GoKawiilLight is the latest mobile phone manufacturer to look to the past to find inspiration. The company, known for creating intentionally minimalist mobile designs, unveiled its first flip phone Tuesday.
At $299, the Light Flip is the first of the company’s models to start a completely new product line rather than drawing from a previous design. The new flip phone is far more affordable than Light’s previous phone, the $799 Light Phone 3.
It has all the hallmarks of a classic flip phone, including a 2.8-inch internal screen, a tactile T9 button layout, a circular cursor and home and volume buttons on the side of its plastic chassis. A 3.5-mm headphone jack feels delightfully analog, but the phone also supports USB-C charging and has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 5G connectivity.
When the Light Flip is folded up, it’s just 4.3 inches long — smaller than your iPhone 17. It’s a petite device, and even has a built-in keychain loop.
The Light Flip phone occupies a niche for people looking for a low-key device that cuts down on the constant stressors and distractions of modern life. There’s no internet browser, no social media and no color at all on the phone’s monochrome OLED display. The Light Flip doesn’t even include the color camera preview mode of previous Light Phone models, largely because it doesn’t have a touchscreen.
Essentially, the Light Flip appears to be aiming to deliver the bare essentials of a mobile phone with the power of modern hardware, which is precisely what makes a device like this appealing.
What to expect with the Light Flip
The Light Flip runs on the company’s custom-built operating system, LightOS, which supports the same apps as the Light Phone 3. It includes call and text functionality, navigation, a music player, an alarm clock, a calculator and a notes app. There’s also a 50-megapixel main camera and a front-facing 12-megapixel selfie camera.
Despite its back-to-basics philosophy, the Light Flip has 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM.
There’s no Google Play Store to download apps from, but the recently released open-source LightOS developer program is native to this model, which means folks can create and share more tools for the device. (That onboard storage might come in handy for more than photos and videos when new software gets added to the developer library.)
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