• she/her

healthcare bureaucrat in philly, v adhd, orthodox jew, ect ect, im love my wife



So last week my LightPhone got here, to those not aware it's an e-ink display phone which strives to keep what is vital with a smart phone while getting rid of the parts that are harmful. It's the cohost of phones lol. I am genuinely shocked at 1) how quickly the intractable "addiction" to online dissipated 2) how much changed in general.

First the nitty gritty review stuff. This little guy is Tiny! it's the size of a debit card and very minimalist which honestly is a huge unexpected benefit. Using my phone way less, and using a lighter phone held closer to my eyes, has resolved sooo much of my back/shoulder/arm pain. It makes sense but is wild. Surprise surprise holding an awkwardly shaped heavy rectangle of glass for hours a day isn't great for ya

Next we can go to the bread and butter, the phone tool. Not going to show it since it has my friends phone numbers lmao but here's what texting looks like. It rules being able to type with one thumb and without having to stretch anything, again it's very ergonomic the text screen, it's very tiny and a bit awkward looking

What sets this apart from other "dumb phones" is what comes next, podcast and maps.

It has an in-system RSS feed! Which rules as someone who grew up on RSS feeds and misses them lmao an rss feed, not much to say about it honestly

The direction tool was absolutely shocking to me, I only yesterday found it! Having maps on an e-ink display feels like it shouldn't be possible lol. And, again like everything else, the UI is super intuitive and minimalist and crisp a very simple map system

Other bare-bones stuff: the battery is pretty solid, I'm coming home with it still around 50% at the end of a work day. It's not amazing but it'll do. The speaker suuucks haha but it does have bluetooth so that only gets in the way when it comes to calls.

On to the impact of this phones raison d'être. Basically the internet is now a tool I use instead of a space I'm trapped in, if I need to interact with a system I will wait until I'm home or I'll move my sims card to my other device, it's no longer a thing that's everywhere constantly pulling at my attention, but instead is something I have to seek out when I need it. Less distractions means more mental bandwidth and energy left over at the end of the day. Instead of filling the 5 minute sized gaps of time in between tasks with twitter I'm, resting, just sitting there resting, and wow that has resulted in So much more energy haha. Also if I want to talk to someone I do it directly instead of just posting, and I'm in general less accessible, which more closely maps the form of socializing that our brains are keyed into. It feels so much less stressful and isolating. Lastly, every notification I get is either from someone I love or about something genuinely important and man that rules way more than I expected it to.

I cannot recommend this strongly enough. You will need a day planner (since there's no calander) and an MP3 player (since they're still working on their music tool) but that's small (to me at least) seeing as I'm getting back like 4-6 hours of my day (how much time I was spending my my phone cumulatively) lmao while also growing my attention span back and fixing how I socialize.

Oh on that note, the price is $200 which is expensive for a dumb phone and very cheap for a smart phone, so whether or not that's good depends on where on that spectrum you put it lol. This company is the opposite of planned obsolescence and e-ink has a 10+ year lifespan usually so uhhh yeah no that price rules imo

Anyways yeah no if you at all struggle with phone addiction or are terminally online, get this asap.


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in reply to @numberonebug's post:

this is the first of these types of phones i’ve seen that’s been genuinely interesting to me!

my main issue, which nothing has nailed yet, is that i talk to people with too many different messaging apps (imessage, discord, telegram being the main three) and, even if i drop imessage, nothing i’ve seen is able to cover the rest. trying to get everyone onto whatever platform a given phone supports is like herding cats.

that and i like having a small camera with me at all times so i can photograph my cat but that’s different

thanks for posting this! really like seeing such a detailed review of Real Use here

I feeeel that! honestly tho like, everyone with a phone can text so it's not as hard as say asking someone to enter a new ecosystem. What I did was basically just, like,, "if you wanna chat while I'm out of the house then text or call, otherwise I'll respond when I'm at my computer" and idk there's something Extremely nice at not Always Being Available that I didn't expect, it's a quieter way to live and when I do see people I have a lot more to talk about

hehe yeah my old smart phone has basically become a camera + banking device now, fumbling around in my bag to turn it on and grab a pic before my cat stops doing whatever she's doing

I keep longingly thinking about picking up, like, a Remarkable or one of the other nice e-ink readers (legit maybe a waterproof one i read so much in the bath), so, fair

lol I've got a remarkable too jkadlfja;

kinda wish I'd gotten the supernote instead,, they just had massive supply chain issues at the time

but yeah idk it's nice to have seperate tools for seperate tasks ya know

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