Light made a flip phone. It’s colorful and it’s cheap.

Kaiwei Tang helped make the iconic Motorola Razr implicit 20 years ago. Now, 10 years into gathering Light, the startup down the minimalist smartphone alternate Light Phone, he’s arsenic amazed arsenic anyone that his customers are begging for a flip phone.

“We’ve been interviewing young radical that usage flip phones for a fewer years,” Tang told TechCrunch, describing a signifier his squad kept moving into: Gen Z users emotion their flip phones but accidental the physique prime is bad. “They’re describing the flip phones successful antagonistic language, but they instrumentality with it, and they consciousness proud.”

So Tang and co-founder Joe Hollier had an idea. What if Light took the fast, customized bundle from its past 3 interaction surface phones and enactment it into a flip phone? That’s however they decided to physique the Light Flip, the astir affordable instrumentality that Light has ever released.

“What we’re doing is offering the aforesaid Light Phone experience, the aforesaid Light Phone OS with our SDK developer program, each of the tools we already person today: alarm, calculator, calendar…” Hollier told TechCrunch. “It’s benignant of the nonstop aforesaid experience, conscionable 1 is afloat tactile, nary interaction screen, and [the other] 1 is simply a implicit interaction surface experience.”

Image Credits:Light Phone

Pricing has ever been Light’s hardest occupation arsenic a tiny hardware startup. How bash you merchantability a “less” telephone for a terms radical volition really pay, erstwhile the full transportation is less features? Its erstwhile release, the unlocked Light Phone III, retails astatine $799. But the Light Flip brings the outgo down to $299 by dropping a interaction screen, NFC reader, and selfie camera. The Light Flip is besides made of plastic, alternatively than sturdier aluminum, but that means that for the archetypal time, Light tin connection 1 of its phones successful a scope of colors: black, red, yellow, pink, navy blue, and airy grey.

“I thought I was afloat QWERTY, but I was having amusive with the T9 predictive texting [the old-school method of typing aggregate letters per number], truthful I tin spot myself going flip telephone besides for the colors,” Hollier said. “Just having a yellowish telephone gets maine truthful jazzed.”

Beyond the sticker price, Light is besides investigating a financing play. It precocious piloted telephone contracts with Andrew Yang’s anti-doomscrolling bearer Noble Mobile. With Light’s ain work plan, customers tin get the Light Flip for a two-year declaration astatine $39 per month; the Light Phone III volition beryllium disposable for $59 per period implicit the aforesaid clip frame.

The Light Flip lone has a 2.8″ OLED surface connected the wrong and nary surface connected the outside, arsenic requested by users. There volition beryllium a tiny airy connected the beforehand of the phone, however, truthful that you tin spot if you person notifications without flipping unfastened the device. With 5G and 4GLTE connectivity, the Light Flip tin download podcasts online and play euphony that you upload to your phone, which you tin perceive to via either a 3.5mm headphone jack oregon Bluetooth headphones. It charges via USB-C, works with some eSIM and carnal Nano SIM cards, and includes a 12-megapixel camera connected the back.

Image Credits:Light Phone

The Light Flip is expected to vessel successful April 2027, which Light acknowledges is simply a agelong pb time. To support preorder customers engaged (and, practically, to support them from canceling earlier it ships), the institution is launching a caller “Flip Your Life” program, including bi-weekly newsletters to assistance radical hole for the manner accommodation of ditching a smartphone. It’s a community-building determination arsenic overmuch arsenic a selling one. By gathering a enactment web astir the phone, Light hopes that the modulation to utilizing its products volition beryllium little jarring and that it sticks.

While Light believes that its phones tin assistance radical reclaim the clip they whitethorn regret spending connected mindless scrolling, the founders admit that it’s not casual to discontinue smartphones acold turkey. It’s hard to sacrifice the convenience of instant net access, Apple Pay, euphony streaming, and convenient connection tools similar WhatsApp and iMessage, and it’s easier for the flip phone-curious to marque this modulation erstwhile they’re not going done it alone.

“I deliberation thing that’s truthful inspiring astir this movement is it’s not coming from a spot of conscionable choler and hatred… It’s a question of optimism, arsenic good arsenic skepticism,” Hollier said. “I deliberation that’s what we’ve ever tried to bash with Light. We’re anti large tech successful each these ways, but we’re ever trying to amusement that the different broadside of beingness tin beryllium truly elemental and beautiful.”