Kendrick Lamar enters the tech space with a collaboration on the Light Phone 2. Light phones offer minimalistic experiences without apps or color.
Just bought a Poco M3 Pro 5G for 75 bucks at AliExpress if they can beat it with their Dumb Phone I’m in.
They all sold out and they are all packed in one dudes garage. The actual sale of them will take place over the next year over a series of ebay auction, as is tradition for limited edition things.
I have owned the Light Phone 1 and the Light Phone 2 – both were built with the intent to stay connected in a handful of ways without needing to have a full-spec’d, app-heavy, typically-sized smart phone.
If the intent and the vibe make sense to you, then it is a wonderful approach for a more ‘minimalist’ device: you can go outdoors, travel, hike, camp, etc., without having a smart phone to pick up and play with. I dig it.
If the intent and vibe don’t make sense to you, the Light Phone may not be a good fit.
I really like the device, and use it often enough as a daily driver on weekends. Always glad to see some public attention on it.
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Why does color matter? My dumb phone in the 90s had a color screen.
Uses more battery, i’ma guess.
Maybe, but with the rest of the description, I’m guessing you’re still talking about a battery life in terms of a significant number of days. I also wouldn’t be surprised if a tiny, low-end LCD color screen was cheaper than an e-ink screen.
Yeah I think you’re right; color lcd are usually quite a bit cheaper than eink at least in small quantities without talking direct to manufacturers. They use a lot more power though since eink only uses power when changing and none otherwise.
They’ve been available forever .
How/what are you going to sideload? It doesn’t run android from what I can tell, so anything you would want to install would need to be developed first
I hardly text and your call is going to voice mail. Phone things are not the reason I have a smartphone. I’d be happy with an updated Palm Pilot with connectivity.
Oh, how I miss my Treo. If only they made a next Gen, with a new OS that had backwards compatibility for Palm apps, which were tiny and used little power.
I hate minimalism! This is a dumb phone that got rid of everything that made dumb phones charming.
I love minimalism, but dumbphones are not functionally minimal. They do less and seem “simple”, but you’re offsetting necessary utility elsewhere. Mostly they require making compromises that don’t need to be made if not for a little self-control.
A simple black rectangle is perfectly minimal. How you set them up is everything.
Let’s be honest, he could sell poop in a ziploc bag and his fans would buy it.
Considered this phone but couldn’t commit to something like that, nor can I justify such a price tag for that. Instead I’m attempting to dumb down my phone. Moving to GrapheneOS and starting from the basics is definitely a good starting point.
Missing lte band 71. Hope the buyers don’t have T-Mobile in an area that’s b71 only.
Yeah the Light Phone 2 has been out for a while now. I saw it and thought “oh this is kind of interesting.” Then I found out it has a shit radio and a shit battery. You’d think that it would last days and says on one charge but nope. Also it has USB-Micro for charging lol.
If they fixed a few things like that, I would be all over it.
I can only imagine what kind of profit this company is making by selling a phone literally purpose built to be as lightweight as possible both physically and on features for $299.
I’d be willing to bet they could sell that for half the price and still make a reasonably-sized profit - so I might just take out my popcorn and see if somebody does.
Jitterbug 2
The Electric Boogaloo
Reddit moment
It’s 30 dollars of technology.
more like 6 dollars on the BOM, would sell for 30 doll hairs to the consumer, tho
It is. Which is why it is so stupid that a company like Nokia or Motorola doesn’t spend a little more on market research to totally own this market.
Or, maybe they did and partnered with Kendrick Lamar behind the scenes.
maybe they did and partnered with Kendrick Lamar behind the scenes.
Litephone has been around for a while.
Since when is Light Phone “Kendrick Lamar’s company”?
That explains why they’re so damn expensive.
You could buy equally or more functional phones in the early 2000s for $100-200.
Not so dumb if it has voice recognition…
Possibly for accessibility reasons? No point in shafting blind people just for a gag.
The Nokia 3310 had voice recognition…
Ridiculous price for a dumb phone
Not for a run of only 250.
Edit: I should have explained that I was referring only to economies of scale in manufacturing of electronics. Making only 250 of some electronic device means a much higher per unit cost than if one made 10,000 of the same thing. You can look at quantity discounts of microcontrollers or sensors or things like that ok Digi-Key or Mouser and see what I mean.
I expect something really special for special editions not a blandly designed phone endorsed by a celebrity
Yeah it’s a pretty meh phone. I couldn’t possibly give less of a fuck about a celeb name attached to it, personally. It might make sense to make 100,000 units of a minimalist phone with no celeb b.s. so it would be super cheap. This, however, just seems ridiculous.
The price is the same for the non special edition one. These have been out for years. Only thing special about it is it says the pglang or whatever on the back. Identical otherwise. Absolutely stupid.
Yeah it is. A rare stupid thing is as worthless as a common stupid thing if you’re not an idiot about it.
I’m talking about economies of scale ffs. Not rarity.
Prices of electronic components goes way down beyond, say, 1000, 5000, 10000, etc.
And I’m talking about how much owning and using it is worth, regardless of the seller’s self-imposed extra expenses.
Makes sense.
It’s an existing product. The only thing “limited” about it is it says phalange on the back. It’s a fucking stupid marketing gimmick. You can go buy a regular one right now, they are in stock
https://www.thelightphone.com/shop/products/light-phone-ii-black
