Like untold tens of millions of smartphone customers, I’ve a little bit of an issue. I’ve been attempting, with middling success, to be extra aware about how I exploit my cellphone. I’ll typically uninstall varied social media apps (however reinstall them later), and I’ve disconnected all my work instruments except 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 Time stats put every day utilization round two to a few hours. That’s lower than I’ve seen lots of people publish on social media, however it’s nonetheless vital.
I’ve been intrigued by the Mild Cellphone III since I first noticed some previews for it final 12 months. Because the title suggests, it’s the third cellphone by Brooklyn-based startup Mild, and the ethos stays the identical. It has no "infinite scroll” apps like e mail, social media, an internet browser or most every part else that defines a contemporary smartphone. It’s designed for fast interactions so you may decide it up, reply to a name or message, perhaps get instructions or placed on a tune after which get again to life. Nonetheless, there are a variety of enhancements in comparison with prior Mild Telephones that made it really feel much more viable to me. Particularly, there’s a digicam, the display is OLED as a substitute of E Ink and the broader, extra responsive show is best suited to textual content enter. It additionally seems 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 Mild Cellphone III since late March, and my plan was to completely decide to it — however the practicality of doing so was surprisingly tough. Primarily based on my expertise, it’s going to be a troublesome promote for lots of people who use a smartphone for fundamentals or issues solely particular apps can ship. The Mild Cellphone III isn’t fairly able to be most individuals’s solely system, however I want it could possibly be.
The Mild philosophy
Generally, the Mild Cellphone III jogs my memory somewhat 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 e mail consumer and an internet browser, however that system was not practically the attention-hog that fashionable smartphones are. In the identical approach, Mild picked particular instruments that it feels most individuals will want whereas holding every part as easy and bare-bones as doable. The thought is that as a substitute of a tool crammed with apps consistently notifying you and attempting to seize your consideration, the Mild Cellphone is targeted on intentional use so that you aren’t consistently choosing up your cellphone.
That exhibits up in a wide range of methods, from the essential block kind issue to the truth that LightOS (primarily based on Android, however you’d by no means understand it) is actually white textual content on a black background. The one time you see shade is in case you open the digicam or have a look at pictures. However crucial factor is the extraordinarily fundamental set of instruments you may set up on the system. Right here’s a full listing along with the settings and cellphone / 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’d like, you may actually simply have the cellphone app, which additionally consists of your contacts listing and textual content messages. In 2025, that’s wildly sparse. And you may see by the above listing that none of those are stuff you’re going to lose numerous time utilizing. The austere strategy doesn’t simply apply to the restricted set of instruments, both — it exhibits up in how each is designed. For instance, the Alarm software doesn’t have a nap button. In case you’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 system is like, let’s run by way of its minimalist {hardware}. The Mild Cellphone III is a chunky rectangle of a cellphone 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 Mild 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 cellphone look quite a bit bigger in pictures than it’s in actuality, as a result of we’re used to assuming a cellphone features a 6-ish inch show. That’s not the case right here.
The entrance is dominated by the display, however I haven’t used a cellphone 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 stuffed 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 p.c is the place the user-replaceable battery lives.
One other factor that makes the Mild Cellphone stand out is its plethora of buttons, which is a rarity within the fashionable 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 appropriate aspect 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’ll push it midway right 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 may flip to regulate display brightness. I’ve by no means felt like I wanted my cellphone’s flashlight sufficient for it to have a devoted button, and of all of the buttons that is the one I by chance activated probably the most. However, the dial for display brightness is fairly useful.
The Mild 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 cellphone is rounded out with the same old array of sensors: GPS, Bluetooth 5.0 and NFC. And, after all, there’s a USB-C port on the backside for charging and restricted connectivity with a pc.
For the reason that Mild Cellphone’s battery is detachable, it’s not practically as giant as those you’ll discover in most fashionable smartphones. You’ll naturally be doing quite a bit much less with this cellphone, although, so it’s not an enormous drawback. I simply acquired a number of days of use from the Mild Cellphone except I used to be utilizing navigation quite a bit. That drained the battery fairly shortly, so in case you intend on utilizing it to your GPS on an extended automotive journey, be sure to have a charging port for it whilst you drive.
Going Mild
Establishing a Mild Cellphone III includes going to a web based dashboard the place you’ll activate your cellphone. As soon as that’s executed, that is additionally the place you may configure varied instruments and do issues like add music and podcasts. There are minimal settings to fiddle with on the cellphone itself — you may regulate quantity for varied notifications just like the cellphone ringer, alarms or media, or flip the hotspot on or off. There are the same old choices for managing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections or updating the software program, however it’s a far slimmer menu than you’ll discover on an iPhone or Android system.
From the dashboard, I added all the Mild Cellphone’s obtainable instruments and dug into the method of shifting contacts and music over. I hoped that the cellphone would simply present up as a USB system 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 Mild Cellphone requires utilizing the dashboard; it exhibits each software you’ve gotten put in and clicking on them enables you to add songs or import contacts.
This was the place I hit my first main friction level. I like music and am a bit obsessive over it, so with the ability to play songs on the go is totally essential to me. I nonetheless purchase music on Bandcamp typically 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 Mild Cellphone. Certain, it wouldn’t be the identical as gaining access to the tens of millions of songs on Apple Music or Spotify, however I used to be okay with a little bit of a philosophical swap. In spite of everything, what number of songs do you actually need at a time?
Seems the large situation isn’t having fewer songs — it’s how minimal each the music participant and tune uploader are. On the dashboard, you may 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 Mild Cellphone’s music participant would have an iPod kind of interface so you possibly can use tags to dig into artists and albums, however no such luck. You may seek for a tune, and in case you faucet it to play it’ll play every part 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 cellphone in any semblance of order. So even when your information 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 Mild Cellphone creators advised me that this software program is a holdover from the Mild Cellphone II, which might solely maintain 1GB of music, like an outdated iPod Shuffle. It wasn’t actually meant for shopping a big library, however as a substitute was simply meant to offer you a fast choice 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 information through USB-C. That will go a great distance in the 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 Mild 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 executed. Opening it up merely exhibits two fields to enter the place you’re and the place you’re going (it may additionally pull your present location through GPS). There’s additionally a selector for whether or not you’re driving, strolling or utilizing public transportation. Whereas the latter two choices principally simply return an inventory of instructions, driving offers you a correct map view and navigation alerts. After I used it whereas driving round, the map view was largely clear and the instructions had been correct sufficient to get me to my vacation spot. It’s all powered by Right here location companies, which have been round for ages and appear fairly good in my nook of the US.
Mild pairs the Instructions software with a Listing that’s its one concession to the search-powered world we reside in. You may seek for common phrases (espresso) or specifics (Starbucks) and get an expansion of outcomes. Tapping on them exhibits some fundamental information just like the handle, hours, cellphone quantity and a fundamental description, and you’ll 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 providing you with real-time updates on public transit. I depend on real-time information for metropolis buses, which makes the straightforward transit choices on the Mild Cellphone a bit exhausting to regulate to.
This ethos unsurprisingly permeates each software on the cellphone. As I discussed earlier, the Alarm has no snooze button, however you may set a number of alarms. You may sync your Google calendar to the cellphone. However when you’ve got just a few calendars in your account (work, household, and many others.), you may solely see the default one. There’s a fundamental Notes app, however you may’t do issues like connect pictures 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 Mild Cellphone — limitations are a part of the equation entering into.
There are two essential options I haven’t gotten to but: the digicam and the cellphone. That is the primary Mild Cellphone with a digicam; there’s a 50-megapixel one on the again (pictures 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 pictures are wildly totally different from the closely processed outcomes you’ll get from most fashionable smartphones. In good gentle, the Mild Cellphone’s pictures look respectable sufficient however clearly lack the advantageous element we’re used to as of late. It’s the form of digicam that you need to use in a pinch, however you’ll discover it missing in case you’re in any respect critical 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. Mild included a devoted digicam button, making it exceedingly easy to shortly shoot a picture. However, after getting your scene framed up and press the shutter button, it takes between one and three seconds for the digicam to truly take the picture. That’s an eternity and it makes the digicam unattainable to make use of for something the place motion is concerned. I’m glad the Mild Cellphone III has a digicam. Nevertheless it brings me again to a time when cellphone cameras had been helpful however crammed with compromises. I might reside with the aesthetics of the photographs if the digicam was extra responsive, however the lag simply kills it. If I used the Mild Cellphone full time, I’d most likely use my correct digicam far more typically — which could be a very good factor! However I’d positively miss the comfort of taking high quality pictures in a pinch from my cellphone.
Utilizing the Mild Cellphone as a cellphone
Some 15 or 20 years in the past, cell telephones had been largely meant for speaking and texting, keep in mind? The Mild Cellphone III is a superb system for cellphone calls, and a mediocre one for texting. In my testing, calls had been clear and simple 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 cellphone a lot in public, individuals!). The contacts part of the app is, after all, minimal: simply names and cellphone numbers. As such, this can not substitute an handle guide or fashionable contact listing. For most individuals I care about, I must retailer a minimum of a cellphone quantity, handle and e mail. There’s after all no want for an e mail handle on the Mild Cellphone, however an handle discipline can be nice so you may shortly pull up instructions to a good friend’s home.
If the Mild Cellphone’s music participant was a letdown, attempting to textual content was the deadly flaw that killed my dream of utilizing this system full time. In comparison with the Mild Cellphone II, this new mannequin is considerably simpler to textual content with. The extra responsive and wider OLED display means the keyboard is analogous in measurement to those you’ll discover on an iPhone or Android system. The messaging app additionally does some sensible issues, like routinely sending hyperlinks and pictures individuals share to your e mail handle so you may have interaction with them in your pc.
However there’s no autocorrect. And in case you haven’t tried to textual content on a cellphone with out autocorrect these days, let me let you know — 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 the vast majority 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 simple to misfire, necessitating irritating edits to make things better. There’s a spell-check characteristic in-built, so phrases that I biffed had been a minimum of underlined. An extended press on them gave me just a few choices to appropriate issues, however the time it took me to compose and ship messages was considerably longer than on a contemporary system. The keyboard format itself is okay and took little time to regulate to, however I by no means felt comfy as a result of I used to be at all times making and fixing errors.
The opposite half of this situation 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 appearance of smartphones and I’ve buddies 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 cellphone’s built-in messaging system, we’ve ongoing conversations that go together with us in all places.
The Mild Cellphone is a return in the direction of utilizing messaging for fast check-ins and updates, maybe as precursors to an precise cellphone (or in-person!) dialog. However belief me after I say that maintaining with a gaggle dialog shall be an train in frustration with the Mild Cellphone. I can reside with the minimalist interface, restricted emoji choice and lack of ability to ship something in addition to plain textual content and pictures if I might sort sooner — however I can’t. You’ll must basically re-think your relationship with how you employ messaging on a cellphone.
Which is form of the purpose of this entire 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 a way radically totally different the Mild Cellphone III expertise is. There have been a number of sensible issues that stored me from totally shopping for in. I would like two-factor authentication apps for lots of companies I exploit. If I wished to go to a live performance, I’d want a smartphone for tickets. I don’t take care of checks typically, however I can’t keep in mind the final time I deposited one at a financial institution as a substitute of on my cellphone. I’m happening trip quickly and wish to have the ability to take good pictures with out dragging my digicam round.
I might work out the required work-arounds for nearly all of this stuff. Possibly the up to date music participant Mild is engaged on can be sufficient for me when it comes out. I’d most likely get used to the keyboard finally, to some extent. I might use my “actual” digicam extra, most likely main to raised and extra considerate pictures. I might get a piece cellphone by way of our father or mother firm to make use of for authentication.
The purpose is that whereas there are methods round this stuff, implementing them includes 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 Mild Cellphone for day-to-day life. And since I wasn’t capable of totally give myself over to the Mild life-style, I didn’t actually get to expertise its advantages in a serious approach.
However, for just a few weeks, I left my iPhone at dwelling after I left the home as a lot as doable and there was one thing liberating in regards to the full lack of notifications and common siren-call for consideration that I normally take care of. It’s one thing that has caught with me at the same time as I shifted again to my iPhone for every day use. I won’t be prepared to completely break my dependancy to my smartphone, however as they are saying, step one is admitting you’ve gotten 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