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 attempting, with middling success, to be extra conscious about how I exploit my cellphone. I’ll usually uninstall numerous social media apps (however reinstall them later), and I’ve disconnected all my work instruments except 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 fully hooked on my iPhone; my Display screen Time stats put each day utilization round two to a few hours. That’s lower than I’ve seen lots of people put up on social media, but it surely’s nonetheless important.

I’ve been intrigued by the Light Phone III since I first noticed some previews for it final yr. 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 pieces else that defines a contemporary smartphone. It’s designed for fast interactions so you may choose it up, reply to a name or message, perhaps get instructions or placed on a track after which get again to life. Nonetheless, there are a whole lot 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 an alternative of E Ink and the broader, extra responsive show is best suited to textual content enter. It additionally appears to be like cool in a minimalist means, 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 Telephone 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 troublesome promote for lots of people who use a smartphone for fundamentals or issues solely particular apps can ship. The Gentle Telephone III isn’t fairly able to be most individuals’s solely machine, however I want it might be.

The Gentle philosophy

On the whole, the Gentle Telephone III jogs my memory slightly 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 machine was not practically the attention-hog that fashionable smartphones are. In the identical means, Gentle picked particular instruments that it feels most individuals will want whereas holding all the pieces as easy and bare-bones as doable. The thought is that as an alternative of a tool full of apps consistently notifying you and attempting to seize your consideration, the Gentle Telephone is targeted on intentional use so that you aren’t consistently choosing up your cellphone.

That exhibits up in a wide range of methods, from the fundamental block kind issue to the truth that LightOS (based mostly 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 if you happen to open the digicam or take a look at pictures. However an important factor is the extraordinarily primary set of instruments you may set up on the machine. Right here’s a full checklist along with the settings and cellphone / textual content messages apps:

• Alarm

• Album

• Calculator

• Calendar

• Digicam

• Instructions

• Listing

• Hotspot

• Music

• Notes

• Podcasts

• Timer

If you’d like, you may actually simply have the cellphone app, which additionally consists of your contacts checklist and textual content messages. In 2025, that’s wildly sparse. And you may see by the above checklist 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 exhibits up in how every one is designed. For instance, the Alarm device doesn’t have a sleep button. For those who’re utilizing it as a get up name, you had higher rise up when it goes off.

{Hardware}

Earlier than digging into what utilizing this odd little machine is like, let’s run by means of its minimalist {hardware}. The Gentle Telephone 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 Telephone 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 lots bigger in photos 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 Telephone stand out is its plethora of buttons, which is a rarity within the fashionable 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 facet 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 fairly stunning inclusion. Urgent it opens the digicam app it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, and you’ll push it midway right 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 may 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 accident activated probably the most. However, the dial for display brightness is fairly helpful.

The Gentle Telephone 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, after all, there’s a USB-C port on the backside for charging and restricted connectivity with a pc.

Because the Gentle Telephone’s battery is detachable, it’s not practically as giant as those you’ll discover in most fashionable smartphones. You’ll naturally be doing lots much less with this cellphone, although, so it’s not an enormous drawback. I simply bought a number of days of use from the Gentle Telephone except I used to be utilizing navigation lots. That drained the battery fairly shortly, so if you happen to 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 Telephone III includes going to an internet dashboard the place you’ll activate your cellphone. As soon as that’s carried out, that is additionally the place you may configure numerous instruments and do issues like add music and podcasts. There are minimal settings to fiddle with on the cellphone itself — you may alter 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, but it surely’s a far slimmer menu than you’ll discover on an iPhone or Android machine.

From the dashboard, I added the entire Gentle Telephone’s accessible instruments and dug into the method of shifting contacts and music over. I hoped that the cellphone would simply present up as a USB machine after I plugged it into my pc so I might drag some MP3s over, however, alas, that’s not the case. Managing content material on the Gentle Telephone requires utilizing the dashboard; it exhibits each device you might have put in and clicking on them enables 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 with the ability to play songs on the go is totally essential to me. I nonetheless purchase music on Bandcamp generally and now have an enormous library of MP3s from the pre-streaming days, so I had loads of tunes so as to add to my Gentle Telephone. Positive, it wouldn’t be the identical as gaining access to the thousands and thousands of songs on Apple Music or Spotify, however I used to be okay with a little bit of a philosophical change. In spite of everything, what number of songs do you really want at a time?

Seems the massive subject isn’t having fewer songs — it’s how minimal each the music participant and track uploader are. On the dashboard, you may add songs out of your pc, however all of them get dumped in a single big playlist. You possibly can re-order issues there, however that’s the one semblance of group. I had hoped that the Gentle Telephone’s music participant would have an iPod kind of interface so you might use tags to dig into artists and albums, however no such luck. You possibly can seek for a track, and if you happen to faucet it to play it’ll play all the pieces following — that was the one means I might 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 information are correctly named, that ordering isn’t at all times mirrored within the remaining add. I resorted to including an album after which utilizing the net dashboard interface to ensure the songs had 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 honest, the Gentle Telephone creators instructed me that this software program is a holdover from the Gentle Telephone II, which might solely maintain 1GB of music, like an previous iPod Shuffle. It wasn’t actually meant for searching a big library, however as an alternative was simply meant to offer 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 information by way of USB-C. That may go a great distance in the direction of making it extra helpful. The excellent news is that sound high quality was nice and I might pair my AirPods Professional with zero points.

One other fear I had was how the Gentle Telephone’s mapping and navigation instruments would maintain up. I’m perpetually misplaced and likewise lately moved, so I usually depend on turn-by-turn to determine the place I’m going. Whereas the Instructions device is sort of primary, it’s sufficient to get the job carried out. Opening it up merely exhibits two fields to enter the place you might be and the place you’re going (it will probably additionally pull your present location by way of 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 a listing of instructions, driving provides you a correct map view and navigation alerts. Once I used it whereas driving round, the map view was largely clear and the instructions had been correct sufficient to get me to my vacation spot. It’s all powered by Right here location providers, which have been round for ages and appear fairly good in my nook of the US.

Gentle pairs the Instructions device with a Listing that’s its one concession to the search-powered world we dwell in. You possibly can seek for normal phrases (espresso) or specifics (Starbucks) and get a diffusion of outcomes. Tapping on them exhibits some primary information 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 knowledge for metropolis buses, which makes the easy transit choices on the Gentle Telephone a bit laborious to regulate to.

This ethos unsurprisingly permeates each device on the cellphone. As I discussed earlier, the Alarm has no snooze button, however you may set a number of alarms. You possibly can sync your Google calendar to the cellphone. However in case you have a number of calendars in your account (work, household, and so forth.), you may solely see the default one. There’s a primary Notes app, however you may’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 Telephone — you already know limitations are a part of the equation entering into.

There are two essential options I haven’t gotten to but: the digicam and the cellphone. That is the primary Gentle Telephone with a digicam; there’s a 50-megapixel one on the again (photos are binned and output at 12 megapixels) and an 8-megapixel one on the entrance for selfies. The company’s blog exhibits 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 photos are wildly completely different from the closely processed outcomes you’ll get from most fashionable smartphones. In good mild, the Gentle Telephone’s pictures look respectable sufficient however clearly lack the wonderful element we’re used to lately. It’s the type of digicam that you should use in a pinch, however you’ll discover it missing if you happen to’re in any respect critical about pictures.

For me the difficulty 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, upon 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 unimaginable to make use of for something the place motion is concerned. I’m glad the Gentle Telephone III has a digicam. Nevertheless it brings me again to a time when cellphone cameras had been helpful however full of compromises. I might dwell with the aesthetics of the photographs if the digicam was extra responsive, however the lag simply kills it. If I used the Gentle Telephone full time, I’d most likely use my correct digicam far more usually — which is likely to 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 Telephone as a cellphone

Some 15 or 20 years in the past, cell telephones had been largely meant for speaking and texting, bear in mind? The Gentle Telephone III is a good machine for cellphone calls, and a mediocre one for texting. In my testing, calls had been clear and straightforward to listen to on each ends, and the built-in speaker is surprisingly usable if 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, after all, minimal: simply names and cellphone numbers. As such, this can’t exchange an tackle e book or fashionable contact checklist. For most individuals I care about, I have to retailer no less than a cellphone quantity, tackle and e-mail. There’s after all no want for an e-mail tackle on the Gentle Telephone, however an tackle subject can be nice so you may shortly pull up instructions to a buddy’s home.

If the Gentle Telephone’s music participant was a letdown, attempting to textual content was the deadly flaw that killed my dream of utilizing this machine full time. In comparison with the Gentle Telephone II, this new mannequin is considerably simpler to textual content with. The extra responsive and wider OLED display means the keyboard is comparable in dimension to those you’ll discover on an iPhone or Android machine. The messaging app additionally does some sensible issues, like mechanically sending hyperlinks and pictures individuals share to your e-mail tackle so you may interact with them in your pc.

However there’s no autocorrect. And if you happen to haven’t tried to textual content on a cellphone with out autocorrect currently, let me inform you — it sucks.

The web is filled with individuals complaining about weird autocorrect errors, however what goes unnoticed is the way it hangs out within the background truly 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 after I decelerate it’s nonetheless very simple to misfire, necessitating irritating edits to sort things. There’s a spell-check characteristic inbuilt, so phrases that I biffed had been no less than underlined. A protracted press on them gave me a number of choices to right issues, however the time it took me to compose and ship messages was considerably longer than on a contemporary machine. The keyboard format itself is okay and took little time to regulate to, however I by no means felt snug as a result of I used to be at all times making and fixing errors.

The opposite half of this subject 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 mates 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, now we have ongoing conversations that go together with us in every single place.

The Gentle Telephone 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 after I say that maintaining with a gaggle dialog shall be an train in frustration with the Gentle Telephone. I can dwell with the minimalist interface, restricted emoji choice and incapacity to ship something apart from plain textual content and pictures if I might sort sooner — however I can’t. You’ll have to essentially re-think your relationship with how you utilize messaging on a cellphone.

Which is type of the purpose of this complete train.

Breaking an habit

I can blame the music participant or lack of autocorrect, however finally I used to be not prepared for a way radically completely different the Gentle Telephone III expertise is. There have been a number of sensible issues that saved me from absolutely shopping for in. I want two-factor authentication apps for lots of providers I exploit. If I wished to go to a live performance, I’d want a smartphone for tickets. I don’t cope with checks usually, however I can’t bear in mind the final time I deposited one at a financial institution as an alternative 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 might determine 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 most likely get used to the keyboard finally, to some extent. I might use my “actual” digicam extra, most likely main to higher and extra considerate pictures. I might get a piece cellphone by means of our mother or father 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 Telephone for day-to-day life. And since I wasn’t capable of absolutely give myself over to the Gentle way of life, I didn’t actually get to expertise its advantages in a serious means.

However, for a number of weeks, I left my iPhone at dwelling after I left the home as a lot as doable 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 at the same time as I shifted again to my iPhone for each day use. I won’t be prepared to totally break my habit to my smartphone, however as they are saying, step one is admitting you might have an issue.