Minimalist phones, just clever marketing?
No marketing quite gets me in the feels like Light Phone's.
“I love this phone. It will make you a happier, more present person,” boasts a testimonial, the very first thing you see when you land on their website.
Their main strapline is that their phones are designed to be used as little as possible, which I have to admit, is genius. Perfectly crafted for their target audience.
And if the inspirational copy doesn't get you, the imagery surely will. The looping videos show a father and son walking together in the snow, birds flying in formation above the trees, a skateboarder zipping defiantly across the steps of a government building, an artist sketching in a studio, a young couple standing on a roof at dusk, a surfer bobbing alone in the ocean, and a girl rollerskating whimsically across a city bridge. All edited to look like grainy, sun-bleached 35mm film to remind us that there was once a better life without smartphones.
It's beautifully done, and it's almost got me to the checkout on a few occasions.
Just think, if I owned this phone, I could do all of those things! Look how carefree and unshackled they all look!
It's classic lifestyle marketing, is what it is. Sell me a dream. Let me picture myself bobbing in the ocean, not worrying about my phone, even though I live in a landlocked city and have never tried surfing. I also wouldn't be seen dead on roller skates, and I last used a skateboard when Papa Roach were my favourite band. I guess I could look at some birds, though?
I'm really not trying to be sceptical here. At its core, what brands like Light Phone are doing is admirable, and flies in the face of big tech - which I'm all for.
But I have come to recognise when I'm being manipulated into making a big purchase. And at $899 (!!!), the latest iteration of the Light Phone will set me back almost double what my flagship Android cost me last year. Purely from a spec point of view, it's a piece of crap.
What the marketing images don't show is their users waiting on hold for hours to speak to their bank trying to move money around. Or driving around in circles because a local marathon has closed their road home and they've got no Maps. Or turning up to a cafe for lunch only to discover it closes early on Tuesdays.
"A tool for a better life" - Light Phone.
And bit by bit, these minimalist phones are getting smarter. They've added fingerprint ID. Cameras. Podcasts. Uber. Even 5G.
It's almost as if, we need a smartphone to function these days...
So while the minimalist phone makers are creeping backwards, packing in features out of sheer survival, we're essentially paying flagship prices for a smartphone with an identity crisis and a smaller screen.
Maybe the real radical act isn't dropping $900 on a device to tell me how to live. Maybe it's just turning off notifications, deleting doom-scrolling apps, and accepting that we probably don't need yet another device in order to observe some birds or jump in a lake.
Other minimalist phones are available. I'm kind of loving the reincarnation of Commodore as a brand, and contrary to all my deeply held beliefs expressed above, I would love to get my hands on an 8020.