PicoBlog

Like you, I am too often on my phone.

Engrossed in unimportant but captivating bullshit, I find myself reflexively eschewing real-life human contact.

WHAT? WHAT DO YOU WANT?

This is the internal monologue whenever I feel another human’s presence encroaching on my phone’s glow.

In any given moment, my phone is more interesting than you. Smarter than you. Funnier than you. Sexier than you.

This is by design.

I’m reminded of a Disney marketer’s recorded comments at the annual “Kid Power” conference:

Antisocial behavior in pursuit of a product is a good thing.

They were talking about marketing toys to children, but they might as well have been describing us and our phones.

I don’t like it.

I don’t want to be mesmerized, entertained, and alone. Except I kinda do.

And that’s the problem: some small part of me is exploitable, easily hacked to reliably prioritize a product over a person. The more I feed it, the larger it grows.

The choice point, therefore, isn’t what I do when I pick up my phone, but rather which phone do I pick up?

That choice led me to the Light Phone II.

I am the target market for this phone— a quirky, independent-minded individual who is techno-skeptical and looking for healthier, more balanced ways to be in the world.

After a month, I judge this phone to be a Noble Failure.

The Light Phone II is the follow-up to the original Light Phone, created by artists and product designers Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang. After meeting at a Google incubator in 2014, the two launched a successful Kickstarter in 2015 for their concept of a phone “designed to be used as little as possible.”

The first Light Phones shipped in 2017 and they performed one function: making and receiving phone calls.

The designers envisioned this phone as “a way to enjoy quality time away from the pressures of the smartphone, doing whatever it is that you love to do the most, maintaining the peace of mind that you are still reachable.”

They knew, however, that many would be reluctant to give up their smartphones entirely or outright. They designed this phone to run on prepaid minutes and, using an app on your smartphone, you would have calls forwarded from your primary phone to this second, minimalist phone. “Your phone away from phone,” they advertised.

The initial release was a broad success, enough that they went back to the drawing board and imagined an expanded version. Many people wanted something to replace their smartphone, not just augment it.

The Light Phone II is the answer to that call.

An e-ink display, texting, maps, notes, calendar, notes, music, podcasts, a calculator, and an alarm.

Armed with these new features, the designers argued that the Light Phone II “will make it even easier to avoid reaching back for your smartphone.”

With these added features the duo went one step further:

We build all of the tools from scratch to ensure there are absolutely no third party apps tracking you. In this time of 'Surveillance Capitalism' and the 'Attention Economy', the Light Phone represents a different option. You are the customer, not the product. This is a phone for humans.

For anyone privacy-minded, this is a great benefit.

In summary, two designers took an idealistic leap to help humanity to be better through a more conscientious relationship to our technology by creating not one, but two, products that aim to deliver on that promise.

The vision is beautiful, I am 100% on board.

It’s the delivery that falters.

I knew that there would be friction in transitioning to a minimalist phone. I anticipated the awkward moments of pulling it out compulsively, only to be greeted with… nothing. No news. No notifications. No distractions.

Some part of my phone-addled brain would find this upsetting, but that was the whole point.

Unfortunately, there are many things wrong with this phone. As in, errors with its core functionality. I’ll keep it to the high-level issues, and spare you all my pedantic quibbles.

The Light Phone II is small, too small.

The size makes sense for a version that only makes and receives calls, but for anything that requires actually looking at a screen it’s frustratingly tiny. Less from the standpoint of reading (though this would undoubtedly be an issue for anyone with less than excellent eyesight) and more from the perspective of typing, selecting, and scrolling. The small screen size effectively requires everything to stretch into the furthest corners for visibility’s sake, but the edges are non-responsive to touch, so there are things you have to tap over and over until you hit it just so.

This is dumb. It should be substantially bigger, allowing the text and images to appear larger, while also having a reliable buffer between the edge of the “technically” useable screen and the part of the screen that’s actually responsive to touch.

The native directions program is a big step down from Google Maps. The maps program doesn’t do any of the remembering of frequently visited places, or recently visited places. Every address search defaults to the most local version of your search, even when it has to bend-over backwards to misinterpret your search terms. For instance:

A search for “1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington DC”

Weird.

Also weird, it always assumes that you’re walking. In kilometers.

I have no idea why either of those would be the default. The kilometers was easy enough to change in the settings, though I discovered this during an active trip and it won’t let you change the settings while it’s being used. Like, not even while you’re stopped at a stop light (which I was). So I had to back out of it, change it to imperial, and then, guess what? It didn’t remember the trip I was on. Had to pull over and re-type. I get back on the road and notice the time estimate is four hours to get across town. Because it thinks I’m walking. Whatever. I’m not going to pull over a second time.

It then gave me directions to go the wrong way down a one-way street. I took a different route, obviously, and it struggled to re-route me. But I was able to get myself back onto the original route, so it worked out.

Unfortunately, it also has a significant lag time and frequently tells you to turn after you’ve already passed the point to turn. Cool.

Practically every time I try to connect a bluetooth device I have to go through this little dance:

It doesn’t automatically connect to a device, so I manually go and select the device. I hit “reconnect to device.”

It returns me to the device selection screen.

I select the device again, hit “reconnect” again.

It returns me to the device selection screen.

I do this three to five more times, and then it connects to my bluetooth device.

Recently, it’s decided to stop recognizing one of my speakers altogether.

Fun.

I listen to a lot of podcasts at work. At least once per episode it simply stops playing. Even with wired headphones. Minor, but still, annoying.

This is my main gripe. This is the thing keeping me on the fence about whether or not to tough it out with this phone.

I assumed, as I think most people would, that this phone should have amazing battery life. It does very little. It has an e-ink display. Even without being used at all it barely makes it through the day.

Listening to podcasts at work? A full charge only gets me to 2 pm.

Using the mobile hotspot to get Google Maps directions from my old iPhone? Dead after 1.5 hours.

That one is worth recounting.

I’m driving 3 hours out of state, I’m using my old iPhone and Google Maps because I have zero faith in the native Directions app from my first experience. It’s especially important that I get to where I’m going, and get there on time, because it’s a funeral.

Despite a full charge, halfway through the drive, the Light Phone II dies. My iPhone informs me that it’s offline. Google Maps is still working (thank god), but my iPhone 6 is on its last legs, and it needs me to keep pressure on the power cord the whole goddamn time.

Even if the Light Phone II maps program wasn’t crapola, the phone would have undoubtedly died even faster. Plug it in you say? The user manual suggests you not use the GPS program for more than 20 minutes at a time, because it will overheat.

Okay, well, that sucks.

But the part that sucks the most is that the Light Phone II is now refusing to charge fully. At least once per week, often 2-3 times, after being plugged in alllllll night I’ll find that it only has 71% battery life.

It’s a month old. There is absolutely no reason why it should be failing this hard.

(Also, another reason to make the thing bigger— you could shove a whole lot more battery into it)

The Light Phone II was designed with the best of intentions, but they brought it to market too early. This phone feels like a glitchy prototype, something that true believers, I’m sure, would be thrilled to beta test.

The Light Phone II is not a phone that would ever convince the average smartphone user to decamp. Not by a longshot. Even a techno-skeptic like me is struggling to justify using it. Currently, it’s failing at its core mission to keep me from “reaching back” for my smartphone.

The Light Phone II is a great phone for zealous die-hards. Or for children. (Seriously, kids are the best use case for this thing).

For everyone else, wait for the 5th or 6th generation Light Phone. Hopefully, by then they will have worked out the kinks. A well-considered, beautifully functioning, minimalist phone is something I would be very happy to have, and I’d gladly shell out $1000 for (same as my iPhone 6 when I bought it in 2016).

I’ll give this phone a couple more months, maybe it will grow on me, maybe I’ll buy a paper roadmap and revert even further into neo-Ludditism. Maybe not.

We’ll see.

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