The Light Phone – A New Phone Devolution?

With technology trying to grab our attention more and more nowadays, it’s refreshing to see a piece of technology surface that puts the interaction back into human gatherings.

The Light Phone is a glorified piece of plastic; when I say glorified, I mean it lights up and makes calls. Created with the idea of having as little as possible to distract you from day to day life so you can leave your smartphone at home.

So what are the features? Nothing, nada, zip, zilch; well it can make calls and act as a flashlight. It is a completely stripped back phone that is around the thickness of four credit cards and the same footprint, so it could fit in your wallet.

The duo behind this are Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang; a team that devised this idea at Google’s 30-week incubator in New York. They both came from a phone manufacturing background and knew the importance of putting human interaction back into the front of socialising.

“We started building this because it became very clear that true happiness means being present. This has been written about by so many of the smartest minds since Seneca. So much of our days are spent connected and staring at screens that we are losing that presence in so many situations. We built the Light Phone as a way for people to find balance with their connectedness. It’s not that we think people should never connect again, it’s just that taking a break is extremely healthy in every sense of the word,” said Hollier.

When you buy the phone, you have 500 minutes preloaded and you can charge by USB; which lasts up to 20 days, this would be perfect to just chuck in the car or in your wallet as an emergency phone. What’s best about this phone is that it is so basic, it will essentially never need to be upgraded like today’s flagship phones.

I can see two sides of the coin here. One side, it is a good way of avoid distractions and has a 20-day battery so would be good in an emergency. On the side, it costs $100; I would just turn my phone off, the inconvenience of turning it on would be enough for me not to use it.

If you are interested in this project, why not pop over to the Kickstarter page and take a look around