Could I Ditch My Smartphone for the Light Phone 2? Almost.

Speaker 1: Meet the light phone too. A cell phone that purposely lacks features like a camera, an internet browser, because in an ever online world, it's been uniquely created to be used as infrequently as possible Speaker 1: As a smartphone gal myself, I was immediately intrigued by this product and knew I had to try it. So I ditched my iPhone for a week and used the light phone too instead. And [00:00:30] spoiler alert. I really enjoyed it. Now you may be wondering if this phone's so simple, what can it do? Well upon first use it can of course, call in text and can also be as a hotspot and an alarm tools for music, podcasts, and navigation, as well as a calculator can be added to, and more features like a voice memo tool are anticipated to come in the near future. It also has a headphone Jack and Bluetooth capability and an electronic paper or E screen that you may recognize from Eres as for service, [00:01:00] depending on where you live. You'll either want the north American or international version of the phone for optimal coverage. It comes unlocked and has 4g LTE connectivity. And while it's compatible with select carriers, depending on location light also offers its own service plans and SIM cards to us users. Since this phone isn't compatible with my smartphone carrier, Xfinity mobile, I opted for the unlimited light service plan. Speaker 1: My journey with the light phone too [00:01:30] officially began with a good old unboxing. Speaker 2: Here it is. Speaker 1: The phone comes in two colors, black and light gray, which is the color I got Speaker 3: Pure Speaker 2: Off Plastic. Then we also have The charging cable And The SIM pin. Speaker 1: Then after inserting [00:02:00] the SIM card, I turned on and updated the phone for the first time. Speaker 2: Greetings, welcome to your light phone. Speaker 1: Next. I made a light account to access the dashboard, a site that allows users to import additional tools, contacts, and up to one gigabyte of audio files onto the phone. Once the files are uploaded to the dashboard, they're supposed to appear on the phone quickly, as long as it's connected to wifi or LTE, while I'm not used to having them manage these things from the website, the dashboard is very easy to use, and once my files were uploaded there, they showed up [00:02:30] on the phone in minutes. Speaker 1: So beyond setup, what's it like to use the light phone too on a daily basis? Are the features any good? Well, for the most part, yes, but more on this later because unlike the majority LS, the most remarkable part of my experience with this product, wasn't the features it has, but the ones it doesn't. So let's break it down. This phone, doesn't have social media, email news and internet browser ads or camera. My blog camera quickly became my [00:03:00] best friend as it filled in for me not having one on my phone. And I happily did without mobile access to news, email or internet, because with so many heavy headlines, it felt nice to be able to choose when I wanted to get informed throughout my day, rather than constantly receiving notifications. But earlier in the week, there were moments when I missed mobile social media access. Like when I was watching my neighbors, very cute kittens. Speaker 4: I'm with two adorable cats right now, very Instagram Wordly moments. So [00:03:30] it's day two of using the light phone day. One of using it exclusively and the urge to post on social media, uh, is still there. You guys don't even know what a phone is, huh? This is your primary form of, of entertainment. Speaker 1: But after a few days, the urge to post on social media subsided, as I quite simply just got comfortable with using my phone less, which is the whole point of this product. And I loved [00:04:00] how much more present I became as a result. I actually looked at my surroundings during my daily walks, instead of staring down at my phone, what a concept, I felt so much more engaged in conversations with friends and family. And when it was time to go to bed, I actually just went to sleep instead of scrolling on TikTok for hours long story, I just felt more present in general than I had in years. [00:04:30] And that point on the only time not having social media apps on my phone, stuck out to me is when those around me were checking them. And I didn't have anything else to do, but not because I actually missed them. Okay. Speaker 5: So I'm currently waiting for takeout and I wanted to document this moment because I am a little bored right now without my smartphone. Speaker 6: I feel so lonely without my iPhone. What else is gonna do? What else am I gonna do? Speaker 7: Outro my [00:05:00] on my phone in run Speaker 6: Of her in front of me, Speaker 7: Really? I should just be present. It's a healthy thing to not be on your phone all the time. I'm putting my phone Speaker 6: Away. That's a good insight. I'm I'm inspiring some people this week. Speaker 1: All right, now that we've gone over what this phone doesn't have. Let's go back to what it does have because that's important too. Making calls on this phone is generally pretty smooth. For the most part, I can clearly hear callers and they can clearly hear me. How do I sound to you? You sound good. Awesome. [00:05:30] And the calling interface is straightforward. I can place a call by searching for a contact or locating them in my recent history. And the call buttons are intuitive. The only feature I never quite adjusted to is text. And this is due in part to the phone's E ink display. Speaker 1: This type of screen has some distinct features. It doesn't radiate blue light, and it can be red outside because it doesn't create a glare, which are two things I love. But aside from those characteristics, the E ink display is also less responsive than a [00:06:00] smartphone screen. Meaning typing takes longer. I was never able to quite get used to this slower typing pace because this in combination with the lack of copy and paste and autocorrect options made texting and large volumes pretty time consuming. That being said, I did test this phone during the holiday, which is a time when I was sending and receiving more texts than normal. So I probably noticed this screen lag a little more than I would've during a regular week. And the phone's voice to text option is very accurate. Can I call you? Speaker 1: [00:06:30] That was pretty good. So this does help speed up texting. I also ran into a texting glitch the first day I use the phone where I heard a ping as if I received a new message. But when I checked the phone, I had no new texts, but light told me users periodically experienced this glitch. And I likely wasn't missing messages. This device doesn't show images received via text. And while this gave me some initial FOMO, I no longer felt this way. Once I realized I can allow these images to be forwarded to my email account, while this device can't send emojis, [00:07:00] it can receive them, but they probably look different than you're used to this. Wasn't a big deal to me, but it may be to you if you particularly enjoy communicating through emojis. All right, now that we've gone over the phone, primary functions calling and texting, let's go over how everything else worked while this depends on location. Speaker 1: In my experience, LTE and hotspot tethering works seamlessly. When I connect my laptop to my personal light hotspot network, I'm able to watch videos just as easily as when I'm connected to wifi. And [00:07:30] this phone's LTE works well for quickly. Applying updates, importing files from the dashboard and accessing directions. Speaking of directions, this tool also get a thumbs up for me while it was a little hard to hear the voice command over the songs I was listening to at times it was manageable. And in the end, this tool got me to a destination I'd never been to before and going back to songs. I also really enjoyed the music experience on this phone. One gigabyte of audio space is enough to store a week's worth of music. And I really liked the focused [00:08:00] listening that came with not having a seemingly endless music library at my fingertips. Speaker 1: It made me more intentional when selecting music for the device and more present while I was listening to the songs since I knew they were all I had, I listened to more closely. And as a result, enjoyed the music more, the songs appear in one playlist, but the search by makes it easy to find specific artists and songs and new podcast episodes automatically import once a series is selected from the dashboard. As long as the device is connected to wifi or LTE. [00:08:30] If I wasn't listening to music through my car's ox cord, I was using Bluetooth to listen to it through my AirPods or beats. I found that this phone's Bluetooth capability works well. As long as your wireless listening devices have a pretty full charge and continuing with charging let's talk battery life with regular usage. I was getting one to two days before I had to charge the phone, but if I did something more data intensive, like importing files from the dashboard on LTE, I'd have to plug it in twice a day as for remaining features, [00:09:00] the calculator worked well. And finally, let's talk about the alarm. This feature worked for me in the long run, but did take some getting used to, I am coming at you all today a little later than expected because I slept through my alarm as a, a person who relies on multiple alarms. The fact that this device only allows you to set one at a time, definitely threw me off at first. And the first alarm sound that I selected was pretty calm. Speaker 1: So I changed it. Speaker 1: [00:09:30] Okay. I, I think the high pitch makes that one, a good candidate and it was success. I'm very happy to report that. I did wake up to my light phone to alarm today. The day is off to a good start. So overall I really enjoyed using this phone features. It does have generally work well and the ones that doesn't have allow me to live in the present in a way I'm just not able to, when using my smartphone, it currently retails for $299, which is still a pretty penny, but a lot [00:10:00] less expensive than my iPhone. So with all that said, could I see this being my primary phone almost while I enjoyed my experience with the light phone too, since I work in social media shameless flag to check out our CNET social media accounts, I need to have some con and talk with social media apps to be able to stay up to date on trends and ultimately do my job. Speaker 1: And while the two-factor authentication required by my job can be in the form of a text message. Some workplaces require using a smartphone app to authenticate [00:10:30] your identity. So at that may be a deal breaker for you. So while it isn't feasible for me to exclusively use the phone to, at this point, this challenge did inspire me to consider transitioning to using the light phone too, as my primary phone and my smartphone as a secondary phone, or at the very least change my habits surrounding how I interact with my smartphone. What do you think of the light phone too? Would you ever use it as your primary phone, maybe a secondary phone. Are you interested in trying it, let me know in the comments below [00:11:00] and like, and subscribe through more tech reviews and news from CNET.