Like untold hundreds of thousands of smartphone customers, I’ve a little bit of an issue. I’ve been attempting, with middling success, to be extra conscious about how I exploit my telephone. I’ll typically uninstall varied social media apps (however reinstall them later), and I’ve disconnected all my work instruments until I’m touring particularly for the job. I don’t play video games with out intention or doomscroll very a lot. However I nonetheless discover myself mindlessly reaching for it when there’s a second to fill, and I don’t love that behavior. I don’t suppose I’m fully hooked on my iPhone; my Display screen Time stats put day by day utilization round two to 3 hours. That’s lower than I’ve seen lots of people publish on social media, but it surely’s nonetheless vital.
I’ve been intrigued by the Gentle Cellphone III since I first noticed some previews for it final yr. Because the identify suggests, it’s the third telephone by Brooklyn-based startup Gentle, and the ethos stays the identical. It has no "infinite scroll” apps like electronic mail, social media, an internet browser or most all the things else that defines a contemporary smartphone. It’s designed for fast interactions so you possibly can decide it up, reply to a name or message, perhaps get instructions or placed on a track after which get again to life. Nonetheless, there are lots of enhancements in comparison with prior Gentle Telephones that made it really feel much more viable to me. Particularly, there’s a digicam, the display screen is OLED as an alternative of E Ink and the broader, extra responsive show is healthier suited to textual content enter. It additionally seems to be cool in a minimalist approach, and has some properly responsive bodily buttons in a world when these have gotten more and more uncommon.
I’ve been utilizing the $599 Gentle Cellphone III since late March, and my plan was to completely decide to it — however the practicality of doing so was surprisingly troublesome. Primarily based on my expertise, it’s going to be a tricky promote for lots of people who use a smartphone for fundamentals or issues solely particular apps can ship. The Gentle Cellphone III isn’t fairly able to be most individuals’s solely gadget, however I want it might be.
The Gentle philosophy
Generally, the Gentle Cellphone III jogs my memory slightly little bit of the very first iPhone — a tool with perhaps 16 built-in apps and nothing else. After all, the iPhone had time-wasters like YouTube, an electronic mail consumer and an internet browser, however that gadget was not practically the attention-hog that trendy smartphones are. In the identical approach, Gentle picked particular instruments that it feels most individuals will want whereas maintaining all the things as easy and bare-bones as doable. The thought is that as an alternative of a tool stuffed with apps continually notifying you and attempting to seize your consideration, the Gentle Cellphone is targeted on intentional use so that you aren’t continually choosing up your telephone.
That exhibits up in quite a lot of methods, from the essential block type issue to the truth that LightOS (based mostly on Android, however you’d by no means realize it) is actually white textual content on a black background. The one time you see shade is when you open the digicam or take a look at photographs. However an important factor is the extraordinarily fundamental set of instruments you possibly can set up on the gadget. Right here’s a full record along with the settings and telephone / textual content messages apps:
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Alarm
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Album
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Calculator
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Calendar
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Digital camera
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Instructions
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Listing
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Hotspot
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Music
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Notes
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Podcasts
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Timer
If you need, you possibly can actually simply have the telephone app, which additionally contains your contacts record and textual content messages. In 2025, that’s wildly sparse. And you’ll see by the above record that none of those are stuff you’re going to lose a number of time utilizing. The austere method doesn’t simply apply to the restricted set of instruments, both — it exhibits up in how every one is designed. For instance, the Alarm software doesn’t have a nap button. For those who’re utilizing it as a get up name, you had higher stand up when it goes off.
{Hardware}
Earlier than digging into what utilizing this odd little gadget is like, let’s run by means of its minimalist {hardware}. The Gentle Cellphone III is a chunky rectangle of a telephone that’s considerably shorter and thicker than what I’m used to. It’s 12mm thick, in comparison with 7.8mm for the iPhone 16e or about 10mm for the Pixel 9a. However whereas the Gentle Cellphone III is about the identical width as a contemporary iPhone, it’s solely 106mm tall, which is shorter than, say, the iPhone 16e (147mm). That makes the telephone look quite a bit bigger in photographs than it’s in actuality, as a result of we’re used to assuming a telephone features a 6-ish inch show. That’s not the case right here.
The entrance is dominated by the display screen, however I haven’t used a telephone with a show this small in years. It’s a 3.92-inch AMOLED panel with matte glass and 1,080 x 1,240 decision, and the remainder of the entrance is crammed out by two giant bezels. The highest one homes an earpiece and selfie digicam, whereas the underside has a surprisingly solid-sounding speaker. On the again, you’ll discover the modest 5-megapixel digicam with a flash; the underside 60 % is the place the user-replaceable battery lives.
One other factor that makes the Gentle Cellphone stand out is its plethora of buttons, which is a rarity within the trendy period. There’s an influence button with a fingerprint sensor on the highest proper nook, however sadly that sensor hasn’t but been activated in LightOS. The correct facet has a house button, with round quantity up and down keys surrounding it. Close to the underside proper edge is a two-stage digicam button, which is a slightly shocking inclusion. Urgent it opens the digicam app it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, and you may push it midway all the way down to activate the middle focus level earlier than miserable all of it the way in which to take your image. Lastly, on the higher left nook is a button that activates the flashlight; it’s surrounded by a dial you possibly can flip to regulate display screen brightness. I’ve by no means felt like I wanted my telephone’s flashlight sufficient for it to have a devoted button, and of all of the buttons that is the one I unintentionally activated essentially the most. However, the dial for display screen brightness is fairly useful.
The Gentle Cellphone is powered by Qualcomm’s SM 4450 processor with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of inner storage. It additionally helps 5G networks along with LTE, and the telephone is rounded out with the standard array of sensors: GPS, Bluetooth 5.0 and NFC. And, in fact, there’s a USB-C port on the backside for charging and restricted connectivity with a pc.
For the reason that Gentle Cellphone’s battery is detachable, it’s not practically as giant as those you’ll discover in most trendy smartphones. You’ll naturally be doing quite a bit much less with this telephone, although, so it’s not an enormous drawback. I simply obtained a number of days of use from the Gentle Cellphone until I used to be utilizing navigation quite a bit. That drained the battery fairly rapidly, so when you intend on utilizing it to your GPS on an extended automobile journey, ensure you have a charging port for it when you drive.
Going Gentle
Establishing a Gentle Cellphone III entails going to a web based dashboard the place you’ll activate your telephone. As soon as that’s achieved, that is additionally the place you possibly can configure varied instruments and do issues like add music and podcasts. There are minimal settings to fiddle with on the telephone itself — you possibly can modify quantity for varied notifications just like the telephone ringer, alarms or media, or flip the hotspot on or off. There are the standard choices for managing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections or updating the software program, but it surely’s a far slimmer menu than you’ll discover on an iPhone or Android gadget.
From the dashboard, I added the entire Gentle Cellphone’s accessible instruments and dug into the method of shifting contacts and music over. I hoped that the telephone would simply present up as a USB gadget after I plugged it into my pc so I might drag some MP3s over, however, alas, that’s not the case. Managing content material on the Gentle Cellphone requires utilizing the dashboard; it exhibits each software you have got put in and clicking on them permits you to add songs or import contacts.
This was the place I hit my first main friction level. I really like music and am a bit obsessive over it, so having the ability to play songs on the go is completely essential to me. I nonetheless purchase music on Bandcamp generally and still have a giant library of MP3s from the pre-streaming days, so I had loads of tunes so as to add to my Gentle Cellphone. Certain, it wouldn’t be the identical as gaining access to the hundreds of thousands of songs on Apple Music or Spotify, however I used to be okay with a little bit of a philosophical swap. In any case, what number of songs do you really want at a time?
Seems the massive difficulty isn’t having fewer songs — it’s how minimal each the music participant and track uploader are. On the dashboard, you possibly can add songs out of your pc, however all of them get dumped in a single large playlist. You may re-order issues there, however that’s the one semblance of group. I had hoped that the Gentle Cellphone’s music participant would have an iPod type of interface so you may use tags to dig into artists and albums, however no such luck. You may seek for a track, and when you faucet it to play it’ll play all the things following — that was the one approach I might approximate the expertise of listening to an album.
Making issues much more difficult is the truth that songs aren’t essentially uploaded to the telephone in any semblance of order. So even when your recordsdata are correctly named, that ordering isn’t at all times mirrored within the last add. I resorted to including an album after which utilizing the online dashboard interface to ensure the songs had been within the correct order. That’s worse than the expertise I had utilizing an iPod in 2003. To have to do that in 2025 is wild.
To be truthful, the Gentle Cellphone creators advised me that this software program is a holdover from the Gentle Cellphone II, which might solely maintain 1GB of music, like an previous iPod Shuffle. It wasn’t actually meant for looking a big library, however as an alternative was simply meant to present you a fast number of tunes in a pinch. And the corporate is actively engaged on a brand new participant with artist/album sorting, customized playlists and letting you load recordsdata by way of USB-C. That will go a great distance in direction of making it extra helpful. The excellent news is that sound high quality was nice and I might pair my AirPods Professional with zero points.
One other fear I had was how the Gentle Cellphone’s mapping and navigation instruments would maintain up. I’m perpetually misplaced and likewise lately moved, so I typically depend on turn-by-turn to determine the place I’m going. Whereas the Instructions software is kind of fundamental, it’s sufficient to get the job achieved. Opening it up merely exhibits two fields to enter the place you’re and the place you’re going (it will possibly additionally pull your present location by way of GPS). There’s additionally a selector for whether or not you’re driving, strolling or utilizing public transportation. Whereas the latter two choices mainly simply return a listing of instructions, driving provides you a correct map view and navigation alerts. After I used it whereas driving round, the map view was principally clear and the instructions had been correct sufficient to get me to my vacation spot. It’s all powered by Right here location providers, which have been round for ages and appear fairly good in my nook of the US.
Gentle pairs the Instructions software with a Listing that’s its one concession to the search-powered world we dwell in. You may seek for common phrases (espresso) or specifics (Starbucks) and get a selection of outcomes. Tapping on them exhibits some fundamental information just like the handle, hours, telephone quantity and a fundamental description, and you may faucet the map icon to ship that place into the Instructions app. All of it works higher than I anticipated for getting round, although each Google and Apple Maps are higher at supplying you with real-time updates on public transit. I depend on real-time information for metropolis buses, which makes the easy transit choices on the Gentle Cellphone a bit laborious to regulate to.
This ethos unsurprisingly permeates each software on the telephone. As I discussed earlier, the Alarm has no snooze button, however you possibly can set a number of alarms. You may sync your Google calendar to the telephone. However when you’ve got a couple of calendars in your account (work, household, and many others.), you possibly can solely see the default one. There’s a fundamental Notes app, however you possibly can’t do issues like connect photographs to entries. I can’t say I’ve an issue with any of this, as a result of that’s the entire level of the Gentle Cellphone — you recognize limitations are a part of the equation stepping into.
There are two essential options I haven’t gotten to but: the digicam and the telephone. That is the primary Gentle Cellphone with a digicam; there’s a 50-megapixel one on the again (photographs are binned and output at 12 megapixels) and an 8-megapixel one on the entrance for selfies. The corporate’s weblog exhibits off a bunch of samples and talks in regards to the course of they’ve used to tune the digicam’s output. Suffice it to say that these photographs are wildly completely different from the closely processed outcomes you’ll get from most trendy smartphones. In good gentle, the Gentle Cellphone’s photographs look respectable sufficient however clearly lack the nice element we’re used to lately. It’s the sort of digicam that you should utilize in a pinch, however you’ll discover it missing when you’re in any respect severe about pictures.
For me the problem is much less in regards to the picture high quality, which has its personal lo-fi appeal, and extra in regards to the digicam’s responsiveness. Gentle included a devoted digicam button, making it exceedingly easy to rapidly shoot a picture. However, after you have your scene framed up and press the shutter button, it takes between one and three seconds for the digicam to truly take the photograph. That’s an eternity and it makes the digicam not possible to make use of for something the place motion is concerned. I’m glad the Gentle Cellphone III has a digicam. But it surely brings me again to a time when telephone cameras had been helpful however stuffed with compromises. I might dwell with the aesthetics of the photographs if the digicam was extra responsive, however the lag simply kills it. If I used the Gentle Cellphone full time, I’d most likely use my correct digicam far more typically — which may be a very good factor! However I’d positively miss the comfort of taking high quality photographs in a pinch from my telephone.
Utilizing the Gentle Cellphone as a telephone
Some 15 or 20 years in the past, cell telephones had been principally meant for speaking and texting, keep in mind? The Gentle Cellphone III is a superb gadget for telephone calls, and a mediocre one for texting. In my testing, calls had been clear and straightforward to listen to on each ends, and the built-in speaker is surprisingly usable if you don’t really feel like holding one thing up (please, cease utilizing speaker telephone a lot in public, individuals!). The contacts part of the app is, in fact, minimal: simply names and telephone numbers. As such, this can not substitute an handle e-book or trendy contact record. For most individuals I care about, I must retailer a minimum of a telephone quantity, handle and electronic mail. There’s in fact no want for an electronic mail handle on the Gentle Cellphone, however an handle subject could be nice so you possibly can rapidly pull up instructions to a buddy’s home.
If the Gentle Cellphone’s music participant was a letdown, attempting to textual content was the deadly flaw that killed my dream of utilizing this gadget full time. In comparison with the Gentle Cellphone II, this new mannequin is considerably simpler to textual content with. The extra responsive and wider OLED display screen means the keyboard is comparable in dimension to those you’ll discover on an iPhone or Android gadget. The messaging app additionally does some sensible issues, like robotically sending hyperlinks and photographs individuals share to your electronic mail handle so you possibly can interact with them in your pc.
However there’s no autocorrect. And when you haven’t tried to textual content on a telephone with out autocorrect currently, let me inform you — it sucks.
The web is filled with individuals complaining about weird autocorrect errors, however what goes unnoticed is the way it hangs out within the background really makes nearly all of our messages far clearer. If I attempt to textual content at a velocity much like that on my iPhone, my messages are riddled with typos. Even after I decelerate it’s nonetheless very straightforward to misfire, necessitating irritating edits to make things better. There’s a spell-check function in-built, so phrases that I biffed had been a minimum of underlined. A protracted press on them gave me a couple of choices to appropriate issues, however the time it took me to compose and ship messages was considerably longer than on a contemporary gadget. The keyboard structure itself is ok and took little time to regulate to, however I by no means felt snug as a result of I used to be at all times making and fixing errors.
The opposite half of this difficulty is extra philosophical. Again within the day, we used texts to ship fast updates to individuals; having prolonged conversations was not the norm. That modified even earlier than the arrival of smartphones and I’ve pals whose velocity at texting utilizing T9 was spectacular. However nonetheless, telephones simply weren’t meant for that. At this level, although, whether or not it's in WhatsApp or Telegram or Sign or your telephone’s built-in messaging system, we now have ongoing conversations that go together with us in every single place.
The Gentle Cellphone is a return in direction of utilizing messaging for fast check-ins and updates, maybe as precursors to an precise telephone (or in-person!) dialog. However belief me after I say that maintaining with a gaggle dialog shall be an train in frustration with the Gentle Cellphone. I can dwell with the minimalist interface, restricted emoji choice and incapability to ship something moreover plain textual content and photographs if I might kind quicker — however I can’t. You’ll must essentially re-think your relationship with how you employ messaging on a telephone.
Which is sort of the purpose of this complete train.
Breaking an dependancy
I can blame the music participant or lack of autocorrect, however in the end I used to be not prepared for the way radically completely different the Gentle Cellphone III expertise is. There have been a number of sensible concerns that stored me from totally shopping for in. I want two-factor authentication apps for lots of providers I exploit. If I wished to go to a live performance, I’d want a smartphone for tickets. I don’t cope with checks typically, however I can’t keep in mind the final time I deposited one at a financial institution as an alternative of on my telephone. I’m occurring trip quickly and need to have the ability to take good photographs with out dragging my digicam round.
I might determine the required work-arounds for nearly all of this stuff. Possibly the up to date music participant Gentle is engaged on could be sufficient for me when it comes out. I’d most likely get used to the keyboard ultimately, to some extent. I might use my “actual” digicam extra, most likely main to higher and extra considerate photographs. I might get a piece telephone by means of our mother or father firm to make use of for authentication.
The purpose is that whereas there are methods round this stuff, implementing them entails a ton of labor. And sadly, now that eSIM has taken over, it’s not so simple as simply popping a SIM card into my iPhone if I wanted it for a few of these issues after which dropping it again within the Gentle Cellphone for day-to-day life. And since I wasn’t in a position to totally give myself over to the Gentle life-style, I didn’t actually get to expertise its advantages in a serious approach.
However, for a couple of weeks, I left my iPhone at house after I left the home as a lot as doable and there was one thing releasing in regards to the full lack of notifications and common siren-call for consideration that I normally cope with. It’s one thing that has caught with me whilst I shifted again to my iPhone for day by day use. I may not be prepared to completely break my dependancy to my smartphone, however as they are saying, step one is admitting you have got an issue.
This text initially appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cell/smartphones/light-phone-iii-review-minimalism-stretched-to-the-point-of-frustration-141559294.html?src=rss
