Light Phone Founders Joe And Kaiwei: The Idea Behind A Minimalist Dumb Phone

Cutting off from the usual social media life is therapy for most! That’s where the Light Phone steps in, having only essential features, a dumb yet minimalistic invention!

Today, let’s learn more about Light Phone founders Joe and Kaiwei, whose brilliance has helped phone addicts feel the finer, fresher, and better aspects of life.

A typical smartphone equipped with the best features sucks up energy, a lot of time, and, most of all, natural connectivity and socialization. Light phones helped users conquer a lot in their lives while decreasing anxiety.

The Light Phone III: Latest In the LightPhone Series

Light Phone’s journey dates back to 2014, when Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang, an artist and product designer, exchanged thoughts of similarity at Google’s experimental program.

Having connected immediately, the partners gave their all, birthing the Light Phone, and now, after all these years, the latest and brightest of all, Light Phone III, has been invented.

Light Phone III comes with a fresh display, an added camera, and other features that will shed light in a while. These features tally to one aspect: the “just can’t live without” factor.

Light Phone Founders Joe And Kaiwei. Image Credit: Social Media.

With the E Ink screen now gone, available in previous Light Phones, this minimalistic Light Phone III’s greatest change is a new display. A 3.92-inch black-and-white OLED panel has been glued.

A new scroll wheel feature exists in this modest phone now, positioned on the left side to adjust the phone’s brightness, as an automatic brightness adjustment has been made absent. One such product, Rabbit R1, came, made a few rounds of headlines, and disappeared.

However, the light phone has come not to vanish from sight but to leave its mark as an iPhone alternative. Yes, this minimally designed device has a fingerprint reader, a Qualcomm SM 4450 processor, 128GB of storage, and 6GB of RAM.

Set for release in Africa, Asia, Australia / Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America, Light Phone founders Joe and Kaiwei have priced the product at $399.

Framed As an iPhone Alternative, See the newest additions To Light Phone III

As mentioned earlier, these phones sail on the notion that only the most essential features, labeled as can’t live without feature, are present on the Light Phone III.

Light Phone II surely had many important features, but this latest III model has an even more impressive collection of features.

Firstly, a 50-megapixel camera is ingrained on the back side, complemented slickly by an 8-megapixel one on the front, having a fixed focal length and a center focus.

Light Phone Founders Joe And Kaiwei. Image Credit: Instagram.

Scanning QR codes is feasible, video chats are possible, and capturing a video from a Light Phone should emit the rendering of an old film camera. Hollywood buff!

Also, amongst the newest additions approved by Light Phone founders Joe and Kaiwei, an NFC chip should have a room somewhere in the device’s body as the company plans to integrate payment at some point.

Lastly, Light Phone has added a USB-C port, which is present in most modern-day phones like the Samsung Galaxy M35 Exynos 1380 and Google Pixel 8a Impart.

An Emboldering Tale On How LightPhone Came to Light! Light Phone Founders Joe And Kaiwei

Simply put, Kaiewi Tang has been sketching expertise at Motorola and Blackberry, while Joe has an artistic background and founded a skateboard company. As the destined business partners met at Google Incubator in 2016, their magnetic force toward each other sparked the idea of developing the Light Phone.

Traditional smartphones melt away peace in people’s lives, piling up anxiety and stress. So, Kai and Joe wanted to create times branded as “going light” where people unplug from excruciatingly addictive smartphones as possible.

Light Phone founders Joe and Kaiwei began testing the hypothesis, giving a few dozen people flip phones for an afternoon or weekend. The results were extremely positive!

The outcomes suggested that it boosted productivity and was the most refreshing weekend for the participants! In April 2017, the Light Phone received its official launch, and following the trend, the Light Phone 2 was a hit.

The first Light Phone successfully collected over $400,000 on launch in 2015 and attained over 3,000 backers. The Light Phone II, launched in 2019, raised $3.5 million on Indiegogo.

This surely paved the road for Light Phone III to grace success, with expected ship day starting January 2025. And now the figures will rise even more once Light Phone III hits the market.

ALSO READ: Meet GoSun CEO Patrick Sherwin: Working Towards A Carbon Free Society

A Few Words On Light Phone’s Master-mind Kaiwei Tang

Kaiewi Tang is the CEO and Co-Founder of Light Phone and a designer and entrepreneur based in New York. Tang has over 10 years of experience in product design, design research, and product development, adding to his impressive experience.

Before Light Phone, the entrepreneur worked relentlessly and successfully bringing more than 10 consumer products to life since 2004, Motorola Razr being one of the popular ones.

The CEO obtained his master’s degree in Design and Business from the Institute of Design, IIT in Chicago.

Light Phone Founders Joe And Kaiwei. Image Credit: Social Media.

Light Phones and his designs have been featured in thousands of global press and events such as the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, Samsung Innovation Center, Mayo Clinic Center, etc.

Being a talented individual, Kai was the first and only designer to be honored with full sponsorship from Google for their inaugural design incubator in NYC in 2014.

The Light Phone founder has bagged awards such as the Phone Design of The Decade and Good Design Awards while securing some patented ones like the Light OS interface design to his name.

A Brief Introduction To Joe Hollier: Co-Founder To Light Phone

Joe Hollier is a Brooklyn-based artist, designer, and Co-founder of Light Phone along with Kaiwei Tang.

The man with an artistic persona, Joe’s Instagram, is a beautiful collage of his paintings and designs where canvas paintings are featured the most, along with other arty forms.

Light Phone Founders Joe And Kaiwei. Image Credit: Instagram.

The Light Phone founder pursued his bachelor’s education in Design from the School of Visual Arts in 2012 and attended Google 30 Weeks Entrepreneurship from the year (2014- to 2015).

This talented artist has been admired with prestigious awards like 30 Under 30 and ADC Young Guns 2016.

Likewise, you might also be interested in learning about Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger.

Future Objectives Scripted By Light Phone

Light Phone founders Joe and Kaiwei aren’t done just yet, as they have other exciting plans like adding directions, calculators, a notepad voice memo tool, and more utility to unfold in the days to shine.

What their vision stands for is simple yet a necessity-based one. For example, their music player will be a basic interface constructed without the music discovery. Rather, loading and preloading the songs the user wants to listen to will be present!

Also, the founders envision an interesting map where the presence of business information will be excluded. A simple map to travel from one location to another will be prioritized and acted upon.

Light Phone is also figuring out ways to integrate the Spotify API, incorporate Uber and Lyft running on the phone, and also the much-needed feature of enabling payments.

With AI spreading as fast as fire, Light Phone is messing around with ChatGPT and other AI tools so that users get worldly information feasibly.

We are optimistic that Light Phone III will hit the home run of success and provide a fantastic user experience for individuals seeking solace from their everyday anxieties.

ictmirror.com contains affiliate links. Meaning ictmirror.com receives commissions for purchases made through those links, at no cost to you.