Light Phone III, a black-and-white phone with a limited set of functions, is introduced
The Light Phone and Light Phone II were created as an alternative to a smartphone for people who wanted a break from overloaded devices, social media, and doomscrolling. However, the phone did not have many useful features.
Now The Light Phone company introduces Light Phone III, an updated model that aims to improve users’ lives without taking away all the functions they need in their daily lives.
The new phone will have a 3.92-inch black and white matte OLED display with a resolution of 1080 × 1240 pixels and a higher refresh rate instead of the usual E-Ink display in previous models, which may not have been very comfortable to use.
The phone also has a Type-C charging port and a replaceable 1800 mAh battery, 6 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of storage. All this will be powered by a Qualcomm SM 4450 processor.
Light Phone III also has cameras – a 50-megapixel main camera and an 8-megapixel front camera. The official website says that the developers were inspired by film cameras and added a physical two-stage shutter button with center focus and fixed focal length to the phone.
On the left side, the phone also has a scroll ring that can be used to adjust the brightness of the display, and when pressed, it turns the flashlight on or off. At the same time, the power button also has a built-in fingerprint scanner.
The new phone also has 5G support and an NFC chip. The Light Phone company hopes that in the future it will be able to add support for contactless payment systems to the Light Phone III.
In a commentary for The Verge, the company’s founder Kaiwei Tan said that The Light Phone is thinking about how to integrate services such as Uber, Spotify, add Beeper, and more communication options. In general, the company is not against apps as such, it is only against endless news feeds and constant scrolling.
Tang also said that The Light Phone experimented with ChatGPT and the possibility of adding AI features to the Light Phone III, but the company was not sure whether it would be really useful for users and whether it would go beyond the idea of a light phone.
The Light Phone III is currently available for pre-order for $399, but its retail price is $799. However, the company hopes to sell enough devices to make them cheaper to produce, which will reduce the final price.