I’m a big fan of Becca Farsace’s YouTube channel. She’s a natural at vlogging and I miss her content when she was at the Verge. Today she posted about her two weeks with the Light Phone III and it echoes the review from Wired that I read previously. It all boils down to the gamble being: will you have a stable software experience with this (temporarily priced?) $600 phone and the answer seems to be no out of the box, in particular SMS issues (can send but not receive, quirkiness with group chats) and camera responsiveness.

I love the industrial design of the device (not sure how it feels in hand), with its Dieter Rahms-esque black box with a speaker grill. Also the photo quality (akin to mid-2015s aesthetic) drives a little bit of nostalgia while preserving perfectly serviceable shots.

The texting thing will be more difficult for the Light Phone crew to solve. Some of it could be carrier related, but in a world where your number is registered to iMessage or Google’s RCS service, things can sometimes linger even if you de-register the mobile from your previous service creating the “send but can’t receive” scenario.

I suspect I would enjoy the device, but no WhatsApp is a deal breaker (supposedly they are working on it), as this is the primary way I communicate with my parents abroad.

For the time being, I will stick with my minimized iPhone 13 mini and keep it stock/barebones with only essential apps and no social media.