A skeptic’s guide to quitting your smartphone

If you’d asked me a decade ago how I felt about my phone, I would have said: “Wow, I love it.” And also: “How could you even ask me such a thing?” 2015 was a quieter, happier time. Barack Obama was president, “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars was the No. 1 song, and I had a sleek, slim iPhone 6 in my pocket. We’re now up to the iPhone 16, and while you already know the other details about our current reality, I will confess that I hide my phone from myself, on a daily basis, in order to feel something real. This sorry state of affairs led me to the Light Phone, a minimalist device that promises freedom from infinite feeds. The third generation of the device, which debuted in late March, represents a radical rethinking of what a smartphone can and should do, cutting off users from distracting features while directing them toward simple tools they need to thrive in a digital world, like a phone and a calendar. There is no web browser, no app store, no forms of entertainment — not even a game to distract you. The Light Phone 3 is intentionally boring but useful. That’s the sales pitch anyways, and it arrives in a world where many are nostalgic for a time when we were far less subservient to our technology. I recently met Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang, the co-creators of the Light Phone and co-founders of its parent company, Light, in their Brooklyn, New York, workshop, where they walked me through the development of the Light Phone 3. They’d given me the device to test out ahead of time, and while I loved the gadget in concept, I had a brutally hard time letting go of my iPhone, which I hate by the way. But how could I give up the many apps I’ve become dependent on to do my job and keep up with my family? How could I get through the day without my algorithmically generated Spotify playlists? How would my brain work without the ability to Google random questions when they pop into my head? “I think that moment when you find yourself pulling out the Light Phone for the fifth time and realizing it does nothing, that’s like a very profound initial Light moment, where you’re like, ‘Now, what?’” Hollier told me. About nine out of 10 Americans own a smartphone, and I’d guess many of them have passed a point of no return, when it comes to connected living. It feels impossible for some people — parents, knowledge workers, Spotify fanatics — to live without a smartphone. For others, it’s simply inconvenient. But ditching your smartphone is a way of liberating your free time and winning back your attention, which has led to a movement of people buying gadgets that are specifically designed to bridge the gap between our dumb phone past and a future where technology use is more intentional. I’m about a week into trying to join this movement. It’s not easy, but it sure does seem peaceful. Why you might need an “intentional” phone Smartphones and dumb phones — think flip phones or phones that can only place calls and send messages — are familiar categories to most people. But intentional phones — phones designed to limit interactions with the device and to help users focus on being present — are a new category, arguably created by the Light Phone itself. When you do something on an intentional phone, you intend to do it, and then you stop using the phone. The original Light Phone, “your phone away from phone,” launched as a Kickstarter campaign in May 2015. It was roughly the size of a credit card and could only place voice calls. That meant you could disconnect for an afternoon and go on a hike but remain reachable. The device sold out, while Hollier and Tang built its successor, the Light Phone II, which shipped in 2019. This phone had an e-ink display, like a Kindle, which refreshes too slowly to support easy scrolling — and came with a handful of simple tools, like messaging and a music player, but lacked a web browser and email. So far, Hollier and Tang have shipped over 100,000 of these devices, and their staff still repairs the old ones in their Brooklyn studio. "“We don’t want the device to try to fight for your attention, or be shiny. We wanted it to be calm, low key, and just disappear, even when you use it.”" - Kaiwei Tang, co-creator of the Light Phone The Light Phone 3 takes things a stage further — but not too much further. Instead of the gritty e-ink screen, the new model has a black and white OLED display with a coating that makes it less shiny. There’s a very basic camera on the back, which Hollier and Tang say is really for documenting things or taking pictures of receipts, since you can’t post any photos from the phone. There’s an updated directions tool, and a directory that works a bit like the Yellow Pages: You search for something, say a coffee shop, and the tool provides a list of nearby businesses with some basic information, like their phone number and hours. There’s also a new podcast app that lets you download episodes of podcasts and take them with you when you’re out, but you can’t look up new content while you’re out. The operating system is built by Light, and there’s no data harvesting. “We don’t want the device to try to fight for your attention, or be shiny,” Tang told me. “We wanted it to be calm, low key, and just disappear, even when you use it.” It’s actually remarkable to use a piece of technology that’s designed to be used as little as possible. It’s beautifully boring. The Light Phone 3 is also just plain beautiful — a slab of black anodized aluminum that fits neatly into a shirt pocket and just works. It retails for $799, although you can preorder one now for $599. The Light Phone 2 is still available for $299. There are other intentional phones on the market that give users more digital liberties. The Bigme Hibreak Pro runs a version of Android and supports all apps but has an e-ink screen that discourages scrolling. The Unihertz Jelly Max is a tiny smartphone that has a color screen, but it’s so small that you’d be hard-pressed to watch a YouTube video on it. The Mudita Kompakt is a lot like the Light Phone 3, except it has an e-ink screen and a few more functions. Then there’s the Sidephone, which starts shipping this year and can run critical apps, like Uber, WhatsApp, and Spotify, while otherwise offering minimal features. It’s actually designed to work alongside a smartphone, with a dedicated phone number you only give to close friends. When I first started using it, the Light Phone 3 reminded me of my digital life not 10 but 20 years ago, when I left the house with an iPod, a Motorola Razr, a notebook, and a Nikon film camera. (Fun fact: Tang actually helped design the Motorola Razr way back when.) Each thing had its own purpose, and if I didn’t need any one thing, I left it at home. If I got bored with my devices, I simply had to find something else to do. Today, there’s something naive about imagining a return to life in 2005, when I was in my 20s. I have a wife, a baby, and a job that demands knowing what’s happening in the world on a daily basis. Leaving the house with just a Light Phone 3 feels like a fantasy, albeit one that is appealing on days when I can’t escape the ping of Slack messages or the buzzes of my news alerts. Toward a philosophy of digital minimalism It was about a decade ago that our digital world started to get really dopamine-driven. Twitter was ascendant, and within a couple years, Facebook would buy Instagram and usher in an era of algorithmic feeds designed to keep users engaged. This is also when Gen Z started to come of age. It didn’t take long for the first generation to live their entire lives online to have second thoughts about social media, smartphones, and technology in general. Gen Z adults are now leading the way in incorporating dumb technology into their lives, according to a 2024 Morning Consult poll. Millennials, like myself, are very close behind. Light says that 70 percent of its users are between 18 and 35 years old, and that 56 percent of them only use Light Phone. Hollier and Tang told me last week that Light Phone adoption has kind of happened in that order, too: Gen Z jumped on board first and more millennials seem to be buying the devices lately. I have to wonder if it’s because more millennials are noticing that they’re reflexively checking their feeds while also watching their kids at the playground. I’ve done it, and it sucks. Young parents are also realizing that the Light Phone is an excellent way to stay connected to their children without giving them unbridled internet access. Jose Briones, a long-time Light Phone user, spent years and thousands of dollars in the smartphone upgrade cycle. A few years ago, Briones became more interested in finding technology that would help him optimize his time, instead of robbing him of hours spent scrolling. Briones now runs a YouTube channel where he reviews intentional phones, like the Light Phone, and describes himself as a digital minimalist. “More people are coming to the realization that they don’t want to live their lives through a screen, but instead, they want to experience it with their own eyes,” Briones said. Digital minimalism is the philosophy that drives a lot of the conversations around the Light Phone. The term was popularized by Georgetown University computer science professor Cal Newport, who also coined “deep work” in 2016 and published a book about digital minimalism in 2019, at the same time Marie Kondo’s Netflix show dropped and not long before the pandemic made us all digital maximalists. --- 3 easy things to do Nobody should feel helpless in our app-saturated world. But you can update a few simple settings to make your phone less habit-forming. Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, offered three tips in a 2018 Vox video that still make sense today: - Turn off all nonhuman notifications - Make your screen grayscale - Restrict your home screen to essential, everyday tools --- There are now communities for all corners of this movement. Briones is a moderator in the subreddits for Light Phone fans as well dumb phones more broadly. There’s also a subreddit for digital minimalism, where people share their experiences of living life without smartphones or how to minimize screen time. Reading through the posts will give you a sense of how deeply some people’s dissatisfaction with the connected life runs and how passionate they are about finding technology that works for them, full stop. The market is starting to meet those needs. Will Stults and his girlfriend Daisy Krigbaum opened an online shop just for intentional phones called Dumbwireless in 2022, which stocks Light Phone models as well as a dozen other devices handpicked for their approach to intentional phone usage. It’s also a side-gig for Stults and Krigbaum, who both have day jobs but are seeing growing demand for devices like this. But after I told him about my own slow start with the Light Phone 3, Stults reiterated that everyone quits smartphones for different reasons and has different needs. “We almost want to put up a disclaimer on our site, like, ‘The perfect non-smartphone does not exist, by the way,’ and that’s kind of the point of this,” Stults said. “You’re going to make some sacrifices. It’s going to be a challenge.” Consider a weekend phone At a certain point, it feels like we’re coming full circle with some of these phones. If you strip away everything you don’t like about your smartphone and then start adding it back in spurts, you eventually end up with digital clutter again. But if you’re mindful of the clutter and keep tidying up as life goes on, you will enjoy some of the benefits from more dramatic moves, like going full Light Phone. You could even use your dumber device as a weekend phone when there’s no particular need to stay so connected. This strategy is essentially what Casey Johnston, who writes a newsletter about health and fitness, described when she “lobotomized” her smartphone recently. Delete everything and then add back the apps intentionally — in classic Marie Kondo-style. Johnston’s tips for streamlining your smartphone are not that different from what I’ve suggested myself, and I would highly recommend tweaking your settings so that newly installed apps do not appear on your home screen. I also like her advice to use an old phone plugged in at a specific location “like a landline” for social media, if you must. I’m not going to throw away my iPhone any time soon. As a husband, dad, and journalist, I’ve come to depend on certain apps and features and immediacy. You might even say living life with just a Light Phone seems like a real luxury. But this notion of being intentional with technology, using the right tool for the right job, and not being afraid of disconnecting — it’s a worthwhile aspiration. I do aspire, at the very least, to take the weekend phone approach in the near future. It’s also neat that there are now gadgets designed specifically for this, and I have to wonder if bigger tech companies, including Apple, will start taking the intentional phone movement seriously. Light Phone, after all, reminds me of the best of Apple’s design ethos: elegant products that solve problems. Only Light Phone is asking a bit more from its users. “Every decision we made is intentional,” Tang told me. “We’re hoping our customers will do the same.” A version of this story was also published in the User Friendly newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!

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A skeptic’s guide to quitting your smartphone