13 months of enlightenment by Light Phone II
A life experience with Light Phone II
Light Phone II is my primary phone of these days.
Light Phone II has replaced my old Motorola Defy cellular phone more than year ago. The Motorola has been my primary phone in service since ‘11. One has never been software upgraded (manufacturer issue), and works only under the 2G network. The phone has obsolete Android version. Much applications no run anymore. No new applications can be installed for a many years. And, finally, only calls and text messages has worked for me. I considered that as a benefit. The phone has been obsoleted on software way, especially due Android policy. The hardware has working absolutely perfectly. The only issue was very fast battery draining: one should be restarted frequently. Perhaps one has been hacked as both battery and data volume indicated.
Being frustrated by my older phone, and by common usage of the device, I bought Punkt. phone. It has a classical “calculator” look and stay live for many weeks. The use of buttons is step-back from smart phones, but other function was worked appropriately. Unfortunately, the phone died after half of year of use on a battery issue; buttons has been partly over lifetime.
Indiegogo project of Light Phone II has been another choice; having good experience with Indiegogo, I becomes backer.
Light phone in action
The e-ink display
The e-ink of display has been a great choice. I’d worry about use of such technology for the phone display before, but it works very well.
I’m an old man so I’ve a tired eyes, I prefer the reflected over emitted light. If I can compare the display to my e-book reader, LPII has significantly better view on both direct Sun and in darkness. The scatter in the display layers is negligible.
The display can have activated an inner light. One can be switch-on permanently or by a low ambient light sensor. It is unconformable for me, so I have the internal light switched-off, and using my pocket battery.
The e-ink display is very smooth. A serif font can be easy used, but the Light phone peoples use a default Android sans-serif fonts in the light, or condensed, variant, perhaps, another plague of computer industry.
The battery life
The phone stay life for 2 – 5 days. I observe, it depends mainly on the LTE signal strength, and also if I’m moving, no matter by walking, by bicycle, or by car. The five, or more, days of life are reached only when the phone is placed on my desk with direct view on a local transmitter. One can be prolonged by regularly switching the air-plane mode.
The battery live also depends on a current software version.
There is an issue: if the phone has lost a signal, the battery drying is significantly faster, notwithstanding if the signal is restored. A restart is only the cure.
The short battery life is my disappointment with LPII. I expected period for charging on week scales. Light phone people says that is due energy consumption of a communication chip engine, and maybe of high energy requirement of LTE protocol at all.
I’m trying to keep battery health as long as possible. I charging up to 90% and discharging down to 20%.
The chassis
The device is made solid. Just only the SIM card tray looks weak. Another weakness is a fragile plastic casing.
It is durable, but not so much as I need for my hands. My phone fallen me on a pavement more times. Corners are a little bit injured, the display has no damage. The offered LPII case can protect the phone against such incidents, but it’s just another futility.
VAT
The price is relative high. On the other side, I’m gladly supported the dream of Light phone peoples. My shorter and shorter live is being happier.
The very unpleasant surprise was additional VAT. In CZ, every US (transatlantic) imported product having price over $100 has additional 20% VAT; no exception. Our government know what one does, certainly.
The Privacy
The phone saved my privacy. No recommendation of stupid offers, or peoples I met, on g-mail or FBi. It looks, the advertising companies lost my track.
Even, the cookies purge on every day basis, regular work in porn-mode of browsers, and use of the duck search does also the great service.
Final words
LPII is my best phone ever. I have much more plentiful live without annoying continual notification and tamagotchi nursing.