- Light Phone 3, a simplified phone, is available for pre-order at a discounted price of $599.
- The phone doesn't have social media apps and is focused on basic functions like calling and texting.
- It does feature cameras and a nostalgic design, but its price rivals the newest iPhone.
Less is more when it comes to the Light Phone 3.
However, even with a newly integrated camera, you'll also be paying more for less.
The handset belongs to a group of devices known as "dumb" phones online. Instead of all the bells and whistles that smartphones come with, like a web browser and social media apps, these are simplified so they only perform basic phone functions.
The world may be on the verge of a tech revolution led by artificial intelligence, but many people are seeking a break from bright screens and doomscrolling. In January, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels predicted that 2025 will be the year people lean into more intentional tech use as AI takes hold.
While you could ditch Instagram by buying a flip phone for less than $100, the Light Phone 3 is available for preorder at a discounted price of $599. Eventually, it'll retail for $799. For comparison, the newest iPhone starts at $599.
The biggest difference from its fellow Light Phone 2, other than a leap in price, is the addition of cameras to the front and rear of the 3. Both Apple and Samsung have recently launched new models and talked up their cameras, showing that's still a big deal for phone users.
When I spoke to Joe Hollier, the cofounder of Light, in January, he told me the Light Phone 3 camera wasn't made to compete with that of an iPhone. Instead, it was inspired by his interest in film photography with an intended "nostalgia feel," he said.
So I decided to give the phone and new camera a try with some selfies and pet photography. Disclaimer: I took photos and texted them to my iPhone to upload for this story.
That nostalgia vibe was evident in the pictures I captured of myself and my dogs. Images had that film camera aesthetic when I viewed them on my Light Phone, but the quality appeared to decrease once I sent them to my iPhone 14 Pro Max — especially those that were taken with the front-facing selfie camera.
It's important to note that the ability to send photos via text was introduced in a LightOS update on Monday, so the feature is only days old. The rear-facing camera gave me less noticeable changes in quality, and it maintained more of that nostalgia element captured in Light's press photos.
Other hardware changes to the handset include more buttons than the Light 2 — it felt like a lot of buttons to me — and an NFC chip that makes digital wallet support possible in the future.
The Light Phone 3's six buttons include a dial for adjusting the brightness that doubles as the flashlight switch. Similar to the latest iPhones, it has a button dedicated to opening the camera and taking photos.
The other buttons are the classic controls of a smartphone: volume, a home button, and a power button that includes its fingerprint ID sensor.
Downloadable features include a directory, where you can search businesses to find their location, hours, and contact info, and a music tool that allows you to upload songs.
Light Phones aren't currently compatible with music streamers like Spotify and Apple Music. However, podcast listeners can access their favorite titles via the Podcasts tool, which also doesn't come installed on the Light Phone 3 out of the box. Hollier previously told BI that Light has no current plans to bring AI to its phones.
It might be an anti-social media phone, but it's picked up some steam online as TikTokers marveled at a phone that has Amazon Kindle vibes, as they put it. In 2024, the Light Phone 2 made a cameo in rapper Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" music video.
However, TikTok users weren't particularly fond of the price tag being the same as a brand-new iPhone 16e.
"I'll keep my iPhone. $800 for that is actually criminal," one comment said, while others praised its simplicity.
