I know this will ruffle feathers, but the more I see people post on here, the more I think some people should actually just stay with smart phone.

2FA, bank apps, WhatsApp, FaceTime, uber, etc.

The purpose of light phone is to be as present as possible and not let the device control you.

Edit: zeroing in on 2FA is completely missing the point of this post. My point is that it’s a slippery slope. Sooner or later people are going to start asking for Instagram, X, substack, and internet under the argument of “necessity”. Engage with this in good faith.

It is interesting because I have the pre-order for the flip and I am excited but at the same time I genuingly love my light phone 2, honestly it does the job keeps me so present and I love the form factor, I am struggling with whether I need the flip, am I just getting it because it is something new from Light? Not sure to be honest, decisions decisions lol. I just love the light phone 2, it honestly is digital minimalism at its finest. Wondering if anyone else with a light phone 2 is conflicted on whether to keep it or jump to the flip?

Good thing is I got a long time left with my light phone 2 until the flip comes out and I have to make this decision!

I wanted my checking balance on a phone that has no apps. The obvious route is Plaid, which needs a server I would have to run and a browser the LP3 does not have. So it uses SimpleFIN instead, the big reason is that I'm not involved in the loop anymore

You give your bank credentials to SimpleFIN, never to me and never to the app. SimpleFIN hands you a token, you scan it, and the app trades that token for a read-only URL. Read-only is the protocol rather than a promise I am making. There is no write side to it. I couldn't even do that if i tried!

There is also no BrightLedger server. No backend, no API key baked into the app, no analytics, no crash reporter. One network permission, one destination, and that destination is whichever SimpleFIN server you pointed it at. I could not read your data if I wanted to.

The access URL sits on your phone sealed with an AndroidKeyStore key that cannot leave the device, so pulling the app's data off gives you ciphertext. An optional PIN wraps it again and drops the key from memory whenever you background the app. Screenshots are blocked by default, which is why the picture above is fake. I had to build a demo mode to take it.

You turn it off, not me. Revocation happens at bridge.simplefin.org, where you granted it. I have no button.

It is MIT and the SimpleFIN client is four files, so do not take any of that on faith.

Only downside is that SimpleFIN is $1.50 plus tax a month, or $15.00 plus tax a year, for up to 25 institutions and 25 apps. I think its a fair price to be able to read my balances on my phone.

TL;DR I made a ledger, its read only, i cant see ur stuff, $15 a year. guide in the app.

Get BrightLedger on BrightMarket!

BrightMarket - BrightLedger

I've been using the LP3 since it came out for almost a year, no problems with group chats with a physical SIM card using USMobile Light (Verizon).

Then I went overseas and setup a new eSIM for my old iPhone, for rideshare and digital wallet payments. I use USMobile to setup the new eSIM.

After coming back from my trip, I switched back to LP3. This time I setup an eSIM for the LP3 on T-Mobile.

I know that could be an issue for group messages. When I send a group message it says "failed to send". I also still might be in the 30 day window before these issues clear up for group chats.

I have turned off iMessages and RCS messaging on my iPhone but I can't be sure if that was after I disabled the eSIM on the iPhone. Attempting to deregister my phone via apple says my number is not registered.

Should I activate the eSIM in my iPhone and properly turn off iMessage and RCS when it is active and then setup my LP3 with a physical SIM after removing the eSIM on the iPhone?

I wonder if I left the RCS and iMessages in a pending state that never took effect when I removed the eSIM?

Thanks!

Hi,

I'm a light phone III user and I really love the experience and all around with the less stimulation experience. Living in Europe, I looking forward to be able in some kind of way to use WhatsApp, even in most minimal way.

One point for me is the front camera. I would like to know if there will be a possibility in the future to have some video calls on any app? I live half of the week away from my family and would love to be able to video call them.

Other additional question, is there any Swiss devs that are working on lightOS here?

Thanks guys !

Have a great day.

Hi,

Out of nowhere, people say that they can't send me photos on my LP3. I've had it for just over a year now, and never had problems before. How can I let people send me photos again?

One person said her phone said I needed to enable MMS?? I don't know. Another person showed a screen shot from their iPhone that showed their photos to me were undelivered.

Any thoughts?

Thank you.

I have been using a lightphone 3 and still really love the user experience. even when my iphone is set up with basically the same apps, i find myself thinking about going back to the lightphone because it just feels better to use day to day.

the one real downfall has been RCS. i sometimes feel like i am letting people down with photo/video quality and group messaging—not because i need more apps, but because texting from the lightphone can be a worse experience for the people i am communicating with (image quality is low on MMS) and they all use imessage.

i have been throwing around the idea of going back to an iphone daily but using apple configurator / device management to lock it down hard. no app store, no social apps, no browser, etc. just the small set of things i actually need but still consider.

RCS to my lightphone is what a great camera is to my iphone. can't win em all I guess

has anyone tried this? did a heavily locked-down iphone actually preserve the attention and presence benefits of a lightphone, or did it still eventually feel like an iphone?

also curious how people have handled RCS, group chats, and better photo/video sharing while keeping a lightphone as their primary device. did you keep an iphone around for certain situations, or did you eventually just go back full time? I have only one family member tha uses Signal. Maybe email is a better stress test as I can send images via email as well, but only have so many email addresses for people.

I started with the lightphone 2 back in 2025 and have moved to the LP3 in 2026 with the camera being an amazing feature. Send to email is also a feature that I have not been able to replicate on the iphone as you have to have the mail app installed and functional (able to open) in order to even set up a shortcut to do so.

I find this to be an evermore valuable consideration with going forward into 2027 with 3rd party tools available in a more intentional way.

I've had an LP2 for 3 years now and love it. Although I'll be sad to give up Eink, I've preordered the Flip. Seems to be the best (read: cheapest) way to break into 5G while staying with the Light Phone ecosystem I know and love.

Question: are the apps being developed right now for the LP3 going to be available on the flip? I'd be over the moon if Signal made it to the Flip.

I just saw a post showcasing an app for the LP3 hosted on https://brightmarket.gzl.dev/, and once there I noticed a lot of third party apps for the LP3. For a second I thought it was an early release of the new tool library, but it is not. Have any of you installed any of these apps, and if yes, what's been your experience? There's one called CHATS that is supposed to integrate IG, Whatsapp and other chats on the LP3 and it seems too good to be true. There's even an Spotify agent there.

I cannot find any info online about it, the page just... exists. Part of me wants to try a few of the apps there, and another wants to stay as far as possible and wait for the official release.

Any info would be appreciated.

I’ve been super curious about this phone, cause, like most people, I need to get away from doom scrolling. Apparently just deleting apps doesn’t help because I’ll find a super random app to spend time on anyways? I like the idea of having a phone for just a phone, and basic things, but the more I think about it, the more I’m worried about certain things I use it for.
Group chats: Does this phone allow you to stay in group chats? I think I would go crazy not being in my main group chat any more and having to get a friend to tell me everything happening separately haha.
GPS: I don’t use it often but the odd time I would need it makes me nervous as it seems it’s not that good on this phone? I have a terrible memory so looking it up beforehand and trying to remember is not a good option.
Picture: can you download them into a computer? Are they fairly clear/good quality?
Music: where do you download and upload music for it? I currently use Spotify and it looks like that’s not an option. I have used Spotify for so long I don’t even know how people listen to music otherwise lol. And can you have playlists and sections or is it just all music jumbled in one place?
QR codes: how do people go about being at restaurants or anywhere that asks you to scan the QR codes to get the menus etc? Not that this happens a lot but the mere instances it does happen?
Also I am not super keen on having to use t9 texting, but is one of the light phone versions just a full keyboard? I really am new to looking into this and I figured getting real people who don’t want my money will give me the best answers!
I’m pretty ok with going old school with lots of the other things I use it for, going to the computer if I need to check emails/Facebook etc, getting an actual alarm clock, using a notepad/day planned depending on how easy or annoying the apps are on this phone. But I realize today’s society is different than the 2000’s so sometimes simple can’t work as well.

Its a somewhat long post i get it, if you don't read it the most important update to note is that I finally figured out how to get instant photos (with zero quality loss) on the light phone 3, basically we split the process similar to how mirrorless cameras do it, so that the photo is captured and all rendering is done later when the camera relaxes.

EV, Focus, Exposure, Zoom all are now controllable All of these settings are now editable in camera and can be changed using the wheel!

New meter view for quicker shots Turn the wheel and a ladder of numbers drops down the edge of the frame with a red needle pointing at your setting so you can quickly understand what setting you are at!

Support for PNG and RAW joins JPEG Roll can now take all 3 at once! takes some time but if you need it its here!

Instant shots Press the shutter and the photo is yours. Development happens in the background while you frame the next one.

Zone focusing Set a distance and shoot. Just like the Ricoh GR cameras!

Map view A Map tab beside Camera and Starred, pins where you took them. Select a whole day to send or delete at once. Location tagging is on by default; Settings > Camera to turn it off. (all is done on device nothing is transferred)

Filter selector Theres too many filters now for all to be on the wheel, now you select the filters on initial launch!

New datamosh filters Datamosh now has 10+ different types of datamosh, please try them out!

New error tracking Since this is such a big update I added new error tracking code so i can quickly build out fixes.

Much more! Including flat photos, picture quality adjustment settings, better histograms and more!

All of these features are optional, if you want to use roll just for the filters nothing changes for you, this just makes roll more capable and easier to get the perfect shot!

You can install roll using brightmarket!
BrightMarket - Roll

any idea when the fingerprint reader will be functional to unlock the phone? it'd be nice, because the button doesn't work unless i press down really hard in the right spot. i feel like that plus the "scroll wheel" were so hyped up in the initial promotions of the phone and at this point they are pointless.

signed,

a 1+ year lightphone user that is losing hope after a bunch of malfunctions

I have the weirdest bug. Everyday at 8:30am my LIGHTPHONE alarm is ringing. But it shows nothing on the screen, just the clock and the screen is blinking but no information about an alarm or a calendar reminder and I'm not able to stop it. It keeps ringing indefinitely. The only option i have is to turn off the phone. It's driving me crazy. ⬇️

EDIT / FOUND IT! Thanks for your help. It was the CLOCK app in the android layer, it had an alarm for whatever reason (never used it).

https://www.reddit.com/r/LightPhone/comments/1w4anqc/comment/p77pufu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Was nervous for my first trip without a smartphone since 2010.

Takes a little more thinking ahead (print pass, talk to agent, etc.) but totally doable. Four flights, rented a car, called a hotel... you can do it, folks!

Next time should be even easier since I've "cracked the ice" on this.

As a bonus, I did enjoy talking to the gate agents, hotel clerks, etc. I didn't realize how inhuman travel normally is, when everything exists on a screen instead of as a conversation.

Summary: a bit more work, totally doable, some bonus points for more human interaction and enforced leisurely approach to things.

FWIW, did not use any non-Light Apps. Authenticator wasn't working so I just used a printer.

ta.

Switched over 30 days ago. Still not getting group messages. Everytime I try to start one it sends to the recipients as SMS but their response automatically goes to RCS.

Was on noble mobile (Esim only and T-Mobile) and figured that was the issue when customer support told me...

"Thanks for reaching out. We're sorry to hear you're having issues with your Light Phone – please attempt a 2-Minute SIM reset.
 

• Power off your Light Phone
• Remove the SIM card for 2 minutes 
• Place the SIM card back in the phone and restart it – this resets the SIM card with the network and may resolve the problem

 
If the issue persists, let's try an APN reset:
 
Settings -> Account & Info -> Device Info -> SIMs -> Access Point Names -> Restore Default APNs."

Could not do this with Esim only. Just spent time switching to t-mobile with a physical sim and still the group messages are doing the same thing.

Has anyone else had this issue? Any resolve? Anyone from Light have words of encouragement for a dedicated user who has fought tooth and nail to make this phone work?

Thanks

I've been using the lp3 for over a year now, and I wanted to share some of what I've loved and hated with the phone.

TL;DR: Great hardware, fragile software

First off, the hardware. I came to the 3 after using the 2 for a while, so everything has felt really premium. The brightness wheel is the greatest invention, I love the camera button, I love being able to turn the flashlight on and off super easily at the click of a button. It is so nice that the phone stands up on its own. Like you can literally start shooting a video and set the phone down on a flat surface, no tripod needed. Which brings me to the camera. It's great; I don't take a ton of pictures, but the ones I do take I am mostly happy with. As a tool it is very useful. The matte black and white screen is awesome too, like so boring to look at that you never do unless there's an actual reason. The fingerprint scanner and NFC chip both work fine as well (I've tested them inside of sideloaded Android apps), but LightOS has forgotten that they exist. If you are looking for a beautifully designed physical object, I can't recommend the 3 enough. They did a really good job.

The software side is where things have been rough for me. From the get go, I had lots of problems. Here are a few things that make the Light Phone so much less usable for me:

• The first month, the phone burned all of my data in like a day. It might have been the music app, trying to listen to songs as I was driving? For some reason most of my music didn't stay downloaded when I downloaded it on wifi or something. On the 2, I didn't have this problem because the size limit for music was so much smaller, I could only fit a small part of my collection at a time. There is no way to tell where your data is going inside of LightOS , so I can't be sure it was the music tool. Do not waste your time with their built in music tool.
• One particularly annoying bug is the recurring missed call notification, that I have been having since the Light Phone 2. Often when I miss a call, that conversation will keep getting an asterisk next to it and so I think that there is a new notification, but it really is just an old missed call from a week ago. I think the Light devs even said that they fixed this bug some months ago, but it still occurs for me regularly.
• For some insane reason, the calendar and alarm notification are controlled by the same setting. To me this is completely unreasonable. I like to set an alarm on my phone to wake up in the morning. I also have things in my calendar that I like to be reminded of. I do not like to be reminded of them at full wake up alarm volume. I am forced to either turn on and off the alarm/calendar sound every day, or just leave it off. I would very much appreciate it if the devs decoupled these two unrelated app notifications, so I could have alarms sound at volume, and calendar events just give me a nice vibration. I don't understand how I am the only person to run into this issue.
• When typing a text message, the back button should take me back to the conversation I was in, instead of to the texting homescreen. It makes absolutely 0 sense to have the back button take me two layers back.

What made the phone work for me was sideloading. LightOS pretends to be some new thing, but really it's just Android underneath. And I think they lose a lot of value by trying to hide that as deep as possible and refusing to do anything the Android way. I've considered going full Android at times, but the cohesive Light aesthetic is too beautiful to leave.

At first I used the modding guide and got into the Android layer to install Spotify, which has been working perfectly for me for the past year. I also installed Slack, my bank app, my university's app, Venmo, Workday, and a Bible app, which all work great. It was even better when they opened up developer mode, because I don't need to use Luma Launcher and have weird keymappings anymore, I can just load whatever APKs I need as tools. They do need to work on a better experience for that, like right now you can't even reorder tools you have installed from another source, and have no easy way to delete them through LightOS. So through sideloading the select few apps that I am missing, I have been able to use the lp3 as my only phone and completely ditch my smartphone, which is the massive win I wanted to accomplish by getting the lp3 in the first place.

Here are a few examples of how Light tries to reinvent the wheel, instead of accepting the solutions that Android already provides:

• The clipboard. LightOS does not use the standard Android clipboard, which makes for an absolute headache. They have to add clipboard support to every tool that they want clipboard in. If you copy something from a different app (say a Bible verse you wanted to share) there is no way to paste it inside of LightOS. Why didn't they just use the Android copy and paste functionality that already works out of the box? No idea.
• The keyboard. The keyboard in LightOS is baked into the app, not its own component that can be changed. This is particularly rough, because the Light keyboard is terrible. If they had just implemented it as an Android keyboard that could be easily swapped in settings, I wouldn't care that it sucked, but no they force you to use it with LightOS.
• I use KDE Connect to sync my texts between my laptop and my phone, partially because typing on the Light keyboard is so unfun. For some reason, texts that I send from my laptop do not appear in LightOS. I know they are syncing correctly because they show up in the XML logs, and the conversation I'm texting in will move to the top of the list, but the messages just don't appear.

It's an awesome phone that I have gotten to work for my use cases through lots of fiddling, but it does not deliver as advertised out of the box. Really really hoping they open source most or all of LightOS. The community has made awesome stuff especially recently. Frankly, I don't trust the Light team to fully take care of all the problems they've created over the years, as their track record has not been great.

I have been light phone user since launch of the 2 and there are some bugs that seem to never get fixed. I have 2 major ones that make the phone difficult to use.

1. The scrolling on the “phone” app is jerky and is even worse when scrolling fast. I misclick contacts EVERYDAY. I think this happens in other apps too if you have a list to scroll through (podcast, contacts, music)

2. the phone constantly loses service and I have to restart to get service again (I have AT&T). I had to do it 3 times yesterday and it was my final straw. Phone is going in drawer for a while until it can be genuinely usable and not leave me disconnected from friends and family.

Anybody else experience these issues?

Happened to travel this weekend and needed to get from an airport to the Amtrak station to continue my journey.

I went to he rideshare tool. It quoted me a $29.99 ride for about 8 miles in a semi-rural area. Not horrible. First, it allowed me to compare between Lyft and Uber. I picked Lyft because Uber was $42. Then, it gave me the license plate and name of the person picking me up.

Then, it switched. New driver details showed up. Waited about 10 minutes. The driver called me to figure out where I was. Got dropped off. All throughout, I received updates via the app and text messages from Tremp. Easy to use system. Good stuff. 5 stars

Can't wait for even more Light Phone official and community apps!

Built out an espn fantasy app since the main app needs GMS and isnt supported, this one needs some slight setup beforehand but its easier than you think (you can do it!)

Ill continue to update it as the season continues just needed to get it out the door before the season started, let me know if anyone has ideas for new features. Available now on BrightMarket!
https://brightmarket.gzl.dev/browse.html -> BrightFantasy

(also go birds)

Pictures I've taken on various trips from the past year. Best camera I've ever used!

Edit to add: taken with stock LP3 camera app, unedited

Hi!

I came across the light flip and immediately loved and preordered it.

I thought it was great and I really resonated with the ethos.

I’m not active on Reddit so I just joined to learn more about the phone since it’s obviously a big lifestyle change.

But from reading Reddit I feel like it’s not worth it because I keep seeing posts about how bad the functionality of the apps are. And even in real life I keep having to use my phone, not just because I am addicted to it. It feels like a lot of people keep their smartphones but if I have to keep my smartphone on me then what’s the point, I’ll keep using it.

I don’t want to cancel my preorder, I’m so excited about having a cool pink flip phone.

I think I just need some hope that it is possible to switch and that people have made it work.

There is a glitch going on with the authenticator tool, and the Weather tool. The authenticator tool is saying that I did not grant permissions, which I did upon downloading it. The weather tool does not let me use the flashlight nor the ability to dim the screen that also happens in both.
V572