When all you want is a phone: The Light Phone

A beep here, a vibration there, emails pouring in at the speed of light, social media tentacles grabbing at you every minute of every day – such is the life with a smartphone. Oh yeah, it will make phone calls too.

The point of all that is one little gadget commands a considerable amount of our time at any point in the day (or night). To disconnect without being totally left in the dust, the Light Phone is your phone away from phone.

At its most basic, the Light Phone does not invent anything new. It is a mobile phone that makes and received calls, and nothing more. The Light Phone does include a few innovations though. You can connect your smartphone with the Light Phone via an app to forward calls if you wish. As a stand-alone device, it will come with a pre-paid SIM and 500 minutes of talk time. The Light Phone is the size of a credit card and nearly as thin at 4mm. Since it is a single-purpose device, even with a small battery, expect a charge to last about 20 days.

The pair of developers behind the Light Phone met at a Google event in New York and hit it off to design the device.

With more than a month to go, the Light Phone is 85% funded on Kickstarter. For $100, you get an unlocked Light Phone, pre-paid SIM loaded with 500 minutes (or more) of talk time, micro-USB charger, and of course the app to connect to your smartphone. Shipments are expected to be a year away, however.

There are plenty of basic feature phones that can be had for less, but they cannot fit in your wallet, and even they are not as single purpose as the Light Phone.





source: The Light Phone (Kickstarter)