\n<\/p>\n
If you were looking for a sign to try out a \u201cdumb phone,\u201d here it is: the trendy, minimalist Light Phone<\/a> is joining forces with Noble Mobile<\/a>, a phone network founded by entrepreneur and politician Andrew Yang<\/a> that gives you money back if you use less data.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, 500 Light Phone III<\/a> models will be in stock and ready to ship through Noble Mobile. The catch is that you have to sign up for a two-year Noble Mobile phone plan at $50 per month, which comes out to $1,200 for the contract.<\/p>\n As those who have been curious about the Light Phone may know, this is the first time ever that the Light Phone III will be available immediately, and without paying its $699 cost up front. If you were to buy the Light Phone III without the Noble Mobile plan, the company estimates that you wouldn\u2019t get your phone until September.<\/p>\n \u201cI think what\u2019s exciting about the Noble launch is not just that the barrier to entry is lower. It\u2019s the first time that we\u2019ve ever had the Light Phone III available for an immediate purchase,\u201d Light co-founder Joe Hollier told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n Hollier and his co-founder Kaiwei Tang met in 2014 at Google\u2019s 30 Weeks<\/a> incubator, which was specifically geared toward artists and designers. They created the Light Phone<\/a>, a device that has generated buzz and curiosity over the last decade. <\/p>\n The Light Phone offers a middle ground between a hyperconnected iPhone and a clunky flip phone with a T-9 keypad, appealing to an ever-growing audience of people who feel like they\u2019re in a parasitic relationship with their smartphone. But as a small startup competing with mass producers like Samsung and Apple, Light Phone has struggled to ship its devices at an affordable rate without wait times; the ongoing RAM shortage<\/a> isn\u2019t exactly helping either. Since the Light Phone III launched last spring, the company has shipped 20,000 devices.<\/p>\n The hope is that for some customers, the \u201ccatch\u201d of signing up for a Noble Mobile contract comes as a benefit. For a mobile plan with unlimited talk, text, and data, $50 per month is reasonable. But the gimmick behind Noble Mobile is that if you use less than 20 GB of data in a month, you get a dollar back for each GB that you don\u2019t use (so, if you use 11 GB of data in a month, you would get $9 back from your $50 payment \u2014 and yes, you could also just stay on Wi-Fi to keep data usage low). You can get that payment in cash, or you can use it like credit card points, which can be cashed out later for rewards.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Light Phone is designed to be used as little as possible, so it\u2019s on brand with Noble,\u201d Hollier said.<\/p>\n The Light Phone III has a lot of the basics that you\u2019d expect from a smartphone. Users can make phone calls, send texts, and do other basic things, but the Light creators have also considered that modern life has made it hard to be a luddite. The device has a directions app and a directory app, which came in handy<\/a> for one Reddit user who wrote about the experience of using the phone\u2019s limited functionality to successfully find a towing company when their car broke down (\u201cthanks to the lightphone I was able to *intentionally* ponder on all my life decisions up to this point while waiting 45 minutes,\u201d they wrote).<\/p>\n The Light Phone\u2019s greatest challenge has been to figure out exactly what level of minimalism customers want. Is supporting rideshare apps a safety feature, or a capitulation to big tech? What if a customer wants to communicate with international relatives via WhatsApp? <\/p>\n Hollier said that while most Light Phone customers use it as their primary phone, some users keep an old smartphone without a SIM card, which they can use via the Light Phone hotspot in case they need it. It\u2019s an understandable compromise, but some users might be turned off by the idea of carrying two phones in the name of minimalism.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really interesting to see how people fit [Light Phone] into their lives\u2026 Some people are actively switching between two phones, and we\u2019ve seen a new trend of users actually getting two phone numbers, kind of like a work phone, home phone balance,\u201d Hollier said. \u201cIt\u2019s been really cool to see all the different ways that people fit the Light Phone in, because it\u2019s not really a one-size-fits-all situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike past iterations of the Light Phone, the newest model has an OLED screen, rather than an e-ink screen. With that color OLED screen, the designers figured they might as well add in front- and back-facing cameras, which will also prove useful when the phone soon starts supporting video calls.<\/p>\n Still, Light\u2019s founders hesitated before adding a camera to the Light Phone. Hollier and Tang are both film photographers, and while they appreciate that smartphones expand access to photography, they have also observed that the maximalist nature of smartphone photography can devalue the actual joy and intentionality of the art form.<\/p>\n \u201cWe talked to people who are like, I took 27,000 iPhone photos last year, and I\u2019ve looked at them zero times, because it\u2019s like, 10 of one meal,\u201d Tang told TechCrunch. \u201cI can tell you how many film photos I took last year.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, they decided that a camera is a necessary tool, but they still did it their way.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just tried to design our camera by taking out what we felt like was the culprit of people actually falling out of the moment, which is sharing, and then waiting for this dopamine hit of reactions,\u201d Hollier said. \u201cOn our camera, we added a physical shutter button, and you can open it with one touch, and you can half-press to start to focus \u2026 We wanted it to be fun, sort of nostalgic. It\u2019s not doing any sort of AI sharpening or covering your blemishes. It\u2019s just exactly like an old point-and-shoot camera.\u201d<\/p>\n The Light Phone still has some critical drawbacks \u2014 it doesn\u2019t support the industry standard RCS texting, relying instead on basic, insecure SMS. In practice, that means your group chat experience will be clunky, your messages will not be end-to-end encrypted, and any photos and videos you send will get compressed. But maybe the target user is someone who doesn\u2019t care if their texts might look weird to their iPhone-wielding friends. That user would likely also be someone who is excited about the mission behind Noble Mobile.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not about asking people to [either] give up their technology, or use this AI 6G smartphone,\u201d Tang said. \u201cThere\u2019s a middle ground of having the right technology tools that design without the attention and advertising layer of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\nHow does the Light Phone work?<\/h2>\n