Minimalism stretched to the purpose of frustr...

Like untold thousands and thousands of smartphone customers, I’ve a little bit of an issue. I’ve been making an attempt, with middling success, to be extra conscious about how I exploit my telephone. I’ll usually uninstall varied social media apps (however reinstall them later), and I’ve disconnected all my work instruments until 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 fully hooked on my iPhone; my Display screen Time stats put every day utilization round two to a few hours. That’s lower than I’ve seen lots of people publish on social media, but it surely’s nonetheless important.

I’ve been intrigued by the Light Phone III since I first noticed some previews for it final 12 months. Because the identify suggests, it’s the third telephone by Brooklyn-based startup Mild, and the ethos stays the identical. It has no “infinite scroll” apps like electronic mail, social media, an online browser or most every part 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 track after which get again to life. Nevertheless, there are a whole lot of enhancements in comparison with prior Mild Telephones that made it really feel much more viable to me. Particularly, there’s a digital camera, the display screen is OLED as a substitute of E Ink and the broader, extra responsive show is healthier suited to textual content enter. It additionally seems cool in a minimalist manner, 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 Telephone III since late March, and my plan was to completely decide to it — however the practicality of doing so was surprisingly troublesome. Primarily based 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 Telephone III isn’t fairly able to be most individuals’s solely system, however I want it might be.

The Mild philosophy

Generally, the Mild Telephone III jogs my memory just a little 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 consumer and an online browser, however that system was not practically the attention-hog that fashionable smartphones are. In the identical manner, Mild picked particular instruments that it feels most individuals will want whereas protecting every part as easy and bare-bones as doable. The thought is that as a substitute of a tool stuffed with apps consistently notifying you and making an attempt to seize your consideration, the Mild Telephone is concentrated on intentional use so that you aren’t consistently choosing up your telephone.

That exhibits up in quite a lot of methods, from the essential block type issue to the truth that LightOS (based mostly on Android, however you’d by no means realize it) is actually white textual content on a black background. The one time you see colour is should you open the digital camera or take a look at photographs. However a very powerful factor is the extraordinarily fundamental set of instruments you may set up on the system. Right here’s a full listing along with the settings and telephone / textual content messages apps:

• Alarm

• Album

• Calculator

• Calendar

• Digicam

• Instructions

• Listing

• Hotspot

• Music

• Notes

• Podcasts

• Timer

In order for you, you may actually simply have the telephone app, which additionally consists of your contacts listing and textual content messages. In 2025, that’s wildly sparse. And you’ll see by the above listing that none of those are stuff you’re going to lose a lot of time utilizing. The austere method doesn’t simply apply to the restricted set of instruments, both — it exhibits up in how each is designed. For instance, the Alarm device doesn’t have a nap button. For those who’re utilizing it as a get up name, you had higher rise up when it goes off.

{Hardware}

Earlier than digging into what utilizing this odd little system is like, let’s run by way of its minimalist {hardware}. The Mild Telephone III is a chunky rectangle of a telephone 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 Telephone 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 telephone look loads bigger in photographs than it’s in actuality, as a result of we’re used to assuming a telephone 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 telephone 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 digital camera, whereas the underside has a surprisingly solid-sounding speaker. On the again, you’ll discover the modest 5-megapixel digital camera with a flash; the underside 60 % is the place the user-replaceable battery lives.

One other factor that makes the Mild Telephone stand out is its plethora of buttons, which is a rarity within the fashionable 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 suitable aspect has a house button, with round quantity up and down keys surrounding it. Close to the underside proper edge is a two-stage digital camera button, which is a somewhat shocking inclusion. Urgent it opens the digital camera 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 way in which 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 telephone’s flashlight sufficient for it to have a devoted button, and of all of the buttons that is the one I unintentionally activated essentially the most. However, the dial for display screen brightness is fairly helpful.

The Mild Telephone is powered by Qualcomm’s SM 4450 processor with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of inner storage. It additionally helps 5G networks along with LTE, and the telephone 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.

Because the Mild Telephone’s battery is detachable, it’s not practically as giant as those you’ll discover in most fashionable smartphones. You’ll naturally be doing loads much less with this telephone, although, so it’s not an enormous drawback. I simply obtained a number of days of use from the Mild Telephone until I used to be utilizing navigation loads. That drained the battery fairly rapidly, so should you intend on utilizing it on your GPS on an extended automotive journey, be sure you have a charging port for it when you drive.

Going Mild

Organising a Mild Telephone III entails going to a web-based dashboard the place you’ll activate your telephone. As soon as that’s carried out, that is additionally the place you may configure varied instruments and do issues like add music and podcasts. There are minimal settings to fiddle with on the telephone itself — you may regulate quantity for varied notifications just like the telephone 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, but it surely’s a far slimmer menu than you’ll discover on an iPhone or Android system.

From the dashboard, I added the entire Mild Telephone’s out there instruments and dug into the method of shifting contacts and music over. I hoped that the telephone would simply present up as a USB system after I plugged it into my laptop so I may drag some MP3s over, however, alas, that’s not the case. Managing content material on the Mild Telephone requires utilizing the dashboard; it exhibits each device you’ve gotten 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 with the ability to play songs on the go is completely essential to me. I nonetheless purchase music on Bandcamp typically and now have an enormous library of MP3s from the pre-streaming days, so I had loads of tunes so as to add to my Mild Telephone. Positive, it wouldn’t be the identical as gaining 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 really want at a time?

Seems the large difficulty isn’t having fewer songs — it’s how minimal each the music participant and track 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 Telephone’s music participant would have an iPod kind of interface so you might use tags to dig into artists and albums, however no such luck. You’ll be able to seek for a track, and should you faucet it to play it’ll play every part following — that was the one manner I may approximate the expertise of listening to an album.

Making issues much more difficult is the truth that songs aren’t essentially uploaded to the telephone 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 verify the songs had 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 honest, the Mild Telephone creators instructed me that this software program is a holdover from the Mild Telephone II, which may solely maintain 1GB of music, like an outdated iPod Shuffle. It wasn’t actually meant for looking a big library, however as a substitute was simply meant to offer you a fast collection 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 great distance in the direction of making it extra helpful. The excellent news is that sound high quality was nice and I may pair my AirPods Professional with zero points.

One other fear I had was how the Mild Telephone’s mapping and navigation instruments would maintain up. I’m perpetually misplaced and in addition not too long ago moved, so I usually depend on turn-by-turn to determine the place I’m going. Whereas the Instructions device is kind of fundamental, it’s sufficient to get the job carried out. Opening it up merely exhibits two fields to enter the place you might be and the place you’re going (it may well 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 mainly simply return a listing of instructions, driving provides you a correct map view and navigation alerts. Once I used it whereas driving round, the map view was largely clear and the instructions had 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 device with a Listing that’s its one concession to the search-powered world we reside in. You’ll be able to seek for normal phrases (espresso) or specifics (Starbucks) and get a variety of outcomes. Tapping on them exhibits some fundamental information just like the handle, hours, telephone quantity and a fundamental 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 Telephone a bit arduous to regulate to.

This ethos unsurprisingly permeates each device on the telephone. 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 telephone. However if in case you have a couple of calendars in your account (work, household, and so forth.), you may solely see the default one. There’s a fundamental Notes app, however you may’t do issues like connect photographs 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 Telephone — you recognize limitations are a part of the equation getting in.

There are two essential options I haven’t gotten to but: the digital camera and the telephone. That is the primary Mild Telephone with a digital camera; there’s a 50-megapixel one on the again (photographs are binned and output at 12 megapixels) and an 8-megapixel one on the entrance for selfies. The company’s blog exhibits off a bunch of samples and talks in regards to the course of they’ve used to tune the digital camera’s output. Suffice it to say that these photographs are wildly totally different from the closely processed outcomes you’ll get from most fashionable smartphones. In good gentle, the Mild Telephone’s photographs look first rate sufficient however clearly lack the effective element we’re used to nowadays. It’s the sort of digital camera that you should use in a pinch, however you’ll discover it missing should you’re in any respect critical about pictures.

For me the difficulty is much less in regards to the picture high quality, which has its personal lo-fi appeal, and extra in regards to the digital camera’s responsiveness. Mild included a devoted digital camera button, making it exceedingly easy to rapidly shoot a picture. However, after you have your scene framed up and press the shutter button, it takes between one and three seconds for the digital camera to really take the picture. That’s an eternity and it makes the digital camera unimaginable to make use of for something the place motion is concerned. I’m glad the Mild Telephone III has a digital camera. Nevertheless it brings me again to a time when telephone cameras had been helpful however stuffed with compromises. I may reside with the aesthetics of the pictures if the digital camera was extra responsive, however the lag simply kills it. If I used the Mild Telephone full time, I’d in all probability use my correct digital camera far more usually — which could be a superb factor! However I’d undoubtedly miss the comfort of taking high quality photographs in a pinch from my telephone.

Utilizing the Mild Telephone as a telephone

Some 15 or 20 years in the past, cell telephones had been largely meant for speaking and texting, bear in mind? The Mild Telephone III is a good system for telephone calls, and a mediocre one for texting. In my testing, calls had 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 telephone a lot in public, individuals!). The contacts part of the app is, after all, minimal: simply names and telephone numbers. As such, this can not substitute an handle guide or fashionable contact listing. For most individuals I care about, I have to retailer not less than a telephone quantity, handle and electronic mail. There’s after all no want for an electronic mail handle on the Mild Telephone, however an handle discipline can be nice so you may rapidly pull up instructions to a good friend’s home.

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

However there’s no autocorrect. And should you haven’t tried to textual content on a telephone with out autocorrect these days, let me inform you — it sucks.

The web is stuffed with individuals complaining about weird autocorrect errors, however what goes unnoticed is the way it hangs out within the background really makes nearly all of our messages far clearer. If I attempt to textual content at a velocity much like that on my iPhone, my messages are riddled with typos. Even after I decelerate it’s nonetheless very straightforward to misfire, necessitating irritating edits to sort things. There’s a spell-check function in-built, so phrases that I biffed had been not less than underlined. An extended press on them gave me a couple 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 format itself is okay and took little time to regulate to, however I by no means felt comfy as a result of I used to be all the time making and fixing errors.

The opposite half of this difficulty 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 appearance of smartphones and I’ve mates whose velocity 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 telephone’s built-in messaging system, we now have ongoing conversations that go along with us in all places.

The Mild Telephone is a return in the direction of utilizing messaging for fast check-ins and updates, maybe as precursors to an precise telephone (or in-person!) dialog. However belief me after I say that maintaining with a gaggle dialog might be an train in frustration with the Mild Telephone. I can reside with the minimalist interface, restricted emoji choice and lack of ability to ship something apart from plain textual content and photographs if I may kind sooner — however I can’t. You’ll have to essentially re-think your relationship with how you employ messaging on a telephone.

Which is sort of the purpose of this entire train.

Breaking an habit

I can blame the music participant or lack of autocorrect, however in the end I used to be not prepared for a way radically totally different the Mild Telephone III expertise is. There have been a number of sensible concerns that saved me from absolutely shopping for in. I would like two-factor authentication apps for lots of companies I exploit. If I needed to go to a live performance, I’d want a smartphone for tickets. I don’t take care of checks usually, however I can’t bear in mind the final time I deposited one at a financial institution as a substitute of on my telephone. I’m occurring trip quickly and need to have the ability to take good photographs with out dragging my digital camera round.

I may work out the required work-arounds for nearly all of these items. Perhaps the up to date music participant Mild is engaged on can be sufficient for me when it comes out. I’d in all probability get used to the keyboard ultimately, to some extent. I may use my “actual” digital camera extra, in all probability main to raised and extra considerate photographs. I may get a piece telephone by way of our dad or mum firm to make use of for authentication.

The purpose is that whereas there are methods round these items, 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 Telephone for day-to-day life. And since I wasn’t capable of absolutely give myself over to the Mild life-style, I didn’t actually get to expertise its advantages in a significant manner.

However, for a couple of weeks, I left my iPhone at house after I left the home as a lot as doable and there was one thing releasing in regards to the full lack of notifications and normal siren-call for consideration that I often take care of. It’s one thing that has caught with me at the same time as I shifted again to my iPhone for every day use. I may not be prepared to completely break my habit to my smartphone, however as they are saying, step one is admitting you’ve gotten an issue.