Additional thoughts on the light phone

My biggest fear going into the transition was, without a doubt, was the havoc I would wreak on the majestic blue bubble iMessage group chats that dominated my social life.

Switching to the LP2 meant giving up iMessages for the caveman technology called SMS which stands for Shitty Messaging System.

I was genuinely afraid to be that guy – to be the person destroying all of the text messages of all the group chats that had somehow let me in.

Now, if it was just for me, that’d be okay who cares, but no I was taking down each group chat with me. As soon as I go green, everything in the chain goes green. Like a salad with no dressing, this was hard to stomach.

And ultimately, that was a big part of what made me decide to keep rocking the iPhone as, like, an iMessage backup, which is pretty common in the Light Phone community

Important caveat: I kept my Iphone and the associated iMessage account it has. Now, I can use iMessage via my email address. This lets me still partake in the blue bubble bliss that is iMessage with my friends – I just do it from my macbook or my wifi connected iPhone. Turning this off entirely would be too much for me.

For example: working out. I have a workout plan that’s on google sheets, so I’m usually tracking my stuff and I’m listening to music but really I’m just texting and looking at Substack and being a classic dumbo. With the light phone, I could do none of this.

Instead I printed out my workout on a clipboard to which I also clipped a number of loose white paper that I used to jot down the notes and ideas that popped into my mind. I also feel like one of those psychos who walks around the gym writing stuff down in his clipboard which, I tell myself often, has to make me look cool. It has to.

Losing the iPhone was a great way to learn about all the habits I’d developed to multitask and try doing way too many things at once. Case in point: my weekly men’s group Zoom call. Halfway through, I have to jump off video and get onto the audio call on my phone so I can go pick up Wilder while continuing to listen. The transition is so easy – just jump on zoom on my phone, throw in my headphones, bam I’m good.

Not so with the LP2. I shit you not it took me a solid 20 minutes to properly dial into the zoom meeting via phone. Dialing the number itself was weirdly hard, but nothing prepared me for the riddle’s three of trying to put in the meeting ID number and the password and also just hit pound at some point because I wasn’t the host I don’t know it was infuriating. But like, that’s mostly on me. I should plan my shit better and try to make my schedule such that these things aren’t happening because really I shouldn’t be trying to pick up Wilder while also on a men’s group call in the first place.

Dialing into zoom calls like a caveman: 1/10

Helping you realize you’re doing way too much because you think you can even though you really can’t: 10/10

I rarely bring my wallet places because if I do, I’ll lose it. Instead I use Apple Pay which I must say is convenient as heck and also a great way to buy shit I don’t need! It’s not even money, my brain says, there’s no credit card or nothin’ just a double tap and bam, I tricked these idiots into thinking I have money on my phone.

But then I get the credit card bill and I go whoa wait it WAS real money.

But the LP2 can’t do anything that comes even close to paying for anything, which has meant I’ll find myself often in situations where I do not have a means to purchase things. Like at the grocery store or coffee shop or Target or really most other places.

One the one hand, this sucks, but on the other maybe bigger hand, I save a lot more money! And that’s before you even get into the fact that you can switch to a way less intense phone plan and pay less monthly too (LP also has its own service plan which costs like $30/month or something).

Paying for stuff – 0/10

Saving money – 10/10

Podcasts are easy – you just subscribe to the feed via the PL2 dashboard on your computer and bam, the latest eps for each ‘cast are sent to the phone.

Music is trickier – basically you can upload mp3 and wav files and that’s about it, meaning you will have to download stuff off YT or elsewhere. I have no qualms about this none at all, but that’s because I’m a bad boy rebel without a cause or effect, ya feel me?

It’s got bluetooth so I could connect my airpods but it wouldn’t connect automatically and so I stopped trying. Moving forward I’ll buy some headphones for it that plug in like they used to back in the 290s.