[edit to add] as others mentioned, no TOTP auth app was the other requirement missing
Oh how I long and wish that my phone had screws. This glued-shut brittle glass box with a puffy time bomb inside makes me sad.
It's sad that the concept of a phone with screws makes me so happy.
The battery will fail, it's just a matter of time. The screen will become cracked. The charge port will become corroded or loose. Water intrusion will happen and be unrepairable because it's inaccessible and uncleanable, not because anything's been dissolved.
Yes, eventually the hardware will be inadequate to keep up with modern apps and websites, but I think we're to the point of diminishing returns on laptops and close to it on smartphones.
And yes, eventually the software will not be supported, but that's a problem of hardware churn and economics, not engineering and durability.
A short lifespan is largely because it's not repairable, not in spite of it being repairable.
The Samsung S5 had a removable back with a silicone seal, this was one of the first widely available water resistant phones. I'm sure they could come up with an even better version now if they wanted to. Glueing it shut is not a requirement for water resistance.
Drop this plastic phone onto concrete, drop a glass iPhone onto concrete. Phone cases should not need to exist, nor be as ubiquitous as they are - they are band-aids on bad durability.
You could probably bend this thing easier than an iPhone, I don't know how much of a metal frame is in this one, but they could add one make it as sturdy. Screws do not preclude this.
It's not all about durability. Screws have a minimal impact on durability compared to materials. It's about a sleek design for sales, with the added benefit of planned obsolescence.
Sorry, I don't buy your argument at all.
For a phone that's almost certainly running Android under the hood, not having the ability to install Signal or Messenger or anything else just makes it dead on arrival imho.
? , that’s literally the selling point, that you cant install those things in this phone duh. Besides, they know what they are doing, they sell pretty well too. They churn out enough of these each year, that foxconn handles their manufacturing for this unit. They must be selling decent numbers in that case.
> The Light Phone II can also used as a complement to your existing smartphone, for taking a break and going light, either by swapping your SIM between devices, or by getting a second phone number for the Light Phone II.
How many people will pay 800 dollars for a less functional version of a product they already own?
I understand the appeal for a simple phone, but this one won't work for people like me.
I'm most curious about this feature. It sounds like there's no preview of your photo? How do you get the pictures off the phone? Is the quality any good?
I love the ideals of this this company ("stop using your phone as a way to scratch every tiny itch of boredom and frustration") but I feel like I can get there with any ol' phone and an hour of deleting all the apps I don't actually want to be using. So much work has been put into modern smart phone cameras that it'd be undesirable for me to give that up.
Also, regular smartphones have a long tail of really useful edge cases: AirBnB checkin instructions, boarding pass QR codes, unlocking scooters, paying for parking, etc.
Get an iphone mini, don't install any apps, turn on greyscale mode. There you have a cheaper version of this, and if you have any apps that you actually need for identification or banks or similar you can actually still use them without needing a second phone.
I'm very confident that I could recreate a similar enough experience on iOS or "normal" android at a similar price-point.
https://www.token2.com/shop/product/molto-2-v2-multi-profile...
Yes, there are many which still only support SMS MFA -- and if you meant TOTP-On-Yubi, that's its own can of worms (limited size, [intentionally?] hard to sync or backup, vender lock-in?). I hope passkeys lead to brouder FIDO/U2F support.
nobody is accepting TOTP anymore.
some govts (br, sg, ru) even allows govt apps to authenticate via bank apps.
But I have a lot of trouble seeing a new piece of hardware being the solution. Sure, this thing only does a handful of things, and that's it. There's no temptation to install the latest game, or a bunch of different messaging and social apps, because there's only so much you can actually do with the phone. It's basically a "dumb phone" with a few extra features to make it more palatable.
But there's a problem with this simplicity. If you have a need that the phone doesn't meet, you're screwed. The only way to get this phone up-to-spec with other phones is to have a marketplace full of apps, each providing the functionality you desire, and at that point you're just another iOS or Android platform with the same problems.
Just get a phone without much bloat, like a Pixel, Nothing, OnePlus, or Fairphone, and consider putting a custom ROM on it to further scale it down. Then just do regular app maintenance - remove apps you don't want or need anymore, and go through your notification history and shut up every app that you don't need to hear from.
You're not going to be able to have the superpowers of a smartphone without also needing to do some amount of housekeeping. With the power of having a personal computer in your pocket comes the responsibility of taking care of it.
I really want to like this phone, and applaud what they are doing. But...it's still a "phone". Aside from the obvious, how is this fundamentally different (or better) than a defanged iPhone/smartphone? When are we going to rethink this problem of how we integrate networked technology into our daily lives in a way that's healthier for us?
I'd say the price is way too high, but hardware isn't easy and they don't seem to be pushing for subscription revenue or selling data.
Has anyone had experience switching between the Light Phone and their daily phone on a day-by-day basis? My daily phone is Android, I don't know if that's relevant.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work with Google Fi, but I could possibly switch carriers if it came to it.
If I recall correctly v1 and 2 were completely closed, not sure though.
Open up or shut up.
There's already a Hisense A9 Pro for e-ink phones. $500 and Android 11 are two huge turn-offs though. Trustability is also up there.
This phone looks a bit boxy but overall dimensions seem maybe a bit shorter than most? I keep thinking of the reading experience; when I read on my phone, I turn off the bottom 1/2 of my screen, since I don't need my eyes to be looking down as much. I keep thinking it'd be very neat to have a very small screen device that still has good e-reading. But you'd likely need a companion device for navigation, if you need to jump around or take notes.
I've been interested in the Light Phone for years but never could commit myself to dealing with so many tradeoffs of the second version.
This is very tempting. Signal would be the one app I miss, other than that basic navigation and a podcast player is really all I use anyway.
I'm a little surprised they did that actually, I thought they got quite a few customers due to the e-ink display. There have been a few devices recently with greatly improved eink performance and resolution, I was hoping the LP3 would have managed to go with one to keep the nicer reading experience.
I would totally just buy it for the shape and hope-to-gosh I can install Lineage on it.
Edit: They should have added Signal.
It's a shame they got rid of the eink display, that was one of the key selling points of the previous model for me.
(The only pocket photo is the phone half-inserted into what looks like the non-tight front of a paint-splattered heavy denim work apron, pulled away.)
Here’s a video of me using various popular android apps on an eink Hisense A9 smartphone. https://youtu.be/dvO9ScTdwz8
TLDR: Great for reading/text/messaging/hacker news, terrible for video and scrolling.
How can I develop my own apps?
For me this is currently a hard no, because even though I like the UX, I will not buy a closed software product, as even Android is modable.