Minimalist Phone to Help Cure Tech Addiction

The Light Phone is a cellphone released last year with an interesting premise: strip away all the extraneous, distracting pieces of modern smartphones—like Internet, texting, email and photography—to leave the distilled essence of a phone.

It could make calls and store nine phone numbers, but that was about it.

It was an interesting idea, promising a life where you could remove the distractions of a regular smartphone while not cutting off the rest of the world entirely, but it was ultimately a little too limited.

The Light Phone 2 is the successor to the original Light Phone and it takes that same minimalist idea but adds a few more features to make it more feasible to use as a regular phone.

It shares the same matte design of the original, but instead of an illuminated 10-digit number pad, it has an E-Ink touchscreen.

The handset also has 4G support and a few new features, including the ability to send text messages. Light is also exploring adding some more advanced features, including basic maps, music or hailing a ride through a company like Uber.

The phone is still pretty early in the process: the company is still finalizing specifications, features and hardware, and does not expect to ship the phone until April 2019.