Minimalism stretched to the purpose of frustration

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 aware about how I take advantage of my cellphone. I’ll typically uninstall numerous 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 suppose 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 submit on social media, nevertheless it’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 cellphone by Brooklyn-based startup Gentle, and the ethos stays the identical. It has no “infinite scroll” apps like e-mail, social media, an internet browser or most all the things else that defines a contemporary smartphone. It’s designed for fast interactions so you’ll be able to choose it up, reply to a name or message, perhaps get instructions or placed on a tune after which get again to life. Nevertheless, there are plenty of enhancements in comparison with prior Gentle Telephones that made it really feel much more viable to me. Particularly, there’s a digicam, the display is OLED as a substitute of E Ink and the broader, extra responsive show is best suited to textual content enter. It additionally seems to be 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 Gentle Cellphone III since late March, and my plan was to totally 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 Gentle Cellphone III isn’t fairly able to be most individuals’s solely gadget, however I want it could possibly be.

The Gentle philosophy

Usually, the Gentle Cellphone III jogs my memory a little bit little bit of the very first iPhone — a tool with perhaps 16 built-in apps and nothing else. After all, the iPhone had time-wasters like YouTube, an e-mail consumer and an internet browser, however that gadget was not almost the attention-hog that trendy smartphones are. In the identical method, Gentle picked particular instruments that it feels most individuals will want whereas conserving all the things as easy and bare-bones as potential. The concept is that as a substitute of a tool crammed with apps continually notifying you and making an attempt to seize your consideration, the Gentle Cellphone is concentrated on intentional use so that you aren’t continually selecting up your cellphone.

That reveals up in quite a lot of methods, from the essential block kind issue to the truth that LightOS (primarily based on Android, however you’d by no means understand it) is actually white textual content on a black background. The one time you see colour is in the event you open the digicam or have a look at pictures. However an important factor is the extraordinarily primary set of instruments you’ll be able to 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

• Digicam

• Instructions

• Listing

• Hotspot

• Music

• Notes

• Podcasts

• Timer

If you need, you’ll be able to actually simply have the cellphone app, which additionally contains your contacts listing and textual content messages. In 2025, that’s wildly sparse. And you may see by the above listing that none of those are stuff you’re going to lose a number of time utilizing. The austere strategy doesn’t simply apply to the restricted set of instruments, both — it reveals up in how each is designed. For instance, the Alarm software doesn’t have a nap button. If you happen to’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 via its minimalist {hardware}. The Gentle 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 Gentle 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 rather a lot bigger in pictures 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 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 Gentle 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 correct 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 slightly shocking 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’ll be able to 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 by chance activated essentially the most. However, the dial for display brightness is fairly helpful.

The Gentle 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.

Because the Gentle 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 rather a lot much less with this cellphone, although, so it’s not an enormous downside. I simply obtained a number of days of use from the Gentle Cellphone until I used to be utilizing navigation rather a lot. That drained the battery fairly shortly, so in the event you intend on utilizing it on your GPS on an extended automobile journey, be sure to have a charging port for it whilst you drive.

Going Gentle

Establishing a Gentle Cellphone III includes going to a web-based dashboard the place you’ll activate your cellphone. As soon as that’s achieved, that is additionally the place you’ll be able to configure numerous instruments and do issues like add music and podcasts. There are minimal settings to fiddle with on the cellphone itself — you’ll be able to modify quantity for numerous 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, nevertheless it’s a far slimmer menu than you’ll discover on an iPhone or Android gadget.

From the dashboard, I added the entire Gentle Cellphone’s out there instruments and dug into the method of transferring contacts and music over. I hoped that the cellphone would simply present up as a USB gadget once I plugged it into my pc so I may drag some MP3s over, however, alas, that’s not the case. Managing content material on the Gentle Cellphone requires utilizing the dashboard; it reveals each software 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 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 still have an enormous library of MP3s from the pre-streaming days, so I had loads of tunes so as to add to my Gentle Cellphone. Certain, it wouldn’t be the identical as accessing the thousands and thousands of songs on Apple Music or Spotify, however I used to be okay with a little bit of a philosophical swap. In any case, what number of songs do you actually need at a time?

Seems the large difficulty isn’t having fewer songs — it’s how minimal each the music participant and tune uploader are. On the dashboard, you’ll be able to 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 Gentle 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 in the event you faucet it to play it’ll play all the things following — that was the one method 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 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 Gentle Cellphone creators informed me that this software program is a holdover from the Gentle Cellphone II, which may solely maintain 1GB of music, like an previous iPod Shuffle. It wasn’t actually meant for searching a big library, however as a substitute was simply meant to present you a fast number 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 through USB-C. That might go a good 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 Gentle Cellphone’s mapping and navigation instruments would maintain up. I’m perpetually misplaced and likewise lately moved, so I typically depend on turn-by-turn to determine the place I’m going. Whereas the Instructions software is kind of primary, it’s sufficient to get the job achieved. Opening it up merely reveals two fields to enter the place you might be and the place you’re going (it will possibly additionally pull your present location through 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 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.

Gentle pairs the Instructions software 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 an expansion of outcomes. Tapping on them reveals some primary data just like the tackle, 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 supplying you with real-time updates on public transit. I depend on real-time information for metropolis buses, which makes the straightforward transit choices on the Gentle 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’ll be able to set a number of alarms. You’ll be able to sync your Google calendar to the cellphone. However when you have a number of calendars in your account (work, household, and so forth.), you’ll be able to solely see the default one. There’s a primary Notes app, however you’ll be able to’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 Gentle Cellphone — you realize limitations are a part of the equation moving into.

There are two essential options I haven’t gotten to but: the digicam and the cellphone. That is the primary Gentle Cellphone with a digicam; there’s a 50-megapixel one on the again (pictures 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 pictures are wildly totally different from the closely processed outcomes you’ll get from most trendy smartphones. In good mild, the Gentle Cellphone’s pictures look first rate sufficient however clearly lack the positive element we’re used to lately. It’s the sort of digicam that you should use in a pinch, however you’ll discover it missing in the event you’re in any respect severe about images.

For me the problem is much less in regards to the picture high quality, which has its personal lo-fi appeal, and extra in regards to the digicam’s responsiveness. Gentle 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 really take the photograph. 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 Gentle Cellphone III has a digicam. Nevertheless it brings me again to a time when cellphone cameras have been helpful however crammed with compromises. I may reside with the aesthetics of the photographs if the digicam was extra responsive, however the lag simply kills it. If I used the Gentle Cellphone full time, I’d in all probability use my correct digicam far more typically — which could be a very good factor! However I’d positively miss the comfort of taking high quality pictures in a pinch from my cellphone.

Utilizing the Gentle 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 Gentle Cellphone III is a good gadget for cellphone calls, and a mediocre one for texting. In my testing, calls have been clear and simple to listen to on each ends, and the built-in speaker is surprisingly usable whenever 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 tackle ebook or trendy contact listing. For most individuals I care about, I must retailer no less than a cellphone quantity, tackle and e-mail. There’s in fact no want for an e-mail tackle on the Gentle Cellphone, however an tackle subject can be nice so you’ll be able to shortly pull up instructions to a good friend’s home.

If the Gentle Cellphone’s music participant was a letdown, making an attempt to textual content was the deadly flaw that killed my dream of utilizing this gadget full time. In comparison with the Gentle 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 robotically sending hyperlinks and pictures individuals share to your e-mail tackle so you’ll be able to interact with them in your pc.

However there’s no autocorrect. And in the event you haven’t tried to textual content on a cellphone with out autocorrect recently, let me let you know — 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 once I decelerate it’s nonetheless very straightforward to misfire, necessitating irritating edits to make things better. There’s a spell-check characteristic inbuilt, so phrases that I biffed have been no less than underlined. An extended press on them gave me a number of choices to appropriate 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 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 pals 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 now have ongoing conversations that go together with us all over the place.

The Gentle Cellphone is a return in the 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 gaggle dialog can be an train in frustration with the Gentle Cellphone. I can reside with the minimalist interface, restricted emoji choice and incapability to ship something apart from plain textual content and pictures if I may kind 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 complete train.

Breaking an dependancy

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 Gentle Cellphone III expertise is. There have been a number of sensible issues that stored me from absolutely shopping for in. I would like 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 typically, however I can’t bear in mind the final time I deposited one at a financial institution as a substitute 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 may work out the mandatory work-arounds for nearly all of these items. Possibly the up to date music participant Gentle is engaged on can be sufficient for me when it comes out. I’d in all probability get used to the keyboard ultimately, to a point. I may use my “actual” digicam extra, in all probability main to raised and extra considerate pictures. I may get a piece cellphone via our dad or mum firm to make use of for authentication.

The purpose is that whereas there are methods round these items, 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 Gentle Cellphone for day-to-day life. And since I wasn’t in a position to absolutely give myself over to the Gentle way of life, I didn’t actually get to expertise its advantages in a serious method.

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