Smallbusiness- Light is a startup that creates products designed to help combat smartphone addiction.
- The company launched its first product, the Light Phone, in 2017. Now it's back with the second iteration: the Light Phone 2.
- The original Light Phone could only make and receive phone calls, but the second version has some additional features: alarms and texting.
- "Five years ago when we started, people didn't understand. 'Why are you creating a simple phone? What's the point?'" Light cofounder Kai Tang told Business Insider. "Especially last year, we can sense the tide changed."
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
In 2019, we are simultaneously more attached to our smartphones than ever before and more aware of how attached we are to our smartphones.
For many of us, it's become something of an anxiety-inducing loop: Open Instagram or Twitter or Reddit, get sucked in, realize how long we've been on said app, put phone down, get a notification, repeat.
That loop is what the creators of the Light Phone 2 are hoping to eliminate.
The Light Phone 2, which debuts on Wednesday and costs $350, is the successor to Light's original device from 2017. It's sort of like the anti-smartphone, or maybe a Swiss Army knife: it's a tool rather than a tool for distraction. It does only a few things (calls, texts, alarms) and has zero apps - no email, no social media, no music or video streaming, nothing.
Here's how Light got its inspiration for the Light Phone, and what the company's latest "dumb phone" can do.