switching to a "dumb" phone made me feel pretty dang smart
the Light Phone diaries
This is the 11th and second to last episode of Season One: I’m (not?) The Best, a multi-month deep dive into the ideas of competition, comparison, testing and achievement.
How heavy do you think an iPhone 12 Pro is? I’d say it's like 1.5 pounds? A pound? It’s heavy.
Ok I looked it up and it’s actually 6.66oz, the devil’s weight and also like 0.4 pounds. But it feels heavier, which makes sense cuz inside of it lives a cosmic shitstorm of useless baggage in the form of apps, reminders, and ‘games.’
Not so with this 2.8oz featherweight Light Phone II (LP2) that I got four weeks ago gotten for free in the mail because I emailed them about my ‘offline as a default’ challenge and asked if they’d be game to send me their ‘dumb’ phone to try as an experiment:
And for some reason they said yes???
Which means that I’m a fucking influencer baby!! I’ve reached out to Apple, Sprouts, and ‘outlet malls’ broadly asking for
free stuff in exchange for my writing them up in Both Are True. More soon.
I was giddier than a 36 year old Jewish man who’d just recently started celebrating Christmas waiting for the package to arrive. And finally, it did.
I immediately ripped it open, wondering if maybe this whole thing was an elaborate
prank and the box would be empty, just like my cold dead heart but no! There it was, the $300 Light Phone II. My first thought was, predictably, “it’s so light!” On the nose, sure, but hey - it’s the titular quality.Now it was time to finally float into the heavens of dumb phone peace.
Fast forward three weeks and I’m lost as fuck driving in my own neighborhood as my two year old son screams “dada where are we?” from the backseat. Even he, a toddler of a boy, is baffled at how long it’s taking for us to get to the playground (the LP2 has a GPS, sort of, but it’s pretty meh and doesn’t work well if you’re out and about which is kinda the whole point), so I’m just out here with nothing more than my Roomba ass sense of direction to guide me.
You cannot have lightness without the dark, nor heaviness without the light.
My tech review of the LP2
The Light Phone II sucks, just like it’s supposed to.
The phone’s slogan is literally “designed to be used as little as possible” and I can very much attest to this fact being true. When using the LP2, I want to stop using it as soon as I can. I am by no means 'having a good time' while using it, which, after three weeks of use, I am starting to think is the way it oughta be!
Remember, friends, that as recently as 2005 (maybe? idk i’m guessing), the phone was meant simply for phone calls and texts. Then they made ‘em into tiny supercomputers that we could use to make calls and send texts, sure, and emails too! Hell, we could use social media and play some games and holy moly the camera is SICK and we can watch videos and wow it just keeps getting better and better and all a sudden it’s 2023 and you’ve got a bonafide Ferrari of a phone in your pocket like it’s a normal ass thing to have.
No. I don’t want a Ferrari for a phone, I want a god damn Toyota corolla basic ass trustworthy reliable phone that’ll last 15 years and still make calls and texts so I can go “ya know how many calls I’ve made on this thing? Like 400. But I’ve sent over 1 million texts. All on this hunk o’ junk! I’m gonna pass it down to my kids!”
The Not Haves
Let’s start with what the LP2 does not have:
an internet browser
social media apps
a camera
the ability to see images at all (photos are instead sent to your email which for some reason feels like getting a fax)
an app store
Instead, you can make calls and texts. You can also install various other apps when logged into an online dashboard on your computer. These include a capital A Alarm (!), Music, Podcasts, Calendar, Directions, and Notes.
I’m gonna focus my review on calling, texting, photos, and gps.
The heck is this screen tho??
Actually before we get to the list, the first thing you notice about the LP2 is that it’s black and white with a screen like a Kindle. There are no colors on it. This, I believe, is on purpose.
By not making the screen feel like a CoCoMelon episode, the LP2 stops being so dang alluring. One week into my experiment and I had a hard time looking at my iPhone, so I made it greyscale. Same with my computer.
I switched both back to color in a few days but still!
Making calls
The switch itself was easy. I popped the SIM card out of my iPhone and blooped it right on into the LP2. I quickly ported over my contacts from iCloud and woof, it was like the old me never existed. Is this what witness protection is like? Sure hope so!
Holding the phone to my face felt strange, for sure, like I was a giant trying to use a teeny human sized phone but ya know what, I LIKED that feeling.
After testing a call with Lauren, I made my first real call to my parents, who said the quality sounded BETTER than the iPhone.
From there, things went peachy dory.
Two weeks later on my way home from Unincorporated Coffee in Eagle Rock, I saw I had several missed calls from them.
“Hi?” I said, anticipating that it was absolutely nothing.
“Your mom and I talked and we’ve decided that you need to go back to using your iPhone,” my dad said.
“What? Why?” I asked.
“We haven’t been able to reach you!!”
“We talked yesterday.”
“It was impossible to reach you today.”
They’d called once.
I told them to email me since I’m more likely to check that then the phone.
The next day, I get this email:
The answer, of course, is yes, but just because something is possible does not mean it must be so (see also: macys thanksgiving parade)
I respond: “is it urgent or can I call you in 30 min.”
“30 min is a perfectly good time to call.”
Thirty minutes later, I call - “hi! finally you answer!”
“You’ve called me once today and we talked yesterday.”
“But still!”
“What was up with that dramatic email?”
“It wasn’t dramatic it was funny.”
Touche, Mr. Dobrenko.
Besides that, the ring tones are all calm and make me feel like a fairy is calling. This is great. All the sounds are gentle and kind. Why isn’t this how things always are?
Ring tones: 10/10
Sound quality: 8/10
Irritating your parents because you’re not around as much: 9/10
Texts
The LP2 combines calls and texts you have with any one contact under one feed, which I love. Everything else about texting sucks, which I love even more.
To text, you have to turn the phone horizontal because the keyboard is small. It’s not t9 or anything, just a basic ol keyboard that, to it’s credit, does have super dope haptic feedback for each letter. Where it gets tricky for a thick thumb idiot like me is anything in the corners of the screen, which are key points to access the symbols, emojis, and button to hit send.
The phone does have voice-to-chat though, so I end up saying most of my text messages instead of typing them. The punctuation is wrong about 40% of the time. I have leaned into this and just decided to be one of those old people who texts you like a maniac. Here’s one text I actually sent to my friend Nate:
Yo dude, somehow I didn’t see your text. Note to self and note to Nate. Text messages get missed on. The light phone though. I think that’s probably an Alex problem more than anything. Let’s talk sometime. This week, let me know when you’re around. Also hello from week three day, one of my. Lifting program. Graham crushing it.
Not only did that basically convey what I was trying to say, it also invented a very good new phrase that I’ll be using on the regular - Graham crushing it!
Here’s a text I sent Lauren:
Hey, I made you. A espresso. It's waiting for you. In the cup, that's in the machine.
Lauren says messages like these make her chuckle because she thinks I’m trying to be poetic and deep. Another big win!
More calls?
Because it’s harder to text, I find myself making more phone calls. This is good! I want to be making more phone calls.
I am not making that many more calls, but I do think about making more calls, and that’s a good start.
Texting: 4/10
Giving off a maniac poet vibe in my texts 11/10
Making me text less and call people more: 9/10
Me actually calling more people: 4/10
taking photos
Here’s a photo of my chicken marsala from last night taken on the iPhone 12 pro vs the Light Phone II:
Gotta say, I much prefer the LP2’s rendition!
Taking way less photos and being more present: 9/10
Not getting distracted by photos on your phone: 10/10
GPS
Driving without google maps is a trip, literally. The shortest of errands become an episode of The Amazing Race because, and I cannot stress this enough, I do not know how to get anywhere.
Highway exits have numbers, who knew!
In other words, I get lost a lot. But I don’t exactly mind it. Without the iPhone’s illusion of control, I must surrender to the reality of my circumstances: lost, yet found, bound yet also…unbound. Nice.
Also, traffic is now a surprise! Without a big ol red “12 min” screaming at you from the phone, I’m driving and hey what the hell is this, traffic! And so my hero's journey begins. Goodbye, ordinary world, here’s my call to adventure with tests, allies and enemies a plenty on the I-5 heading southbound. .
When will the journey end? Who knows. Without the smartphone, true mystery returns. Maybe I will be stuck here forever. Welcome to the shit, my boy, you’ve been here the entire time.
getting lost so hard that your son screams at you: 2/10
being way less stressed overall because you must surrender to the simple truth that you’re just a guy trying to make his way home: 10/10
Being present
It’s wild how often we are lured into the phone to do one quick thing and then get stuck there forever. Smart phones are like one big ‘come for a quick tour of our timeshare and you get a nice weekend for free’ that end up with you buying the timeshare and living there fulltime (is this how timeshares work idk).
For example: I took Wilder to this insane indoor playground that seems to make its money throwing parties on the weekends but has open play on the weekdays and so there we were, just the two of us, goofin’ hard.
There was a tiny ball pit with white and semi translucent silver balls that he’d keep jumping into like an olympic gymnast doing a trick, popping his head out of the balls with glee to see what the judges (me) thought. 10/10 every time.
“Monster truck show” he’d scream for some reason, and then jump, this time onto the astroturf grass, landing with a thud’s thud.
“did that hurt?” I ask him.
“yea,” he says with glee before doing it again and again and again until he gets bored and starts taking the little doll house’s furniture and chucking it onto this deranged mini merry-go-round with the padded donkeys that have black O’s for eyes and I think to myself, genuinely, “I could watch this for a while.”
Not forever, but like 10 minutes, at least. When's the last time you watched something other than a screen for that long without checking your phone?
Being present for your son’s monster truck show jumps 10/10
Conclusion: I’m keeping the LP2
There is information in transitions. Switching away from the iPhone was hard, which itself is sort of the point. I craved it at home, while driving, while stopped at a red light, while not stopped at a red light, I wanted to open and scroll. This was life: I eat food, i do poops, and I scroll my smart phone - fundamental tasks of the living; to question them would be like questioning why birds fly. Cuz they do ya dildo!
But now, on the other side of things, I don’t miss it. Maybe that’s because I still have access to a lot of its features via iMessage1 and I still listen to podcasts and music on it when I want to - but like, I don’t crave the mind-numbing scroll.
It was jarring, at first, to notice how little actual connection was coming through the phone. Maybe texts just weren't going through, I thought to myself. Otherwise I was basically interacting with Lauren, my parents, and...a few other people? That couldn't be right. On my iPhone, it felt like I was Gilbert Gatsby himself, hob knobbing with the internet's who is who finest as well as, of course, my real life compatriots, besties, and acquaints all the while - group chat here, whatsapp group there, I was a man about the digital town and I was busy!
But...I wasn't. Not really. But I could be! There’s the promise of so much more on the iPhone if only I could access it, and in comparison to that endless possibility I am, of course, trash.
The LP2 is boring, and that’s okay. That’s great. Why would I want it any other way?
My only true realization
I will never win the battle for my own attention when using the iPhone as my main squeeze. It’s too powerful. I stand no chance against the unholy union of dopamine and the bright colored smart phones.
The only way out, I believe, is to make big hard decisions that make all of the little ones for me.
Like switching your phone. I can’t win against the iPhone but I can simply not play. And that’s powerful.
I wanted to call this whole piece “the unbearable lightness of being a guy without a smart phone.” Except it’s not that unbearable. It’s very much bearable, in fact. I can and will bear it.
Attention is all we have. According to philosopher Simone Weil, it is sacred — the rarest form of generosity:
“Attention alone, that attention which is so full that the ‘I’ disappears, is required of me. I have to deprive all that I call ‘I’ of the light of my attention and turn it onto that which cannot be conceived.”
Yet the smart phone of social media industrial complex is literally the “I”phone. How can we give attention - pay it, truly - when engulfed in the self?
We can’t, and that’s a damn shame. But we can just stop using the phone entirely. I didn’t realize that was true before. Now I do.
A final caveat: Inconvenience for others
Making this switch is taxing for the people in my life. Friends don’t know whether to text me on my green bubble normal number or my iMessage account that’s linked to my email.
I was super late for a meeting, and I couldn't send an email from my phone, so I had to call Lauren and ask her to do it.
And she did, but that's not really that cool is it?
Or maybe it is cool. Maybe that’s the real point here — that it’s okay to ask others for help. Gone with the smart phone is the illusion that I can figure it all out on my own. That I need no help.
Maybe it’s okay to ask friends if they don’t mind small inconveniences that make your life a lot better. But admitting you need help is hard. And not something you have to do often when you’ve got a smart phone that can do it all for you.
I asked Lauren for her review of my using the LP2. Here’s what she said:
On board with the new phone, even if it's annoying to text you. I miss tracking your location to make sure you’re safe when riding your bike, but I realize it’s not a must. You being truly 'out in the world' when you're out is actually pretty awesome. So yeah, it's a change, but a good one, green bubbles and all. I do need you to pick up when I call though. I don’t think that’s a phone issue as much as a you issue.
Oh yea, I forgot to mention that on the day I asked her for the review, I’d turned the LP2 to silent and missed a bunch of calls. Classic Toyota Corolla stuff, tbh.
I want to keep this post nice and short for you heathens. There’s a lot of stuff I had to cut (like how I’m still using my iPhone for iMessage sometimes, etc). All of that extra stuff can be found here. I’ll also link to it when relevant throughout.
Support an idiot with a dumb phone
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Comments
Now that I’m a tech influencer reporter review guy, what piece of lofi tech should I review next?
Would you ever switch to a dumb phone?
What would you miss most about not having a smart phone?
Do you remember life before the smart phones tell me more about that?
Are you a caller or texter? If caller, how do you do it I wanna be a caller.
THE DEVIL’S WEIGHT
Ha! So cool. I told my adult children I was leading the way in mental health improvement with my Nokia 3110 but they didn't believe me. Now if someone young (ish ha ha), cool and an influencer as massive as Alex is doing it then I know I am on trend. They bought me a Smart Phone Nokia to force me back inline (online) but since I have turned off every concievable part of it's tech it barely even knows it's a phone anymore and has driven itself crazy by not knowing it's location or purpose in the multiverse... back to the 3110 then!