[hn_throwaway_99]

> the biggest downside to the Light Phone I can envision for most people is the absence of apps like Uber, Apple Pay and Spotify.

You've hit it spot on. I got a light phone years ago to help cure my cell phone addiction, but it was too problematic. I still need to use the "tools" of my phone - things like Maps, Uber, authenticator apps, texting, etc., but I just wanted to block the "dopamine dealers" like social media and the browser.

The best I've gotten to so far is to permanently enable "focus mode" on my phone. Of course I can still disable it, but I've noticed the number of times I just automatically start browsing the web or whatever when I'm even just a tad bored, and having those apps blocked is at least just a reminder to me of "Do you really want to do this right now?"

[pcchristie]

I'm with you. As I mentioned elsewhere, I'd have a Light Phone if it could use Telegram and a few other "essentials." Throw in a good camera and it'd be incredible.

At the moment I use greyscale mode on my Pixel and have uninstalled apps, only using them in the browser if I "need to." It's not much, but adding that small friction helps somewhat.

[skydhash]

Some more friction, use a password manager and change the password to a really long string of characters, then don't install the password manager on the phone.

[CadmiumYellow]

I tried a Light Phone as well and I found that it made texting so difficult it was basically useless to me as a phone. I then tried a basic flip phone which was more useful but ultimately still added too much friction to my life to be worth it. Now I'm back to my iPhone. It would be great if Apple created the equivalent of those minimalist Android launchers that allow you to remove distracting apps and simplify the UI. At the end of the day a phone is a tool and none of the minimalist phones currently in existence work well enough to be a useful tool for me.