Minimalism stretched to the purpose of frustration

Like untold hundreds of thousands of smartphone customers, I’ve a little bit of an issue. I’ve been attempting, with middling success, to be extra conscious about how I take advantage of my cellphone. 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 utterly hooked on my iPhone; my Display Time stats put each day utilization round two to 3 hours. That’s lower than I’ve seen lots of people submit 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 e-mail, social media, an online browser or most all the things 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 plenty 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 is OLED as an alternative of E Ink and the broader, extra responsive show is healthier suited to textual content enter. It additionally seems 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 tough. Based mostly on my expertise, it’s going to be a troublesome 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 gadget, however I want it could possibly be.

The Mild philosophy

Normally, the Mild Cellphone III jogs my memory somewhat 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 e-mail shopper and an online browser, however that gadget 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 things as easy and bare-bones as attainable. The concept is that as an alternative of a tool stuffed with apps continuously notifying you and attempting to seize your consideration, the Mild Cellphone is targeted on intentional use so that you aren’t continuously choosing up your cellphone.

That exhibits up in a wide range of methods, from the essential block kind issue to the truth that LightOS (primarily based on Android, however you’d by no means comprehend it) is actually white textual content on a black background. The one time you see coloration is for those who open the digital camera or have a look at photographs. However an important factor is the extraordinarily fundamental set of instruments you may set up on the gadget. Right here’s a full listing along with the settings and cellphone / textual content messages apps:

• Alarm

• Album

• Calculator

• Calendar

• Digital camera

• Instructions

• Listing

• Hotspot

• Music

• Notes

• Podcasts

• Timer

If you would like, you may actually simply have the cellphone 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 number of time utilizing. The austere method doesn’t simply apply to the restricted set of instruments, both — it exhibits up in how every one is designed. For instance, the Alarm software doesn’t have a sleep button. In case 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 gadget is like, let’s run by means of 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 photographs 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, 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 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 p.c 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 digital camera button, which is a somewhat stunning inclusion. Urgent it opens the digital camera app it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, and you may push it midway right 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 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 unintentionally activated essentially the most. However, the dial for display 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 standard array of sensors: GPS, Bluetooth 5.0 and NFC. And, in fact, 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 obtained a number of days of use from the Mild Cellphone until I used to be utilizing navigation quite a bit. That drained the battery fairly rapidly, so for those who intend on utilizing it in your GPS on an extended automobile journey, ensure you have a charging port for it whilst you drive.

Going Mild

Organising a Mild Cellphone III includes going to a web-based dashboard the place you’ll activate your cellphone. As soon as that’s completed, 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 cellphone itself — you may modify quantity for varied notifications just like the cellphone ringer, alarms or media, or flip the hotspot on or off. There are the standard 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 gadget.

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 gadget after I plugged it into my pc 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 exhibits each software you have got put in and clicking on them allows 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 a giant library of MP3s from the pre-streaming days, so I had loads of tunes so as to add to my Mild Cellphone. Positive, it wouldn’t be the identical as getting access to the hundreds of thousands of songs on Apple Music or Spotify, however I used to be okay with a little bit of a philosophical swap. In spite of everything, what number of songs do you really want at a time?

Seems the massive 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 pc, however all of them get dumped in a single large 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 kind of interface so you could possibly use tags to dig into artists and albums, however no such luck. You’ll be able to seek for a track, and for those who faucet it to play it’ll play all the things 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 online 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 previous iPod Shuffle. It wasn’t actually meant for looking a big library, however as an alternative was simply meant to provide 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 will go a great 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 kind of fundamental, it’s sufficient to get the job completed. Opening it up merely exhibits two fields to enter the place you’re and the place you’re going (it might probably 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 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 have been correct sufficient to get me to my vacation spot. It’s all powered by Right here location providers, 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 stay in. You’ll be able to seek for normal phrases (espresso) or specifics (Starbucks) and get an expansion of outcomes. Tapping on them exhibits some fundamental data just like the deal with, hours, cellphone quantity and a fundamental description, and you may 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 knowledge for metropolis buses, which makes the straightforward transit choices on the Mild Cellphone a bit laborious 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 if in case you have just a few 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 Cellphone — you understand limitations are a part of the equation getting into.

There are two essential options I haven’t gotten to but: the digital camera and the cellphone. That is the primary Mild Cellphone 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 concerning the course of they’ve used to tune the digital camera’s output. Suffice it to say that these photographs are wildly completely different from the closely processed outcomes you’ll get from most trendy smartphones. In good gentle, the Mild Cellphone’s photographs look first rate sufficient however clearly lack the high quality element we’re used to today. It’s the sort of digital camera that you need to use in a pinch, however you’ll discover it missing for those who’re in any respect severe about images.

For me the problem is much less concerning the picture high quality, which has its personal lo-fi allure, and extra concerning 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 unattainable to make use of for something the place motion is concerned. I’m glad the Mild Cellphone III has a digital camera. However it brings me again to a time when cellphone cameras have been helpful however stuffed with compromises. I might stay with the aesthetics of the pictures if the digital camera was extra responsive, however the lag simply kills it. If I used the Mild Cellphone full time, I’d most likely use my correct digital camera far more usually — which is perhaps a superb factor! However I’d undoubtedly miss the comfort of taking high quality photographs 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 largely meant for speaking and texting, keep in mind? The Mild Cellphone III is a good gadget 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 while 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, in fact, minimal: simply names and cellphone numbers. As such, this can’t change an deal with guide or trendy contact listing. For most individuals I care about, I must retailer a minimum of a cellphone quantity, deal with and e-mail. There’s in fact no want for an e-mail deal with on the Mild Cellphone, however an deal with subject can be nice so you may rapidly pull up instructions to a buddy’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 gadget 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 means the keyboard is comparable in measurement to those you’ll discover on an iPhone or Android gadget. The messaging app additionally does some sensible issues, like routinely sending hyperlinks and photographs individuals share to your e-mail deal with so you may have interaction with them in your pc.

However there’s no autocorrect. And for those who haven’t tried to textual content on a cellphone with out autocorrect currently, let me let you know — 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 truly makes nearly all of our messages far clearer. If I attempt to textual content at a velocity just like that on my iPhone, my messages are riddled with typos. Even after I decelerate it’s nonetheless very simple to misfire, necessitating irritating edits to make things better. There’s a spell-check function in-built, so phrases that I biffed have been a minimum of underlined. A protracted press on them gave me just a few choices to right issues, however the time it took me to compose and ship messages was considerably longer than on a contemporary gadget. The keyboard format itself is okay 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 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 arrival 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 cellphone’s built-in messaging system, we have now ongoing conversations that go together with us all over the place.

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 after I say that maintaining with a gaggle dialog can be an train in frustration with the Mild Cellphone. I can stay with the minimalist interface, restricted emoji choice and lack of ability to ship something moreover plain textual content and photographs if I might sort quicker — however I can’t. You’ll must basically re-think your relationship with how you utilize messaging on a cellphone.

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 completely different the Mild Cellphone III expertise is. There have been a number of sensible issues that saved me from totally shopping for in. I want two-factor authentication apps for lots of providers I take advantage of. If I wished 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 keep 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 photographs with out dragging my digital camera round.

I might work out 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 some extent. I might use my “actual” digital camera extra, most likely main to higher and extra considerate photographs. I might get a piece cellphone by means of our dad or mum firm to make use of for authentication.

The purpose is that whereas there are methods round this stuff, implementing them includes 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 just a few weeks, I left my iPhone at house after I left the home as a lot as attainable and there was one thing liberating concerning the full lack of notifications and normal siren-call for consideration that I normally take care of. It’s one thing that has caught with me whilst I shifted again to my iPhone for each day use. I won’t be prepared to completely break my habit to my smartphone, however as they are saying, step one is admitting you have got an issue.