Light Phone III Review: The Anti-Smartphone

The bottom grille is the stereo speaker, and the audio is surprisingly good—it can get decently loud! I had to relearn how to download music again, but once I did, I uploaded a few albums, like GNX, through the Light Phone’s web dashboard on my PC. (The phone has 128 GB of internal storage.) Unfortunately, there’s no headphone jack, but you can use Bluetooth to pair wireless earbuds. It paired swiftly with my car’s Bluetooth so I could pump out tunes or podcasts on rides. Speaking of, it’s easy to add specific podcasts through the online dashboard, and you can force the Podcasts tool to sync on the device to get new episodes.

Microphone quality is also rock solid. I took multiple calls, and no one found my voice quality lacking. Even in the Notes app, you can either write notes or record voice memos, and my voice sounds clear, though I primarily recorded myself in relatively quiet environments.

The 1,800-mAh battery easily lasts around two days. If you play music or podcasts for several hours, that will drop down considerably. It charges via USB-C. Four screws on the back allow for easier battery replacements, though this does mean you only get an IP54 water resistance rating; fine in the rain, but don’t drop it in water.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

You’ll probably use the Phone tool the most. Adding contacts was a quick affair on the dashboard via Google Contacts (you can upload a .VCF), and texting is so much nicer on this handset over its predecessor, thanks to the wider design—though there’s voice-to-text if you still find it cramped. You can even attach images you’ve captured from the Light Phone III to convos.

The Directions tool is surprisingly helpful. It’s powered by Here, and I successfully got Google Maps-style driving and walking directions. However, I have noticed that the built-in GPS is a little slow to find its position, especially indoors. There’s a public transit option, though this is more akin to printing a set of directions from MapQuest.

I quite like the Directory. If you want to find a nearby coffee shop or look up the hours of a museum, type it in and you’ll get a collection of details like hours of operation, contact information, and even a star rating (sometimes). You get quick options to navigate there via the monochrome map or to place a call.

Over on the back is a 50-megapixel camera paired with an 8-megapixel selfie camera. The results were better than expected, but that might be because I had low expectations. A smartphone of comparable value will easily trounce the photo quality of the Light Phone III, but I found myself enjoying the lo-fi look of these images. In low-light settings, you’ll have to adjust the exposure compensation to get anything usable. Even then, it’ll look super grainy, but that’s in vogue, right? Right now, you have to hook up the Light Phone III to a computer and enable Media Transfer on the handset to transfer photos, but eventually, they’ll sync to the web dashboard.