Light Phone Is Making Its Dumb Phone More Useful With Third-Party ‘Tools’ Leave a comment

Time and time once more, homeowners of dumb telephones—or minimalist telephones—flip to their area of interest communities asking for additional options for his or her pared-down units: an authenticator app, Uber, or a strategy to view mountain climbing trails. They turned to those telephones to cut back the time spent looking at a smartphone display screen and reduce the anxiousness pushed by the trendy consideration economic system from their lives, however seems we nonetheless want apps.

“I can’t inform you how many individuals come again to us saying that, ‘Hey, if solely you had this factor for QR code scanning; if solely you had this localized app,’ that they’d be capable to use the Gentle Cellphone extra typically,” Kaiwei Tang, CEO and cofounder of Gentle Cellphone, tells WIRED. “We’re a smaller crew, we’re not Apple. We do not have app shops with thousands and thousands of apps.”

However now the Brooklyn firm is taking a step to shut that hole. Gentle Cellphone is launching a developer program in Could for LightOS, the working system powering its new Gentle Cellphone III. Now anybody within the platform can extra simply create “Instruments” they wish to use on the cellphone.

Gentle Cellphone is likely one of the extra distinguished firms within the area of interest minimal cellphone market, which noticed many new gamers in 2025, just like the Minimal Cellphone or the Mudita Kompakt. Gentle has been making its utility-focused units since 2014 for individuals who really feel overly reliant on expertise. The primary Gentle Cellphone may solely make and obtain cellphone calls, and the second added perks like turn-by-turn instructions. The newest iteration, the Gentle Cellphone III, significantly modernized the {hardware} whereas staying true to its bare-bones nature.

However for the individuals who nonetheless need their primary dumb cellphone to try this one little additional factor, the power so as to add Instruments is sweet information.

The Gentle Cellphone neighborhood has already been modding and hacking the corporate’s {hardware}. Whereas Gentle solely provides a handful of first-party Instruments, equivalent to a Calculator, Alarm, Calendar, and Podcasts, neighborhood members have made their very own, together with a Spotify consumer, an app to retailer passes—like health club membership playing cards—and even an app to test bus and practice schedules.

Now, with an official software program developer equipment, it will likely be a lot simpler for events to make the apps they need. You do not even want a Gentle Cellphone III to create a Device for the platform, although these third-party Instruments are solely accessible on the most recent handset, not older Gentle Cellphone fashions.