Lite made a foldable phone. It’s colorful and cheap.

Kaiwei Tang helped create the icon Motorola Razr More than 20 years ago. Now, 10 years later, Light, the startup behind the minimalist alternative to smartphones, was born Light phonehe is as surprised as anyone that his clients are begging him Flip the phone.

“We’ve been interviewing young people who have been using foldable phones for a few years,” Tang told TechCrunch, describing a pattern his team kept encountering: Gen Z users love their foldable phones but say the build quality is poor. “They describe foldable phones in negative language, but they stick to it, and they feel proud.”

So Tang and co-founder Joe Holler came up with an idea. what if a light Did you take the fast, custom software from the last three touchscreen phones and put it into a foldable phone? That’s how they decided to create the Light Flip, the most affordable device Light has ever released.

“What we’re doing is providing the same Light Phone experience, the same Light Phone operating system with our SDK developer software, and all the tools we have today: alarm clock, calculator, calendar…” Holler told TechCrunch. “It’s exactly the same experience, only one is all touch, no touch screen, and (the other) one is a full touch screen experience.”

Pricing has always been the toughest issue for Light as a small hardware startup. How can you sell a “lesser” phone for a price people will actually pay, when the entire offering is fewer features? The previous version, the unlocked Light Phone III, retails for $799. But the Light Flip brings the cost down to $299 by dropping a touchscreen, NFC reader, and selfie camera. The Light Flip is also made of plastic, rather than the sturdier aluminum, but this means that for the first time, Light can offer one of its phones in a range of colours: black, red, yellow, pink, dark blue and light grey.

“I thought I was using a full QWERTY keyboard, but I’ve been enjoying T9 predictive texting (the old-school way of typing multiple letters per number), so I can see myself using a mobile phone for colors as well,” Holler said. “Just having a yellow phone makes me feel cheerful.”

Beyond the sticker price, Lite is also testing the financing method. Recently workout Telephone contracts with Andrew Yang’s anti-destructive carrier Nabil’s mobile. With Light’s service plan, customers can get Light Flip for a two-year contract at $39 per month; The Light Phone III will be available for $59 per month during the same time frame.

The Light Flip only has a 2.8-inch OLED display on the inside and no display on the outside, as requested by users. However, there will be a small light on the front of the phone, so you can see if you have notifications without unlocking the device. With 5G and 4GLTE connectivity, the Light Flip can download online podcasts and play music you upload to your phone, which you can listen to via a 3.5mm headphone jack or Bluetooth headphones. It charges via USB-C, works with both eSIMs and physical Nano SIM cards, and includes a 12-megapixel camera on the back.

The Light Flip is expected to ship in April 2027, which Light admits is a long time coming. To keep pre-ordering customers engaged (and, in practice, to prevent them from canceling before it ships), the company is launching a new “Flip Your Life” program, including bi-monthly newsletters to help people prepare for their lifestyle adjustment to ditch the smartphone. It’s as much a community building move as it is a marketing move. By building a support network around the phone, Lite hopes the transition to using its products will be less difficult and lasting.

While Light believes its phones can help people reclaim time they might regret spending on mindless browsing, the founders admit it’s not easy to stop using smartphones. It’s hard to sacrifice the convenience of instant internet access, Apple Pay, music streaming, and convenient communication tools like WhatsApp and iMessage, and it’s easier for mobile fans to make the shift when they’re not going through it alone.

“I think there’s something very inspiring about that a movement “It doesn’t just come from a place of anger and hatred… it’s a movement of optimism, as well as doubt,” Hollier said. “I think that’s what we’ve always tried to do with Light. We’re anti-big tech in all these ways, but we’re always trying to show that the other side of life can be really simple and beautiful.