Chopping giant SAAS apps into mini single services seems to be the trend right now, and it totally makes sense for both users as well as developers. Simplify, only use what you need, pay less, and collect these mini tools like trading cards.

But now there's an epic version of the digital minimalism movement that is a real head scratcher. The Light Phone 3, which is finally shipping after a long period of anticipation, hype, and passive curiosity, is so alluring and yet utterly insane. The reviews are basically "I really want to love this, buuuut..."

Still, if this dumbphone manages to break out of its hyper niche, hipster early bird shiny object worship period, if it gets even a tiny morsel of adoption among teens and normie suburbanites, then we might be at the cusp of a phenomenal tech movement that will generate so much new hardware it might just save the whole digital universe from destroying itself.

What even is the Light Phone 3

When the iPhone came out, it merged several hardware devices into one: namely your music payer, phone, and calendar planner, Then it also swallowed up your camera, mapping device, notebook, remote, audio recorder, video camera, health tracker, credit card, keys, and of course your computer itself, with ready access to every app and website imagineable.

The smartphone has garbled up nearly everything around it, and in return you get such a beautiful single device, you can almost forgive it for the bones it left behind.

The Light Phone 3 just barfed everything back out. It has a phone, an mp3 player, basic text messaging, kind of a map, and a camera from 20 years ago. There's also a calculator, a rudimentary calendar, podcast player, an alarm, and a voice memo.

Can it _____? No.

How will I ____? Carry another device.

Does it work here in _____? Maybe.

Ok but surely it's under $____. It's $799 (!).

And yet... You want to believe that you really could just get by with the essentials. You want to say no to phone addiction, to doom scrolling, to the world at your fingertips.

You want to go back in time, for yourself, your family and friends, definitely your kids. Smartphones bad, dumbphones good. Silicon Valley powerless, humanity recovers.

But can you?

During technology blackouts, people thrive

I remember courtyard parties in the Portland heyday listening to 1980 cassette tapes. That New York City rooftop gathering in 2003 when the power went out (and the 'I Survived the Blackout' shirt that followed). So many camping trips, long motorcycle rides with nothing to listen to except wind, reading bus schedules and subway maps to get around a new city.

I also cannot shake those memories of being out of service, no one around, no technology to help when you need it. Still, they're fond memories now.

When we lose access, we find a way. When it's a controlled blackout, pure bliss. But unplanned disconnection is a temporary spiritual journey.

Lately there are reports of the power outages in Portugal bringing people together in a short and sweet fit of mass community. But we can go back to 2020-21 to remember the generational blackout that might be the true beginning of this minimalist awakening.

During Covid, when there was no office to hurry off to, you didn't need to a computer in your pocket. The era of work from home meant a huge majority of people experienced a compartmentalization of all these convenient, portable devices. You could get your work done at the computer, and then turn it off. You couldn't rely on websites to list accurate open hours for a restaurant, so you walked to it and peaked inside. Maybe you played that guitar finally, using a printed song book.

Of course there were many isolating aspects of Covid, and so much tragedy, as well as an over dependence on technology to replace in person gatherings. So it's not like we had much energy to sit around and bask in the joys of turning off technology.

But now here we are, the rupture in our effortless and steady adoption of smartphones as our second brain hasn't gone away. We know we want to not want them. That's big.

And now with AI, we most certainly do not feel good about where phones are going.

But the Light Phone 3 is $799 - currently $599 if you preorder. For barely anything. You know what else is $599? The latest iPhone 16E with Apple Intelligence, crash detection, satellite messaging, 5G internet, all day battery, face detection, an absurdly amazing camera, sublime voice to text, unimpeachable CarPlay, pinpoint accuracy for finding AirTags, and so on, and so on.

The future is retro

You don't have to look far in Science Fiction to see examples of minimalist hardware in the far future. Remember the movie Her? That little nothing phone, such a thing of beauty.

As an aside, that retro-futuristic AI companion world which seemed impossible in 2013 is now here, go have a conversation with the Sesame AI voice demo to see it for yourself.

Or Severence, which doesn't offer easy clues for the time period it's meant to take place in, but definitely the future, right? It's not nothing that the show envisions a technological future where computers and office phones have singular functions. Can't you imagine playing Oregon Trail on one of these?

When I lived in Denmark over 25 yeras ago, I recall the beautiful simplicity of Bang & Olufsen televisions. They could fit in a showroom from decades before their time, and yet the raw teletext interface was still so useful for news, sports, and weather, despite internet and computers nearby. Teletext is still a thing in Europe, by the way.

So it's certainly possible to believe that the peak of smartphone technology will be a reversal of abundance. We will express technological maturity by going back to absolute minimalism.

What will hardware minimalism look like

This is the fun part. Imagine what the next 10 years might look like, if we start to deconstruct unifying devices and go back to single purpose hardware.

• Instead of Spotify we go back to limited music collections.
• \Instead of dependence on maps and gps, we regain a sense of direction and memorize where we intend to go.
• \Instead of constant access to emails and websites, we do our work and research during the time we've allotted ourselves.
• \Instead of watching Youtube in line at the grocery store, we strike up a conversation.
• \If you need help with something you call or text message someone.
• \If you want to make memories, you carry a photo or video camera and you make them with intention.
• Instead of a phone that does everything, you have a phone that does a couple things, and you do everything else.

By the way, everything listed above is already possible with the Light Phone 3.

Minimizing the iPhone

If you're not quite ready to punch convenience in the face, you can still minimize your iPhone. First, there's a Minimal Phone Launcher for iOS that can look pretty darn close to a Light Phone. You can still get around it to access your apps, but it will make you think twice about what you really need.

Second, on newer phones you can use the built-in Assistive Access feature to create a simplified interface. This is designed for people with cognitive disabilities, but it can also be used to limit distractions and make your phone feel more like a Light Phone. You can customize the layout and choose which apps are available.

Finally, consider using Focus Mode on your iPhone to limit notifications and distractions during certain times of the day. This can help you create boundaries around your phone usage and make it easier to disconnect when you need to.

The Light Phone 3 and you

If you're new to the Light Phone 3, you might wonder what about the last two phones. They were rudimentary E Ink devices, and while I absolutely, unashamedly love E Ink devices, these things definitely required carrying a real phone in addition to the minimal dumbphone.

The Light Phone team is small, but they've managed to create a whole ecosystem around the Light Phone 3. Everything you don't think about with your iPhone but required billions of dollars and tens of thousands of people to make happen. These guys have like 40 people, so cut them some slack.

Despite all this, the Light Phone 3 does precisely what it says it does, and nothing more. (Not exactly true as there are many enhancements in the roadmap). Reviewers love the idea of it, but hate it at the first sign of trouble.

So yes, we come back to planned blackout versus unplanned disconnection. Pure bliss, temporary torture. But if people around you start to adopt this voluntary minimalism, if you don't have to be the guinnea pig, if teens think it's cool, or if your grandma happily uses it without gushing about it. What if? Would you get it?

Personally, I want one, of course I do. But more than that, I want to see this movement come to fruition. I want the end of smart and the beginning of dumb. Because maybe then humanity will remember how to be smart again.