Light Phone 2, my favorite tech thing of 2024

I have an annual tradition where I make a list of all of my favorite things from the past year. This year the headlining tech thing is the Light Phone 2.

I used to believe that making computers more accessible to everyone through smartphones would benefit the whole world. But as internet brain has afflicted the real world, I’ve looked for guardrails that reduce the flow of internet nonsense into my head. That search has taken a previously unthinkable idea – of using a non-smartphone or “dumb phone” – and moved it into the realm of reasonable responses to the current state of internet media.

I bought the Light Phone as a present for myself more as a novelty. It was not my goal for it to be a serious purchase or an across-the-board lifestyle change. I wanted to see how well it worked and maybe use it as a backup phone.

What made the Light Phone stand out from other dumb phones is that it has a Qwerty software keyboard. I didn’t have to sacrifice my familiarity with the layout of a keyboard and go back to the old rotten days of T9.

It has no web browser, no email, and no third-party applications. Instead it has a limited selection of applications called tools. Tools are available for calendar, calculator, turn-by-turn directions, and others, but they’re not intended as one-for-one replacements for smartphone apps. The tools exist to give me something, and maybe just enough, to not need my smartphone.

The transition away from my iPhone 11 Pro to using the Light Phone full-time was gradual and, as I said, not really my goal.

I had a rough start. At first I couldn’t get text messages from my friends that use iPhones because of iMessage, an instant messenger service that Apple puts on top of the text messaging application on the iPhone. If two people have an iPhone, messages are automatically sent over the internet using iMessage rather than as cellular SMS text messages. Because my iPhone was still linked to iMessage, I kept receiving messages from my iPhone-using friends on my iPhone even when my SIM card was in the Light Phone. I hoped that I could have the best of both worlds and keep using iMessage when my SIM card was in my iPhone then automatically switch to using use SMS when my SIM was in the Light Phone, but it didn’t work out that way. I had to opt-out completely.

Once I could send and receive calls and texts with everybody, using the Light Phone was an exercise in getting comfortable with discomfort. I mean, it can be scary to not have a smartphone out in the world. After 17 years of smartphone usage, I was out of practice living like that. I was used to having all sorts of apps and websites that remove or reduce uncertainty, even small amounts of uncertainty. For instance, I’ve used Google Maps so many times while walking around downtown just to check if I’m facing and walking in the right direction. With the Light Phone, all that uncertainty came right back.

So at first the Light Phone was just a home phone. I used my iPhone outside the house but switched to the Light Phone at home for serenity.

A couple months later, the Light Phone became my weekend phone. If my SIM card was still in my iPhone by Friday evening, I moved it back to the Light Phone. Over a few weeks, the Light Phone’s weekend time bled into the week.

Then at some point the Light Phone became my full-time phone. By then it happened without friction or fanfare.

The loss of iMessage has been difficult because photos sent over iMessage are full quality, while photos sent over text message are heavily compressed. I always want the highest possible quality images, especially photos of my family. I already have to ask Android users (whose messages are sent to iPhones as SMS text messages) to email me their photos, but now I have to ask that of everybody. I would like a better photo-sharing solution for that because nobody wants to be asked to send an email in the middle of a party, but that’s a project for another time.

Other than the loss of some conveniences, it’s been great. I really needed this. These days I don’t have the brain space to deal with all the things my smartphone would like me to do. The reduced mental load from switching to the Light Phone outweighs any features that I’ve lost.

Freeing up some brain space is a big deal for me as a parent of a toddler, where there are already so many reasons to feel impatient and frustrated. Like when I’m struggling to get my kid to leave the playground, or to stop throwing things, or to get ready for sleep. It’s easier to practice patience when there isn’t a bunch of “important” stuff I could be doing in my pocket. I would handle a lot of situations worse if I was also half-doing a bunch of stuff on my phone.

What sealed the deal for me was seeing how my kid reacts to the Light Phone. Normally if she spies any screen or smartphone, she hunts it down and messes around looking for stimuli. But with my Light Phone, she just picks it up and hands it to me because she knows it’s mine. She has no interest in it. I think a lot about the difference in her reactions. It really solidifies the idea that something about smartphones are attractive at a basic level, that both full-grown adults and toddlers are susceptible to its charms.

Whether to use a smartphone usually doesn’t feel like a choice at all. I’m grateful that the Light Phone exists to let me experiment and decide for myself. For most of the year I had the choice between a lifestyle with a smartphone or the Light Phone. I chose the Light Phone more and more often until it became my default. After this last year, I don’t see myself carrying a smartphone full time ever again.

I like the Light Phone for how well it works at its intended purpose, but I love it for what it represents. It demonstrates a happy medium where a technology product can provide utility without stoking my worst and most addictive impulses. That makes it my favorite tech thing of 2024.

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