Light Phone III: a repairable anti-smartphone with no apps or feeds — ships March 2025

Light, the New York company founded in 2014 by Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang, shipped the Light Phone III on March 27, 2025 — its first serious attempt to make the 'digital detox' phone a complete replacement for a smartphone. The phone keeps the founding refusal to carry an app store, web browser, social feeds or even color icons, but pairs it with hardware that finally feels finished: a 3.92-inch 1080x1240 AMOLED under matte glass, 5G, a 50MP rear camera with a two-stage shutter button, an 8MP front camera, and a user-replaceable battery.

The pivot came from customer feedback. CEO Kaiwei Tang told The Verge the slow, blocky E Ink screen was the number one reason people abandoned the Light Phone; co-founder Joe Hollier called the goal 'intentionality,' a phone that feels like a tool rather than a distraction. The AMOLED is deliberately less glossy and reflective, the UI stays nearly all black and white — color appears jarringly only in the camera — and the phone offers only Tools such as phone, text, directions, podcasts, music, notes, calendar and hotspot, managed from a web dashboard.

Repairability is central: the battery door opens easily and screen and USB port can be replaced, so the phone lasts instead of feeding the upgrade cycle. Tang stressed there is no business model to maximize engagement, and Light avoids Google's servers for privacy. The Verge called it 'a much better, more powerful, still extremely minimalist smartphone' and said its reviewer used it less than any phone tested, while noting NFC, fingerprint and video chat were inactive at launch; Wallpaper* and TechCrunch echoed the praise and the caveats.

Priced at $599 for a limited time and $799 afterwards — up from the $299 E Ink Light Phone II — the III launched with March-shipping preorders sold out and new orders queued for June. The Verge observed that the phone had also caught on with schools and families looking for a low-distraction device for teenagers, and that Light's track record of improving its phones in software suggested the missing features would arrive over time.