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- [00:02]
Nilay Patel
Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of T9 texting. I'm your friend David Pearce and today on the show we're going to talk about minimalist phones, specifically the new Lite Flip, a very cool kind of minimalist smartphone, maybe call it a dumb phone device from a company called Light that has spent more than the last decade trying to figure out how to frankly rescue you from your smartphone. I think the world has changed in a lot of ways that make sense for what Light has been trying to do for a long time. And I also think Light has changed in some really interesting ways. So Kai Tang, the CEO and co founder of Light, is going to come on the show. We're going to talk about what it takes to make a great flip phone in 2026 and why in the world you would even want to do that. But first, here's everything else happening on the Verge today. This is 90 seconds on the Verge for Tuesday, July 28, 2026. Apple just officially launched its new upgrade program, which essentially allows you to lease Apple devices. The system works like this. You pay for a device in installments, you get a Mac for 25 bucks a month, or you pay $12 a month and you get an iPad. Air after 24 months, you can either pay the rest and keep it, you can upgrade to the latest model and keep financing, or you can just return it and be done. This is all obviously happening to make it more palatable to buy new Apple gear, which like everything else in tech, is getting seemingly more expensive by the day. But if you're asking me, you should buy nice things and keep them longer, not get in the habit of renting gadgets. Meanwhile, there might be a new upgrade in that program relatively soon. Bloomberg reported today that Apple about to start a big push into the smart home, and that it could launch a new smart home hub as soon as this October. It sounds like a homepod crossed with an iPad, if that makes sense. There's also a new Apple TV and a new HomePod mini coming soon, and it seems like even the robot arm with a screen we've been hearing about might really be happening. But all of this is really based on Siri AI. If Apple's assistant is finally good, it could be a game changer, but that's a big if. And finally, X Money, the payment platform that Elon Musk has been promising for some time, is finally rolling out to the US to preview premium and Premium plus X users. This is a big part of the whole plan to make X the everything app and has been part of the plan since Musk bought the platform formerly known as Twitter all the way back in 2022. But I don't know y'.
- [02:13]
Sponsor Voice 1
All.
- [02:13]
Nilay Patel
I'm not sure mixing social media and super easy money transfers is a really good idea. You can read more about all of this@theverge.com that is 90 seconds on the verge for Tuesday, July 28th
- [02:25]
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- [02:52]
Nilay Patel
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- [02:54]
Sponsor Voice 2
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- [02:58]
Nilay Patel
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- [02:59]
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- [03:04]
Nilay Patel
on Monday.com all right, let's talk phones. Joining me now, Kai Tang, the CEO and co founder of Light. Welcome to the show.
- [03:10]
Kai Tang
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
- [03:12]
Nilay Patel
So you and I have talked intermittently over the last, I would say decade about what are we going to do about all of these smartphones. And I think we've come to a really fun point in that conversation that I am eager to get to, but I do just kind of want to rewind all the way back to the beginning. I was back on your Kickstarter page from 2015, looking at the original Light phone. There's a video of baby Kai explaining what you're doing. But I was struck in reading the Kickstarter page and watching the video that you didn't come into this, as far as I could tell, with grand theories about defeating the smartphone and addiction to technology. You were building something else, maybe something more specific. So rewind me back a decade or so. What were you thinking about smartphones the very first time you set out to make what became the first Light phone?
- [04:03]
Kai Tang
Almost like a reaction, I remember. Reaction to the observation or just the weirdness I felt when I when I was in public, right, Watching people sitting in the park with the family on their phone, in the restaurant, everyone, everyone's swiping in, train station, airport. And I think at the time my co founder Joe Holly and I were in this incubator that Google started for designers as well. So we had that, we had the chance to speak to a lot of VCs really successful entrepreneur app, specifically platforms and obviously being, you know, kind of encouraged to that direction. But I remember just vividly that almost everyone's talking about the traction of how much time the user spent in the app. You know, bragging about, oh, my user spent two hours in my game. That's why we could collect all this data, we synthesize it and we could sell it to the highest bidder. I mean, not in those honest words, but that's exactly what happened.
- [05:11]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, that was peak engagement.
- [05:13]
Sponsor Voice 3
Right.
- [05:13]
Nilay Patel
That was everybody's favorite metric at the time was how long can we keep you here? That is an unalloyed good thing if we can keep you in our app.
- [05:21]
Kai Tang
Yeah. And that's what we business model makes sense. I get it. It's very efficient, which is why I met Google or Facebook. Twitter are a billion dollar company. It's very efficient. I get it. But at the same time, you know, I was asking myself, what about me? What about my time? All I wanted to do is just use this specific tool like getting a direction home or getting a Uber home. Why do I have to suffer through advertisement? So I want to build a phone for myself that just have the right, just have the thing I wanted to do and then move on. And we did a test with I think 20 participants at the time that took away, we took away their smartphone, asked people to go out, you know, for a couple of hours, for a day, come back and tell us how you feel like. And almost everyone said, oh wait, I spent two hours in the museum in moma. I remember seeing this. I remember talking to this guy. Oh, I was in grocery stores. I don't have nothing to swipe. I was nervous. But then someone talked to me and I, we start talking about this and that and everyone feel like they're freed. They feel like they're outside the cage. They feel, they're saying that, oh, this is the best hours after day, the best day after the week. And I think that's sort of solidify this direction of we want to offer design, offer something that would encourage people, people to break away from this 24. 7 connection.
- [06:52]
Nilay Patel
Okay. I wanted to start there because I want to explain to you sort of my sense of the timeline since then. And then I want to know if the way you've experienced it, making products matches the way that I've seen it sort of reporting on and living in this world. So I think back then, 2015, 2016, that experience you had and the way that you were feeling about technology. There were definitely people who felt that way. And I think if you sort of explained people, it was a real kind of this is water phenomenon that if you, you were like, look around at all of these people looking at their phones instead of playing with their children, people would be like, oh sure. But I don't think most people were feeling that super acutely about themselves in their day to day life. And then I think we got to the point where, you know, fast forward a few years, we get through Cambridge Analytica, we start to experience a real tech backlash. There is this sense that I'm spending too much time on my phone. The algorithmic feeds start to come in and I think then we get to a point where everybody kind of intellectually understands that they would like to use their smartphone less. And I think then Covid happens and throws. This makes this all weird because we all sit in front of screens on our phones for, you know, a year because there's nothing else to do but leaving that one aside. I think there was this sense for a long time that if you asked somebody, do you spend too much time on your smartphone? They would probably say yes. And then if you asked, are you doing anything about it and really deep down are you interested in doing anything about it? Most people would say no. And then I think you get to the last, I don't know, 18 months and it feels like something has flipped that actually in a really meaningful way. Maybe as a response to the ever encroaching algorithms, maybe as a response to AI. People are not only understanding that they want to make these changes and that they ought to make these changes and that these things are an incursion in their lives, but are actually actively doing something about it. Is that again, you've been selling people phones along these lines this whole time. Does that, does my experience of this match yours or have you, have you seen it happen differently?
- [08:52]
Kai Tang
No, I think it's somewhat similar. I think of a use analogy that using your smartphone is like smoking. Smoking used to be cool and indoor. You can smoke whatever you want to smoke, right? No one, no one say anything about it.
- [09:08]
Nilay Patel
And it's a fun one because for a long time nobody knew it was a problem. It was like it was not an issue.
- [09:12]
Kai Tang
Yeah, yeah. And then at some point this whole society's attitude towards smoking changed. I mean, partially because education, partially because awareness. And then the government start to find, try to find policy to change and people start to like, you know, like asking people, oh, don't smoke around me and stuff. Like that. I think this is really similar to that trajectory of smoking. Okay, smoking, cool. Oh, maybe not. Oh, that's not smoke. Right. And smartphone is the same thing. I think it's like, oh, you know, smartphone, social media, so good. Very, very helpful network and getting the community together and say, oh, I feel horrible. Oh, you know, like, I spent so much time on it. What do I do? And then, you know, now we're in this phase of what government do, what can we do, what parents do.
- [10:07]
Nilay Patel
This feels like a good segue to your new device, the Light flip, which I think is frankly not the device I expected you to make. I think the sort of march of light phone has been. And again, you and I have talked about this many times towards this question of what is the least you need to do in order to replace people's smartphones in a sort of meaningful way. Because I think the learning from the first phone was phone calls is not enough. You made a thing that made phone calls and people were like, well, I need a phone that does two or three other things in order for me to leave it alone. And then you give them those couple things and they say, oh, but wouldn't it be awesome if I could do these other two things? And everybody has two things and everybody's list is different. And I've, you know, I've had this conversation with so many people trying to make these sort of minimalist devices over the years, and it's like you eventually get to the point where you say, okay, most people in the world use WhatsApp. Let's give them WhatsApp. And then you're one small step away from just installing Android and giving people an Android phone. And so finding that line, I think, is really hard. But with the Light Phone 3, I think you were getting closer. And you, you were. When you shipped the thing, you were still working on some of the stuff, NFC was still coming, video chat was still coming, but you were, you were sort of on this road to we're going to nail this middle ground of what a minimalist smartphone is supposed to be. That sort of looks and feels and operates like a smartphone, but is. Is able to do some of the stuff. And then you just took a big right turn into a completely different form factor. Tell me about that right turn.
- [11:31]
Kai Tang
Yeah, of course. I mean, I never thought about creating or bring back flip phone again, to be honest with you, because that's where my career started.
- [11:42]
Nilay Patel
Is it really? I didn't know that.
- [11:44]
Kai Tang
Yeah, yeah. After graduate school, I went to design school after that I was part of a broader team that tried to bring Motorola Razr to life. Wow. And I never thought about I'm going to be working on designing a flip phone again. But the last two years we just had so many people emailing us saying, oh, I love light phone. Well, sorry bragging about, oh, I love what you guys trying to do,
- [12:11]
Nilay Patel
but
- [12:12]
Kai Tang
I don't want to be seen using a smartphone. Can you build a flip phone? I love flip phone. And I was like, maybe this is just an outliner, but we keep getting those requests from especially younger than me, generations that wanted a flip phone. And I keep thinking this might be just the nostalgia retro, you know, temporary thing. And it's all like we getting keep getting those emails. So I said, I set out to interview, I think 15 young people that use flip phone religiously. And so I start talking to them. I was like, dude, like, you know, I know, you know light phone and how do you feel about flip phone? Why you stick with flip phone? And they're like, oh, my flip phone sucked. They are ugly, they're stupid. And there's no updates. You know, it can't repair them. And I switched like 5 phones phone since like 2,22,009 and but they stick with it. I was like, well, you know, you know, like phone you can get a lifelong, whatever phone you want to get. Like, why stick with the flip phone? And there's a couple of things. Number one, it's very affordable, you know, so they want to get flow phone. Number two, they love the satisfaction of opening up and you could shut it down and flip down and the technology goes away. It represents something. It's almost like a badge of honor for some people that I could put down the technology and goes away, right? There's no screen. Well, some of them still have screen outside, but it goes away.
- [13:44]
Nilay Patel
It sounds so ridiculous to say that out loud, but I'm absolutely convinced there is something real to that. I really am, that there is something to say. I am finished with my phone now and you close it. There is something in that that I think is honestly powerful.
- [13:57]
Kai Tang
We do that all the time. We put our smartphone face down. The same idea. I love the action. And then we hear from some hardcore for the ph flip from users that they just don't want to be seen using a glass, like texting on a glass. They want this flip, they want this form factor. This form factor represents something else to them. I think it presents almost like a movement they wholeheartedly believe in or the opposite of all this AI Everywhere, all this invasive practice or AI, everything you touch. And what does that benefit me? A lot of them ask, have that question too, like, what does that got to do with me? I have that question too. What's all this thing got to do with me? I know the benefit, I know the use case, some use case are really helpful. But I think this generation, at least from my understanding, I don't speak for them, but my understanding, they don't devalue their own, you know, like, freedom. They don't want to supply to the, to the agenda that technology companies are pushing. You know, they value real life experience.
- [15:08]
Nilay Patel
So the implication here is that it's actually not just a sort of individual tool for not using your smartphone so much. It's actually a status symbol. It's, it's like, this is so funny because I think again, you and I came up in the age where you, like, I remember who my last friend was to get a smartphone and we all made fun of them for still having a flip phone when everybody else had smartphones. Because it's like, oh, well, you're, you're just, you're the loser being left behind by technology. And you're saying that now, you know, two decades later, that has come all the way back around. And actually you're, what you're saying is like if you're 17, you're looking at your friends with smartphones being like, oh, you're the, you're the sheep beholden to big tech companies. I'm free. Look at my flip phone. I love, I love that so much. It's so ridiculous. But I love it so much.
- [15:52]
Kai Tang
But I'm different. It's like similar to how when iPhone first on the market, right. People feel when they buy this object, they feel they're a different kind of person. It represents what their belief system. Have an entertainment center with a laptop, my tablet, you know, I know I could do social media things and emails here and there. And I don't want to carry this thing 24 7. And this is something we've been talking about too. Like, I'm not asking people to give up technology. We're trying to say we have different car, different shoes, different jacket designed for different purpose. Higher price, lower price, different purpose, right? When it comes to phone the last 20 years, for some reason, it just has to be smartphone. And they all look the same anyway. IPhone, Android, app store, they're all the same anyway. And there's no other option. You could obviously buy a flip phone 20 years ago. It's 2G 3G reception sucks. No one care about it, no one's selling them. Coverage is horrendous and there's no other option. It's just like so on violence and yeah, I guess that's where we come in.
- [16:56]
Nilay Patel
Okay, so tell me about the process of designing a flip phone for 2026.
- [17:00]
Kai Tang
I think the form factor, obviously the product looks different is a flip phone, but I actually think the software, it's what those group of people already value. Meaning that the light flip and Light Phone 3 software User interface operating system are essentially the same. And we have a toolbox or tool library, I call it AKA app store, a tool library that we and our community created and that has just essential tools. And that will apply to both Light Phone 3 and Lightflip. So you still have all modern essential tools that we designed as a company in the community created for lifelong. And those tools will follow the same principle of no advertisement, do one thing well and no infinite fees. Right. So, you know, the tool will continue to grow. I want to give everyone like we talk about, give everyone all the modern essential tools I can create, which is slow because we're smaller. But I want to have a toolbox has all the tools that you need and you can use that on iPhone3 or Lightflip. And so essentially software design are the same. It's similar with iPhone3. That hasn't changed. But the flip phone, we take away touch screen for the form factors and all the navigation settings will sue the
- [18:23]
Nilay Patel
navigation pad is that again, because people, people are like, I don't want to be seen typing on glass. Like in a very real way. You're like, we have to make it not look like this is a smartphone cut in half. We have to actually change the interaction system here.
- [18:36]
Kai Tang
Well, I think, you know, there's no point touching the screen with the keypad. How I say this, the whole keypad. I'm a big fan of DDR, the calculator's buttons. And I want to recreate those buttons be so tactile design well with the curvature. So press down and travel down well. So I want to recreate those buttons with navigation pad. And with that pad, there's no point touching your screen and you flip it down. There's a screen, you flip it up. There's no confusion of where to touc and versus the Light Phone 3. Light Phone 3 is a glass screen. It's a touch panel. So it makes sense. And I want the product look visually like, you know, this still has a little speaker grill on the light flip and when you open it, there's a screen, there's a key. That's it. So it's just honest and straightforward. That's how I usually design things.
- [19:33]
Sponsor Voice 1
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- [20:37]
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- [21:12]
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- [21:50]
Kai Tang
That's a dog. You will not have to lift a face.
- [21:53]
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- [21:55]
Nilay Patel
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- [22:00]
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- [22:14]
Nilay Patel
What kind of technology was hard to do here? I mean, I think especially this long into the smartphone revolution. I would assume it's actually in a lot of ways probably easier to build a smartphone than it is to build a flip phone in 2026. Is that true?
- [22:27]
Kai Tang
Yeah, it is true. The caveat being, the problem being because no one is making mass producing flip phones, so a lot of components are, we need to revive them. We need to talk to suppliers to build it for the flip phone. Compared to smartphone, there's a lot of common parts so which also contribute to the cost Smartphone company. If you build a smartphone, a lot of common parts, a lot of suppliers or price are lower. But if you try to make a custom customized phone like Light Phone three or Lightflip your cost, it just, it just, it's just high. It just get, there's nothing, no way out.
- [23:07]
Nilay Patel
So give me an example. What's, what's a hard thing inside of the lightflip?
- [23:11]
Kai Tang
Well, like hinge. Right. Who is making Hinge now? Hinge? No one's making it. So you know, there's some, there's still some vintage phones being built. So but there's not a lot of suppliers fighting to build hing. So suppliers are finding a really good display memory. We all know what happened there with the memory. So those are like common components. Lots of supply. All of that memory and costs are cheaper like Hinge, you know, a smaller display, even smaller displays, smaller displays are hard to find. Especially high resolution because you know, all smartphones are huge and big and entertainment centered. Right. So all components, sourcing components are going to be more difficult for the phone.
- [24:00]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, it's an interesting mix of there's almost no one out there trying to do this thing and do it in a high end way. And I don't even necessarily mean that as a knock on other flip phones. It's just that most of their purpose is to be very simple, very straightforward, very retro and very complex.
- [24:17]
Sponsor Voice 4
Cheap. Right. Like that.
- [24:18]
Nilay Patel
That is their job. There's a lot out there trying to make this thing nice in a sort of meaningful way.
- [24:24]
Kai Tang
Yeah, I guess that's where we come in because you could obviously buy a a 20 years ago vintage flip phone, the. The Sha. The. The God and, and, and just re. Rebrand it and, and sell it. That's easy. I mean, not easy, but relatively easier. Yeah, but I, I want to build this device from hardware software replaceable battery will stand behind the flip phone. As long as we're here to repair your device. We also, I also want to make it really affordable, which is why we Launch with a $39 per month contract offer comes with a SIM card, 1 gigabyte data unlimited talk. So you pay $39 a month for your phone and your service plan. That's it for lifelong it. Right. So I want to make it accessible too. We get all this feedback from lifelong3 that oh, lifelong3 is so expensive. 699. I mean, I'll argue all day about that, but you know, I get it
- [25:20]
Nilay Patel
on that front actually, I think the price is one of the things that was striking to me because it feels like sort of a return to form from the original light phone. Like again, in a certain way. I feel like you've come all the way back around too. I think you spent some time, and you can confirm or deny this, but I think you spent some time trying really hard to convince people to not buy smartphones. You mentioned hopefully shipping early next year. Tell me about life as a hardware company. Right now. It is, we are, we are deep in Ramageddon. Are you, are you, are you worried about this moment in trying to actually build and ship consumer devices for people?
- [25:57]
Kai Tang
Yeah, it's pretty difficult to be honest with you. Like the tariff implementation since last year is. It's horrendous. Our cost is exponentially higher. You can't move your factories anywhere else because there's no one making things here that's affordable. Or you can move to a different country, but tariff is different. And now memory, it's all being bought by data centers, AI data centers and the suppliers. It's obviously understandable. Shifting the focus to supplying memory dram to the AI servers and all the consumer electronics can increase price because we can't buy memories. We can't buy cheap memories because they're all being used in AI centers. So I expect this price of all consumer electronic to increase very soon. So our life is difficult, but at the same time, we've been here for 11 years. We went through Covid, we went through tariff. Now memory is just another thing and we believe in what we're doing. I think it's important, important that as a society we have the option like this. And so we de risk diversify our platform. We're using a MediaTek platform versus Qualcomm. Lightfone3 is using Qualcomm Lightflip, we're using MediaTag. They all have different memory approved vendors so we could choose from. So we're not just limited to certain suppliers. So we try to to diversify our vendor base so at the same time diversify manufacturers. So we are we de risk ourselves. And the last thing would be just our service plan bundle sales. I'll shamelessly promoting it because it helps us de risk that too. So the hardware sales are less sensitive to us because the value that our customers give us customers give us is not just one off hardware sales. It's a continuous revenue stream to support software development and software growth in a company as well. The last few years. It's definitely difficult but I think we've been here for four decades now. We know what we're trying to do. I know where we could diversify to de risk and I'm excited about life flip. I think something like that as an option is necessary.
- [28:29]
Sponsor Voice 2
Yeah.
- [28:29]
Nilay Patel
Okay. And then last thing. Do you think there is a looming trend in this kind of gadget? I think we've been waiting for the like disintermediation of the smartphone for some time now. And there's been this trend where everybody's going and buying old Canon power shots.
- [28:49]
Kai Tang
Wired headphones.
- [28:50]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, wired headphones is a great example. But I think what we haven't seen yet is a new spin on those old devices. Right. Canon has not put out the 2026 version of that PowerShot. People are buying old ones. Do you think we're due for a new round of this new thinking on these kinds of old pre smartphone gadgets? Because there is this real interest in them.
- [29:12]
Kai Tang
A single purpose device, single purpose object are always a thing. We just went too far on cramping everything in a piece of glass. But I don't know, a really good speaker can still make the camera. I think it's less about going back in time retro product, but it's more about start this trend of designing single purpose object. A typewriter, a camera, a phone, a chair. Like when an object designed for single purpose we as a customer, a consumer user, we filter. That's why when you pick up a Canon, a camera or you sit on a really well designed chair, you feel that and that experience are way different than try to do everything on a single piece of glass. When you try to do that, I mean I think some famous designers said that, not me. But when you're trying to design a thing, build a thing for everyone, in every purpose, nothing is special. Like this is. You don't feel anything because like I said, play your piano and you your phone and guitar and phone. Like nothing special. I remember this commercial from Apple that's horrendous. That new iPad, squash all the creativity. All the guitar, all the pianos, all the paintings are. Until it's a new iPad. I was like, dude, that's not what I want. Yeah, but yeah, I think this single purpose tool, device product will always be there. I think we just start to realize we're going too far and more people start to wanted to experience that specialty special feeling when you use a single purpose thing. I like it.
- [31:05]
Nilay Patel
I hope so. I have been, I have been sort of begging for you to be right for about the last four years. And again, it feels like the cultural energy is there. There's proof in the market that there's interest in this stuff. It feels like the thing that worries me is that all of the RAM and memory shortage stuff is going to scare away a lot of potential hardware. We're startups, but my hope is we get through this and people get through this. And on the other side there is just an explosion of weird new gadgets. And I am very much looking forward to all of that.
- [31:35]
Kai Tang
Me too.
- [31:36]
Nilay Patel
All right, Kai, thank you for doing this. Keep us posted. We'll probably have you back on when the phone actually launches and we'll just get weird about Flip phone hinges here on the vergecast. But until then, thank you for being here.
- [31:47]
Kai Tang
Thank you for having me.
- [31:49]
Nilay Patel
All right, that's it for the show. Thanks again to Kai for being here and thank you as always, for watching and listening. If you have thoughts, feelings, if you have feature requests for the light flip, if you want to build some software for it, you actually can. There's a new SDK. I want to hear all of your ideas about what a device like this needs to really work like in a big mainstream way. So get at us. Vergecastheverge.com is the email 866 verge11 is the hotline. I want to hear from you about all of that and everything else. And as a reminder, the best thing you could do to support everything that we're up to here at the Verge and on the Verge podcast is to subscribe to the Verge theverge.com subscribe it gets you all of our podcasts ad free, including this one. It gets you all of our exclusive newsletters. It gets you all of our coverage. We've been covering the Light phone for like 12 years now and there's a lot of great stories. We had a reporter spend like a year trying to live with one of these things for a while and write about it a long time ago. Really fun story. Totally holds up. Go get it all. Theverge.com subscribe the Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast network. The show is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer and Travis Larchuk. We will see you next time. Rock and roll.
- [32:56]
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