of interface so you would use tags to dig into artists and albums, however no such luck. You’ll be able to seek for a tune, and if you happen to faucet it to play it’ll play all the pieces following — that was the one method I might approximate the expertise of listening to an album.

Making issues much more difficult is the truth that songs aren’t essentially uploaded to the cellphone in any semblance of order. So even when your recordsdata are correctly named, that ordering isn’t all the time mirrored within the closing add. I resorted to including an album after which utilizing the net dashboard interface to ensure the songs have been within the correct order. That’s worse than the expertise I had utilizing an iPod in 2003. To have to do that in 2025 is wild.

To be truthful, the Mild Cellphone creators advised me that this software program is a holdover from the Mild Cellphone II, which might solely maintain 1GB of music, like an outdated iPod Shuffle. It wasn’t actually meant for searching a big library, however as an alternative was simply meant to present you a fast choice of tunes in a pinch. And the corporate is actively engaged on a brand new participant with artist/album sorting, customized playlists and letting you load recordsdata by way of USB-C. That may go a good distance in direction of making it extra helpful. The excellent news is that sound high quality was nice and I might pair my AirPods Professional with zero points.

One other fear I had was how the Mild Cellphone’s mapping and navigation instruments would maintain up. I’m perpetually misplaced and likewise lately moved, so I usually depend on turn-by-turn to determine the place I’m going. Whereas the Instructions software is sort of primary, it’s sufficient to get the job accomplished. Opening it up merely reveals two fields to enter the place you might be and the place you’re going (it could actually additionally pull your present location by way of GPS). There’s additionally a selector for whether or not you’re driving, strolling or utilizing public transportation. Whereas the latter two choices principally simply return an inventory of instructions, driving provides you a correct map view and navigation alerts. After I used it whereas driving round, the map view was principally clear and the instructions have been correct sufficient to get me to my vacation spot. It’s all powered by Right here location companies, which have been round for ages and appear fairly good in my nook of the US.

Mild pairs the Instructions software with a Listing that’s its one concession to the search-powered world we dwell in. You’ll be able to seek for basic phrases (espresso) or specifics (Starbucks) and get a diffusion of outcomes. Tapping on them reveals some primary information just like the handle, hours, cellphone quantity and a primary description, and you’ll faucet the map icon to ship that place into the Instructions app. All of it works higher than I anticipated for getting round, although each Google and Apple Maps are higher at providing you with real-time updates on public transit. I depend on real-time information for metropolis buses, which makes the easy transit choices on the Mild Cellphone a bit onerous to regulate to.

This ethos unsurprisingly permeates each software on the cellphone. As I discussed earlier, the Alarm has no snooze button, however you may set a number of alarms. You’ll be able to sync your Google calendar to the cellphone. However when you’ve got a number of calendars in your account (work, household, and so forth.), you may solely see the default one. There’s a primary Notes app, however you may’t do issues like connect pictures to entries. I can’t say I’ve an issue with any of this, as a result of that’s the entire level of the Mild Cellphone — you already know limitations are a part of the equation entering into.

There are two essential options I haven’t gotten to but: the digicam and the cellphone. That is the primary Mild Cellphone with a digicam; there’s a 50-megapixel one on the again (photos are binned and output at 12 megapixels) and an 8-megapixel one on the entrance for selfies. The company’s blog reveals off a bunch of samples and talks in regards to the course of they’ve used to tune the digicam’s output. Suffice it to say that these photos are wildly totally different from the closely processed outcomes you’ll get from most trendy smartphones. In good mild, the Mild Cellphone’s pictures look first rate sufficient however clearly lack the high quality element we’re used to lately. It’s the sort of digicam that you need to use in a pinch, however you’ll discover it missing if you happen to’re in any respect critical about images.

For me the difficulty is much less in regards to the picture high quality, which has its personal lo-fi allure, and extra in regards to the digicam’s responsiveness. Mild included a devoted digicam button, making it exceedingly easy to shortly shoot a picture. However, after getting your scene framed up and press the shutter button, it takes between one and three seconds for the digicam to truly take the picture. That’s an eternity and it makes the digicam inconceivable to make use of for something the place motion is concerned. I’m glad the Mild Cellphone III has a digicam. But it surely brings me again to a time when cellphone cameras have been helpful however crammed with compromises. I might dwell with the aesthetics of the pictures if the digicam was extra responsive, however the lag simply kills it. If I used the Mild Cellphone full time, I’d most likely use my correct digicam far more usually — which may be an excellent factor! However I’d undoubtedly miss the comfort of taking high quality pictures in a pinch from my cellphone.

Utilizing the Mild Cellphone as a cellphone

Some 15 or 20 years in the past, cell telephones have been principally meant for speaking and texting, bear in mind? The Mild Cellphone III is a superb system for cellphone calls, and a mediocre one for texting. In my testing, calls have been clear and straightforward to listen to on each ends, and the built-in speaker is surprisingly usable if you don’t really feel like holding one thing up (please, cease utilizing speaker cellphone a lot in public, individuals!). The contacts part of the app is, after all, minimal: simply names and cellphone numbers. As such, this can not substitute an handle e-book or trendy contact record. For most individuals I care about, I have to retailer at the very least a cellphone quantity, handle and electronic mail. There’s after all no want for an electronic mail handle on the Mild Cellphone, however an handle area can be nice so you may shortly pull up instructions to a pal’s home.

If the Mild Cellphone’s music participant was a letdown, attempting to textual content was the deadly flaw that killed my dream of utilizing this system full time. In comparison with the Mild Cellphone II, this new mannequin is considerably simpler to textual content with. The extra responsive and wider OLED display screen means the keyboard is comparable in measurement to those you’ll discover on an iPhone or Android system. The messaging app additionally does some good issues, like routinely sending hyperlinks and pictures individuals share to your electronic mail handle so you may interact with them in your laptop.

However there’s no autocorrect. And if you happen to haven’t tried to textual content on a cellphone with out autocorrect recently, let me inform you — it sucks.

The web is filled with individuals complaining about weird autocorrect errors, however what goes unnoticed is the way it hangs out within the background really makes the vast majority of our messages far clearer. If I attempt to textual content at a pace just like that on my iPhone, my messages are riddled with typos. Even once I decelerate it’s nonetheless very simple to misfire, necessitating irritating edits to sort things. There’s a spell-check function in-built, so phrases that I biffed have been at the very least underlined. An extended press on them gave me a number of choices to right issues, however the time it took me to compose and ship messages was considerably longer than on a contemporary system. The keyboard structure itself is ok and took little time to regulate to, however I by no means felt snug as a result of I used to be all the time making and fixing errors.

The opposite half of this subject is extra philosophical. Again within the day, we used texts to ship fast updates to individuals; having prolonged conversations was not the norm. That modified even earlier than the arrival of smartphones and I’ve mates whose pace at texting utilizing T9 was spectacular. However nonetheless, telephones simply weren’t meant for that. At this level, although, whether or not it is in WhatsApp or Telegram or Sign or your cellphone’s built-in messaging system, now we have ongoing conversations that go along with us in all places.

The Mild Cellphone is a return in direction of utilizing messaging for fast check-ins and updates, maybe as precursors to an precise cellphone (or in-person!) dialog. However belief me once I say that maintaining with a bunch dialog will probably be an train in frustration with the Mild Cellphone. I can dwell with the minimalist interface, restricted emoji choice and lack of ability to ship something apart from plain textual content and pictures if I might kind quicker — however I can’t. You’ll have to basically re-think your relationship with how you utilize messaging on a cellphone.

Which is sort of the purpose of this complete train.

Breaking an dependancy

I can blame the music participant or lack of autocorrect, however finally I used to be not prepared for a way radically totally different the Mild Cellphone III expertise is. There have been a number of sensible concerns that stored me from totally shopping for in. I want two-factor authentication apps for lots of companies I take advantage of. If I needed to go to a live performance, I’d want a smartphone for tickets. I don’t cope with checks usually, however I can’t bear in mind the final time I deposited one at a financial institution as an alternative of on my cellphone. I’m occurring trip quickly and wish to have the ability to take good pictures with out dragging my digicam round.

I might determine the mandatory work-arounds for nearly all of this stuff. Perhaps the up to date music participant Mild is engaged on can be sufficient for me when it comes out. I’d most likely get used to the keyboard ultimately, to a point. I might use my “actual” digicam extra, most likely main to raised and extra considerate pictures. I might get a piece cellphone by our guardian firm to make use of for authentication.

The purpose is that whereas there are methods round this stuff, implementing them entails a ton of labor. And sadly, now that eSIM has taken over, it’s not so simple as simply popping a SIM card into my iPhone if I wanted it for a few of these issues after which dropping it again within the Mild Cellphone for day-to-day life. And since I wasn’t in a position to totally give myself over to the Mild life-style, I didn’t actually get to expertise its advantages in a significant method.

However, for a number of weeks, I left my iPhone at residence once I left the home as a lot as attainable and there was one thing releasing in regards to the full lack of notifications and basic siren-call for consideration that I often cope with. It’s one thing that has caught with me at the same time as I shifted again to my iPhone for day by day use. I won’t be prepared to completely break my dependancy to my smartphone, however as they are saying, step one is admitting you’ve got an issue.