Last autumn, my best friend replaced her iPhone with a Nokia. She’s not the only one: interest in “dumbphones” has grown in the past few years, particularly among young people. But when Joe Hollier, 33, and his fellow founder Kaiwei Tang, 44, first conceived of the Light Phone—a “minimalist phone” which is “designed to be used as little as possible”—in 2014, the idea of giving up your smartphone was barely imaginable. “Some people had just gotten their first smartphones and weren’t yet burnt out or jaded,” recalls Hollier, a freelance graphic designer and artist who met Tang, a product designer, at the New York-based 30 Weeks programme, an experimental design incubator which asked participants to create a new product.
Neither Hollier nor Tang was interested in making “sticky” smartphone apps aimed at getting people hooked in order to sell ads or user data. Hollier thought, “Am I ready to, like, throw this phone in the ocean and go live off the grid?”
It’s not quite a “dumbphone”, but the Light Phone is designed to make it easy to switch off. No third-party apps, no social media, no blue light, and with functionality at its core. When I reach Hollier by Zoom on what was, for me, a drizzly Tuesday afternoon in Manchester, he’s preparing to launch a new directory function to sit alongside the handful of other Light Phone “tools”, all created in-house: an alarm, a calculator, music, podcasts, notes, directions and an internet hotspot.
Since giving up his smartphone, Hollier has been fulfilling himself artistically
Hollier joins the call from his sweltering Brooklyn loft. His exposed-brick walls are adorned with his own acrylic paintings, and there’s a keyboard in the corner that Hollier has been learning to play in the years since co-founding Light. “It has been a really big, positive change, probably the best thing I’ve done for myself as an adult,” he says about learning the instrument. His spare time is now spent “fulfilling [himself] artistically”: working on his art without having to worry about selling it, taking “excessive” walks (with or without a camera), skateboarding, camping and sitting in the park and drinking beer with his buddies. “I try to practise what I preach and not get so lost in the Light Phone that I’m working 24/7, you know?” But even still, developing the Light Phone feels like an artistic endeavour. That even in its conceptual stage the project could elicit such a strong reaction from people—they either thought it was the “dumbest idea they had ever heard” or instantly wanted in—he says, “felt really powerful”.
Hollier seems really in control of his life. He has the serene quality that only someone who has not used a smartphone for almost six years can achieve. When we speak, I’m in the middle of begrudgingly setting up my new (refurbed) iPhone, which I finally conceded to buying after months of dealing with a faulty screen. I managed to keep hold of my old one for about three and a half years. “That’s more than the average, for sure,” says Hollier, who is “morally against” the alleged planned obsolescence which causes certain phones to become faulty, forcing customers to upgrade prematurely. Light Phones are designed to last. Hollier and Tang like to keep things “honest”, even if that this isn’t very profitable. “There is no hidden, backstream revenue from selling data or ads,” Hollier says. “We sell our phone for a price, the price includes all the features ongoing, and we aspire to not sell you another phone until you absolutely need one, hopefully more than four years later.”
Profit, then, has never been the priority, but making enough to run a business and live comfortably can be a “struggle”. Light manages by “keeping things scrappy” with a small, mostly remote team, and by attracting investors who believe in its mission “from a moral angle”.
The Light Phone is an antidote to our smartphone-centric world that doesn’t sacrifice convenience. Perhaps it will push consumers (and, in turn, investors) towards a more mindful approach to tech—although I haven’t given up my iPhone yet.
