The Light Phone III and the search for the perfect minimalist smartphone

Smartphones are great. They’re also… a lot. The idea of a more balanced device, one that gives you all of the most important and useful features of a smartphone but keeps you out of the infinite-doomscrolling loops, has been an enticing one for a long time. Nailing that balance, though, turns out to be almost impossible.

On this episode of The Vergecast, we try and get it right. The Verge’s Allison Johnson joins the show to talk about the new Light Phone III, and then we run through a list of a few dozen things your phone can do and we wonder if your perfect, sane, functional phone should be able to do them. Some things are easy, some are surprisingly difficult. We’re still not sure what to do with Snapchat.

Finally, we answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11, or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about whether anyone is working on an in-home camera that can tell you where you left the scissors. It’s a tricky problem to solve, but there are a lot of folks working on it. (Maybe not specifically for scissors, though.)

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started: