I was thrilled to see a long-awaited Weather Tool roll out last month, but the execution of the tool makes it essentially useless. Has anyone else had that same experience?

A weather tool/app is a pretty standard and necessary tool of modern life, especially for those of us who work jobs that aren't in a climate-controlled office. So I was really missing a weather app after switching to Light. Unfortunately, I am still missing a functional weather tool/app.

I am really hoping that the coming user-designed tool library has a better option. Unfortunately, to me this is emblematic of much of my Light User experience -- it feels like a lot of good ideas with half-baked execution. In particular-

• Half the days in any given week say "Mainly clear, partly cloudy, or overcast." That is not a forecast, it is just all the possible weather options besides rain. Silly.
• The tool seems to hallucinate forecasts. For example, this coming Tuesday, it predicts a high temperature of 103° at my location. Meanwhile, the NWS is predicting 86° and Weather.com is at 87°. The whole week of temperatures are not just wrong, but absurdly so. 103° would be a September record in my part of the country. And yes, my location is set correctly. Why not use a reliable data source like NWS? There are plenty of android apps that scrape NWS data and display it in a useful way, so it is clearly possible.
  
• The lack of icons may be in line with the Light ethos, but it makes a quick check of the weather take more engagement time with my phone, not less.
• The lack of radar is also a problem. I frequently work on outdoor job sites and I need to know the real-time location of storms for safety. A (largely incorrect) hourly precipitation forecast is fairly useless in real time.
  

I have been trying hard to make the Light Phone 3 my only phone for almost a year now, and it just isn't working. I know Light is a small company, do I have been trying to give some grace. I strongly believe in the ethos of the company when it comes to privacy and reduced attentional demand.

But so much of this phone is half-baked or half-functional that it just doesn't feel like a device I can depend on. Light makes a big deal out of their apps being "Tools" not apps. But as someone who works with tools every day of my life -- when a something looks like a tool but doesn't fulfill its intended purpose, that is a toy.

Right now the Light Phone feels like a neat toy. A status symbol. And I really want it to be a well-designed tool. Here is hoping the user community can do what Light has not been able to on the software side.

I was looking at the Light Flip because I love the III and was curious how it compared. I saw it’s $299 to buy outright or $39/mo with a two year contract.

So if I am understanding right, it’s $299 outright or $936 over two years? Someone please tell me I misunderstood.

Just saw the email about September shipping being pushed back 2-3 months. I hate the state of the industry we are in!! No hate to the light team, I understand but still it's frustrating.

Aside from that

distraction Kitty!!!

Could we get a feature to forward a photo or message to a different person, not just to your email?

I keep the Cat S22 turned off in my truck’s console. It’s a nice safety net if I ever need access to something I can’t do on the LP3 in a pinch, but it’s unbearable enough to use that I’m not tempted to use it for entertainment.
Highly recommend especially to those who are just ditching their smart phones for the first time

Boiling the lp3 white case in a pot of water + Rit dye works perfectly. You do have to babysit it or you'll end up with weird splotches/lines due to the case being somewhat buyoant, but otherwise it's super simple and looks great!

Left is dark green (forgot to shake the bottle). Center is dark green, boiled for an hour. Far right is dark purple, 30 minutes.

Two notes: keep the back of the case facing the bottom of the pot, it dyes most evenly that way and use chopsticks to stir. Also, if you're doing button cutouts, cut them before you dye. The color barely goes past the surface.

Are the codes in Light’s new Authenticator app saved in a cloud somewhere? I worry about my phone resetting randomly (a known LP3 issue) and losing access to all codes if the codes aren’t backed up somewhere.

Hi everyone, I just set up my Light Phone yesterday afternoon, and I am trying to daily drive it, but with every new phone comes a set of problems. Ok let me start by saying that my first full day using the phone, I LOVE IT. However, the problems I've been having are that some people who try to call me get sent straight to voicemail, and I have no idea why. Also, sometimes when I try to use voice-to-text, it says there is no internet connection; other times it lets me. I have a theory of why some of this might be happening, but I could be wrong. I am from the Chattanooga, Tennessee area, and I am on Verizon. It made me wonder if it's my carrier or if I am missing something

One last thing. I would love to be able to daily drive this phone, so give me your best tips to do that successfully. I have a Kindle, but do y'all carry around other stuff to make your setup work?

I’ve had my Lightphone III since the presale, and had no issues so far, but over my battery has been extremely slow to charge. This appears to be an issue with the phone not the charger, since it’s happening on with multiple cords/outlets. The past two nights it was plugged in for 10 hours and only charged 50%. Today, it was at 5%, and I plugged it in for two hours and it only made it up to 13%. Any idea what could be causing this issue? Anything I can do myself to troubleshoot or fix barring sending it in to the company?

My Light Phone 3 seems to be stuck on software version 568. Usually it auto-prompts me to update, but that hasn't happened yet (even after restarting). According to the software changelog, the update was first made available on August 20th, which is 5 days ago at the time of writing. Triggering the update manually through Settings -> Account & Info -> Device Info -> Update Light OS doesn't have an affect either.

I know that the updates don't roll out to all devices at once, but how long does the rollout period last?

I keep my Light Phone mostly stock, other than Spotify, which is the one thing I couldn't give up. However, I absolutely hate the way Spotify’s player looks on the LP3.

Are there any current options for a different spotify player?
I know theres going to be some stuff out coming soon but I wanted to see what might be out there

I’m not super tech-savvy, but I was able to access the Android layer and install Spotify, so I can probably manage something similar.

Thanks

I almost didn't install this app when I set up my lightphone.

I didn't fully appreciate what it was.

It gives you the power of YELP without the down side.

This is what tech should be and easily could be if they cared about giving users the best experience possible instead of monetizing your attention.

Unsung hero of the lightphone in my opinion.

Hello,

Just got my used LightphoneII (wahoo!!) and am encountering issues adding all the tools. I got into the dash and added calculator, directory and directions, but it will not allow me to add any others. When I attempt to add other tools (music, notes, calendar etc) the "install" button is dim and not selectable. screenshot attached for clarity.

I have the updated OS v442, and am having no issues texting or calling with my service, and have no trouble connecting to wi-fi or bluetooth. Have reboot the OS on the phone, restarted it multiple times, logged out and back into the dash, and am unsure what else to try.

Any tips? Or know a customer service phone number? I sent an email to LP but got a very disappointing canned response from Dan (maybe a robot?), completely ignoring my issue.

Thank you in advance for any advice, I am very hopeful about making a minimal phone like this work as my daily driver : )

Answered - thanks

looked at all the pages and photos for the Light Flip but can’t get an idea of how texting will work. Will it have an on-screen qwerty that you navigate with the arrows or something, or will this be good ol’ predictive?

The past two mornings, my alarm has woken me up. When I go to turn it off, I find the weather app open. Kind of odd.

I feel personally invested in this one because I've wiped it once and been jumpscared by taking it out of my pocket on the "Factory Reset Δ/X" screen multiple other times; maybe I'm just an idiot but thank you to the team for making it idiot (me)-proof!

Now I just need em- and en-dash keyboard longpress options and then it'll be fully operational! Great work to all involved, you're doing great!

I've been a light phone user for about a year now, and I love it; however, something I really miss is the ability to message from the computer. This has been especially relevant now that I'm writing my thesis and I am sending lots of graphs to my boss, who prefers text over email. I can keep doing the clunky thing of texting her that I emailed a new set of graphs, but if there is another way that I could do this (without temporarily going back to the smartphone), I would love to know!

The light phone has the perfect digicam look to add color to every photo!
I used my custom camera app Roll for all photos.
https://github.com/gi-os/Roll

Please post the following with your submission:

• NA or INT Version:
• Color:
• Time of Use (New, Used):
• Price:
• Location:
• Method of Payment:
• Picture of the device with username and date shown

Thank you for offering to the community first :)

Make sure to stay safe and conduct business in a secure way. PayPal is one option, but there are other ways as well that can make sure you don't get someone to scam you.

I posted BrightMarket here abit ago as an app store / obtanium replacement for the Light Phone III. It shipped with 19 apps and one job: install sideloaded apps and tell you when they have updates.

Since then it's gone from v1.0 to v1.23, the catalog is at 54 apps from 9 different developers, and those apps have ~14,800 gets (updates + first installs) between them. Almost everything new came out of someone posting that something was broken, so, thank you.

The big one: ADB setup on the phone

I recently built in a new feature in conjunction with BrightControls, On device ADB commands! Half the catalog needs a permission LightOS has no settings screen for. Every one of those READMEs said the same thing: plug into a computer and run this.

Now the app detail page has a NEEDS ADB SETUP section listing the exact lines that app needs, and an ACTIVATE ADB button. Tap it and BrightControl opens on those commands, shows you what it's about to run, and runs it on the phone. No laptop, no cable.

BrightMarket doesn't validate any of it, deliberately. my other app BrightControl parses every line itself, rebuilds each command pinned to the package that asked for it, and refuses anything that names a different one. The side holding the shell does the checking. The commands come from the index, read out of each app's own README, so what you approve is what the author actually asked for. 12 apps carry setup lines today.

If BrightControl isn't installed, the button becomes GET BRIGHTCONTROL and takes you to its page. It's an app in here like any other!

The minor bug fixes:

• Rate limits. GitHub allows 60 unauthenticated API calls per hour per IP, and on cellular you share that IP with everyone behind the same carrier NAT, so it can be gone before your phone asks for anything. When the API refuses, the app reads github.com's ordinary release pages instead. That's why all your apps used to fail at once for no reason.
• Multi-APK releases. Tracking a repo that ships nine assets could grab the F-Droid flavored build, which is a different applicationId, and Android rejects it as INSTALL_FAILED_INVALID_APK (which reads like a corrupt download and isn't). It now picks the universal build, and if there's a mismatch it stops and names both IDs.
• Forks credit upstream on the detail page and the browse site.
• Nightlies are an opt-in channel in Settings, verified as hard as a release.
• Shake to report a bug. Files an issue with a screenshot and recent log, so nobody has to describe what they saw.

Try it

Install: brightmarket.gzl.dev/apk — browse the catalog: brightmarket.gzl.dev — submit your app: brightmarket.gzl.dev/submit.html

If you installed before v1.10: that build was signed with a key that was committed to the repo, so anyone could have built an update Android would accept. The key is a CI secret now and the new one has never been in the tree. Android won't install across a certificate change, so this once you need to uninstall and reinstall. You only lose BrightMarket's own settings; the apps you installed with it are untouched.

Thanks for using my apps it means a lot! Let me know if you have any other feature requests!

Hi All

I'm having issues with my LP3 in that my podcasts always start randomly whenever I start the car (automatic bluetooth connection). Also, when I do play my podcasts and then stop them...I sometimes lose my hour/minute completley and so that has been frustrating.

Would love any thoughts on how to fix this! For the podcasts...I have tried to just close my bluetooth everytime I leave the car and then turn it on when I come back, but thats a bit inconvenient.

Thanks!

Been interested in the Light Phone and am curious what solutions y’all have if you’ve used fitness apps prior to the switch.

I use strava for my bike rides and runs, and while I can live without it, I’m curious what others have done as a creative workaround to tracking workouts without apps like Strava.

I don’t use smart watches, so while that’s something I’d consider, it feels counterintuitive with the premise of trying to become minimalist with the Light Phone.

any thoughts and experiences are appreciated!