Searching for the perfect minimalist smartphone

The Vergecast

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Tech News, Technology

4.4 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2025

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

David has a Light Phone III, and it's making him wonder a lot of things about technology. So The Verge's Allison Johnson joins the show to talk about the whole trend of minimalist smartphones, and to figure out which features a smartphone absolutely needs, and which ones we could all probably do without. After that, The Verge's Andy Hawkins takes us through a big weekend in the Tesla Takedown movement, what's happening with Elon Musk's car company, how automakers are responding to impending tariffs, and whether we're wrong to be excited about the new Nissan Leaf. Finally, The Verge's Jen Tuohy answers a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11, or email [email protected]!) about all-seeing cameras in our homes. Which mostly don't exist yet. Mostly. Further reading: Light Phone III review: everything in moderation There’s no perfect minimalist phone — yet One year with the Light Phone 2 We went to 10 anti-Tesla protests — and a couple counter protests, too ‘Tesla Takedown’ protesters planning ‘biggest day of action’ How Elon Musk turned the Tesla brand so toxic The Nissan Leaf lives on as a compact SUV with a Tesla charge port Ring’s latest security camera is a drone that flies around inside your house Project Astra is the future of AI at Google Alexa Plus arrives with promise but plenty of questions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of automotive tariff coverage.
0:08.6	Somehow that's true.
0:10.0	Didn't really set out to do that here.
0:12.0	And yet, sometimes that's what we do.
0:14.7	I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here on a very warm afternoon trying to decide how far into the light phone three life
0:24.4	I'm ready to go. So I have the light phone three. If you don't know about the light phone,
0:29.1	it's basically this sort of decade old project from this company called light, trying to figure
0:34.7	out like what is the least amount of phone a regular person
0:38.9	needs? So if you think about it, it's like, okay, you need a phone that makes phone calls,
0:42.6	you need a phone that sends text messages, you probably need some kind of navigation. I think in
0:46.6	2025 you need a camera. What else? What do you need that isn't social media? It isn't web browsing.
0:52.7	It isn't all the distracting problematic stuff
0:55.0	we're actually trying to get rid of on our phones
0:57.3	and do less of.
0:58.6	What if you could just have a phone that did the essentials
1:00.6	and nothing else?
1:02.2	I've been using this phone for a while,
1:03.5	and it's not all the way there,
1:06.1	but it's pretty close.
1:07.7	And I think it's close in some really interesting ways.
1:10.1	But the thing for me is,
1:11.0	like, I'm just not going to stop using a smartphone. Part of the thing is, like, I do this
	...

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