Flip phones are so back

The team at Light has been working on minimalist phones for more than a decade. Its last device had a lot in common with a smartphone, but the newest model, the Light Flip, is something very different. Light CEO Kaiwei Tang explains why Light made a flip phone, how the world's opinion of smartphones is changing, and whether you can cure your tech problems with more tech. Further reading: ⁠Apple launches ‘Upgrade’ program to lease new devices⁠ ⁠Apple’s reported ‘HomePad’ may launch as early as October⁠ ⁠X Money is launching in the US starting today⁠ ⁠The Light Flip is a minimalist flip phone with a point to prove⁠ ⁠Light Phone III review: everything in moderation⁠ ⁠The high hopes of the low-tech phone⁠ ⁠There’s no perfect minimalist phone — yet⁠ ⁠Subscribe to The Verge⁠ for unlimited access to ⁠theverge.com⁠, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ⁠ad-free podcast feed⁠. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to ⁠[email protected]⁠ or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, flagship podcast of T9 texting. I'm your friend David Pierce and today on the show, we're going to talk about minimalist phones, specifically the new Light Flip, a very cool kind of minimalist smartphone, maybe call it a dumb phone, device from a company called Light that has spent more than the last decade trying to figure out how to frankly, rescue you from your smartphone. I think the world has changed in a lot of ways that makes sense for what Light has been trying to do for a long time. And I also think Light has changed in some really interesting ways. So Kai Tang, the CEO and co-founder of Light, is going to come on the show. We're going to talk about what it takes to make a great flip phone in 2026 and why in the world you would even want to do that. But first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds on The Verge

• 0:46Speaker 00

  for Tuesday, July 28, 2026. Apple just officially launched its new upgrade program, which essentially allows you to lease Apple devices. The system works like this. You pay for a device in installments. You get a MacBook Air for 25 bucks a month or you pay $12 a month and you get an iPad Air. After 24 months, you can either pay the rest and keep it. You can upgrade to the latest model and keep financing or you can just return it and be done. This is all obviously happening to make it more palatable to buy new Apple gear, which, like everything else in tech, is getting seemingly more expensive by the day. But if you're asking me, you should buy nice things and keep them longer, not get in the habit of renting gadgets. Meanwhile, there might be a new upgrade in that program relatively soon. Bloomberg reported today that Apple is about to start

• 1:30Speaker 00

  a big push into the smart home and that it could launch a new smart home hub as soon as this October. It sounds like a HomePod crossed with an iPad. Does that make sense? There's also a new Apple TV and a new HomePod Mini coming soon. And it seems like even the robot arm with a screen we've been hearing about might really be happening. But all of this is really based on Siri AI. If Apple's assistant is finally good, it could be a game changer. But that's a big if. And finally, Xmoney, the payment platform that Elon Musk has been promising for some time, is finally rolling out to the US to Premium and Premium Plus X users. This is a big part of the whole plan to make X the everything app and has been part of the plan since Musk bought the platform, formerly known as Twitter, all the way back in 2022. But I don't know, y'all. I'm not sure mixing social media

• 2:15Speaker 00

  and super easy money transfers is a really good idea. You can read more about all of this at theverge.com. That is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Tuesday, July 28.

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• 3:32Speaker 00

  All right, let's talk phones. Joining me now, Kai Tang, the CEO and co-founder of Light. Welcome to the show.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  So you and I have talked intermittently over the last, I would say, decade about what are we going to do about all of these smartphones? And I think we've come to a really fun point in that conversation that I am eager to get to. But I do just kind of want to rewind all the way back to the beginning. I was back on your Kickstarter page from 2015 looking at the original Light phone. There's a video of baby Kai explaining what you're doing. But I was struck in reading the Kickstarter page and watching the video that you didn't come into this, as far as I could tell, with grand theories about defeating the smartphone and addiction to technology. You were building something else, maybe something more specific.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  So rewind me back a decade or so. What were you thinking about smartphones the very first time you set out to make what became the first Light phone?

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Almost like a reaction. I remember reaction to the observation or just the weirdness I felt when I was in public, right? Watching people sitting in the park with their family on their phone, in the restaurant, everyone swiping in train station, airport. And I think at the time, my co-founder Joe Holly and I were in this incubator that Google started for designers as well. So we had the chance to speak to a lot of VCs, really successful entrepreneur app, specifically platforms. And obviously being kind of encouraged to that direction.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  But I remember just vividly that almost everyone's talking about the traction of how much time their users spend in the app. You know, bragging about, oh, my users spend two hours in my game. That's why we could collect all this data. You know, we'd synthesize it and we could sell it to the highest bidder. I mean, not in those honest words, but that's exactly what happened.

• 5:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. That was peak engagement, right? That was everybody's favorite metric at the time, was how long can we keep you here? That is an unalloyed good thing if we can keep you in our app.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. And the business model makes sense. I get it. It's very efficient, which is why Meta, Google or Facebook, Twitter are a billion-dollar company. It's very efficient. I get it. But at the same time, you know, I was asking myself, what about me? What about my time? All I wanted to do was just use this specific tool, like getting a direction home or getting a Uber home. Why do I have to suffer through advertisement? So I want to build a phone for myself that just have the right, just have the thing I wanted to do and then move on. And we did a test with, I think, 20 participants at a time that took away, we took away the smartphone, asked people to go out for a couple of hours,

• 6:31Speaker 03

  for a day, come back and tell us how they feel. And almost everyone said, oh, wait, I spent two hours in a museum in MoMA. I remember seeing this. I remember talking to this guy. Oh, I was in grocery stores. I don't have nothing to swipe. I was nervous. But then someone talked to me and we start talking about this and that. And everyone feel like they're freed. They feel like they're outside a cage. They feel, they're saying that, oh, this is the best hours after day, the best day after the week. And I think that's sort of solidify this direction of we want to offer, design offer something that I would encourage people

• 7:14Speaker 03

  to break away from this 24/7 connection.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  Okay, I wanted to start there because I want to explain to you sort of my sense of the timeline since then. And then I want to know if the way you've experienced it, making products, matches the way that I've seen it sort of reporting on and living in this world. So I think back then, 2015, 2016, that experience you had and the way that you were feeling about technology, there were definitely people who felt that way. And I think if you sort of explained people, it was a real kind of this is water phenomenon that if you were like, look around at all of these people looking at their phones instead of playing with their children, people would be like, oh, sure. But I don't think most people were feeling that super acutely about themselves in their day-to-day life. And then I think we got to the point where, you know, fast forward a few years,

• 8:03Speaker 00

  we get through Cambridge Analytica, we start to experience a real tech backlash. There is this sense that I'm spending too much time on my phone. The algorithmic feeds start to come in. And I think then we get to a point where everybody kind of intellectually understands that they would like to use their smartphone less. And I think then COVID happens and throws this, makes this all weird because we all sit in front of screens on our phones for a year because there's nothing else to do. But leaving that one aside, I think there was this sense for a long time that if you asked somebody, do you spend too much time on your smartphone? They would probably say yes. And then if you ask, are you doing anything about it? And really deep down, are you interested in doing anything about it? Most people would say no. And then I think you get to the last, I don't know, 18 months? And it feels like something has flipped

• 8:47Speaker 00

  that actually, in a really meaningful way, maybe as a response to the ever-encroaching algorithms, maybe as a response to AI, people are not only understanding that they want to make these changes and that they ought to make these changes and that these things are an incursion in their lives, but are actually actively doing something about it. Is that, again, you've been selling people phones along these lines this whole time. Does my experience of this match yours? Or have you seen it happen differently?

• 9:19Speaker 03

  No, I think it's somewhat similar. I think of the use analogy that using your smartphone is like smoking. Smoking used to be cool and indoor, you could smoke without, you wanna smoke, right? No one, no one say anything about it.

• 9:34Speaker 00

  And it's a fun one, because for a long time, nobody knew it was a problem. It was, it was like, it was, it was not an issue.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then, and then, and then at some point, this whole society's attitude towards smoking changed. I mean, partially because education, partially because awareness. And then, and then the government start to find, try to find policy to change. And, and people start to like, you know, like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, asking people, oh, don't smoke around my, uh, around me and stuff like that. I think this is, this is really similar to the track, uh, trajectory of smoking, okay? Smoking cool, oh, maybe not, oh, let's not smoke. Right? And, and smartphone is the same thing. I think it's like, oh, you know, smartphone social media is so good, so very, very helpful network.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  And getting the community together is like, oh, I feel horrible. Oh, you know, like, I spend so, so much time on it, what do I do? And then, you know, now we're in the, in, in this phase of what government do? What can we do? What parents do?

• 10:34Speaker 00

  This feels like a good segue to your new device, the Light Flip, which I think is frankly not the device I expected you to make. I think the, the sort of march of Light Phone has been, and again, you and I have talked about this many times, towards this question of what is the least you need to do in order to replace people's smartphones in a sort of meaningful way? Because I think the learning from the first phone was phone calls is not enough. We, you, you made a thing that made phone calls and people were like, well, I need, I need a phone that does two or three other things in order for me to leave it alone. And then you give them those couple of things and they say, oh, but wouldn't it be awesome if I could do these other few things? And everybody has two things and everybody's list is different. And I, I've, you know, I've had this conversation with so many people trying to make these sort of minimalist devices over the years.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  And it's like, you, you eventually get to the point where you say, okay, most people in the world use WhatsApp. Let's give them WhatsApp. And then you're one small step away from just installing Android and giving people an Android phone. And so finding that line, I think, is really hard. But with the Light Phone 3, I think you were getting closer. And you, you were, when you shipped the thing, you were still working on some of the stuff. NFC was still coming, video chat was still coming. But you were, you were sort of on this road to, we're going to nail this middle ground of what a minimalist smartphone is supposed to be, that sort of looks and feels and operates like a smartphone, but is, is able to do some of the stuff. And then you just took a big right turn into a completely different form factor. Tell me about that right turn.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course. Uh, I, I mean, I, I never thought about creating or bring back Flip phone again. Uh, to be honest with you, because that's where my career started.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  Is it really? I didn't know that.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. After graduate school, I went to design school. After that, uh, uh, I was part of a broader team that, that tried to bring Motorola Razr to life.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  And I never thought about, I'm gonna be working on designing a flip phone again. But the last two years, we just got so many people emailing us saying, oh, I love Light Phone. Well, sorry, bragging about myself. Oh, I love what you guys are trying to do. Uh, uh, uh, and, and, and can, but I don't wanna be seen using a smartphone. Can you just, can you build a flip phone? I love flip phone. And I was like, maybe this is just our line. But we keep getting those requests from, from, especially young, younger than me, uh, uh, generations that wanted a flip phone. And I, I also, I mean, I keep thinking this might be just a, you know, the, the nostalgia, uh, retro, you know, temporary thing. And so I, we're getting, keep getting those emails.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  So I said, I set out to interview, uh, I think 15, uh, uh, young people that use flip phone religiously. And so I start talking to them. I was like, dude, like, you know, I, I know you know Light Phone. Uh, uh, and how do you feel about flip phone? Why do you stick with flip phone? And they're like, oh, my flip phone sucked. They are ugly. They're stupid. And, and there's no updates, you know, uh, uh, I can't repair them. And I, I switched like five phones since like two twenty, uh, two thousand nine. And they, but they stick with it. And I was like, well, you know, you know Light Phone, you could get a Light Phone, you can get a, uh, whatever phone you wanna get. Like, why stick with the flip phone? And there's a couple of things. Number one, it's very affordable, you know? So they wanna get a flip phone.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  Number two, they love the satisfaction of opening up. And you could shut it down and flip down and the technology goes away. It represents something. It's almost like a badge of honor for some people. That I could flip down the technology and goes away, right? There's no screen, well, some of them still have screen outside, but it goes away.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  It sounds so ridiculous to say that out loud, but I'm absolutely convinced there is something real to that. I really, yeah, that, that there is something to saying, I am finished with my phone now and you close it. There is something, there is something in that that I think is honestly powerful.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  We do that all the time. We, we put our smartphone face down, the same, the same idea. They love that action. And then we heard from some hardcore flip phone, flip phone users that they just don't wanna be seen using a glass, like texting on a glass. You know, and they, they want this flip, they want this phone factor. This phone factor represents something else to them. I think it presents a, almost like a movement they, they are wholeheartedly believe in. Or it's opposite of all this AI everywhere, uh, all this invasive, uh, uh, practice or AI, everything you touch, and what does that benefit me? Right? A lot of them ask, have that question too, like, what does that got to do with me?

• 15:06Speaker 03

  I have that question too. What, what's all this thing got to do with me? I know the benefit. I know the use case. Some use case is really helpful. But I think this generation, uh, at least from my understanding, I don't speak for them. But my understanding, they, they don't, they value their own, you know, like, uh, freedom. They, they, they don't wanna subscribe to the, to, to the gender that, that, that technology company are pushing. You know, they value real life experience.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  So the implication here is that it's actually not just a, a sort of individual tool for not using your smartphone so much. It's actually a status symbol. It's, it's like, this is so funny, because I think, again, you, you and I came up in the age where you, like, I remember who my last friend was to get a smartphone. And we all made fun of them for still having a flip phone when everybody else had smartphones. Because it's like, oh, well, you're, you're just, you're the loser being left behind by technology. And you're saying that now, you know, two decades later, that has come all the way back around. And actually, you're, what, what you're saying is like, if you're 17, you're looking at your friends' smartphones, being like, oh, you're the, you're the sheep beholden to big tech companies. I'm free. Look at my flip phone. I love, I love that so much. It's so ridiculous, but I love it so much.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  But I'm different. It's like similar to how when iPhone first in, uh, uh, on the market, right? People feel when they buy this object, they feel they're different kind of person. It represents what their belief system. I have entertainment center with a laptop, my, my tablet. You know, I, I know I could do social media things and emails here and there. And I, I don't wanna carry this thing 24/7. And this is, this is something we've been talking about too. Like, I'm not asking people to give up technology. We're trying to say, it's different, we have different car, different shoes, different jacket, designed for different purpose, higher price, lower price, different purpose, right? When it comes to phone, the last 20 years, for some reason, it just has to be smartphone. And it all look the same anyway. iPhone, Android, App Store, all the same anyway.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  And there's no other option. Well, you could obviously buy a flip phone 20 years ago, it's 2G, 3G, reception sucks, no one care about it. Uh, no one's selling them, uh, coverage is horrendous. And there's no other option. And it's just like, so unbalanced. Um, and, and yeah, that's, I guess that's where we come in.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  Okay. So tell me about the process of designing a flip phone for 2026.

• 17:27Speaker 03

  I think the phone factor, obviously, the product looks different as a flip phone. But I actually think the software, it's, it's what, what those group of people already, um, um, value. Meaning that our, the, the Light Phone, Light Flip and Light Phone 3 software, user interface, operating system are essentially the same. And we have a toolbox or tool library, I call it, AKA App Store, a tool library that we in our community created and that has just essential tools. And that will apply to both Light Phone 3 and Light Flip. So you still have all the modern essential tools that we design, uh, as a company and the community created for Light Phone.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  And those tools will follow the same principle of no advertisement, do one thing well, um, and no infinite fee, right? So, you know, the, the tool will continue to grow. I wanna give everyone, like we talk about, give everyone all the modern essential tools I can create. We're just slow because we're, we're smaller. Uh, but I wanna have a box, toolbox has all the tools that you need. And you can use that on Light Phone 3 or Light Flip. And so essentially software design are the same, it's similar with Light Phone 3, that now hasn't changed. But the flip phone, we take away touch, touchscreen for the phone factors. And all the navigation settings will suit the navigation pad.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Is that again because people, people are like, I don't wanna be seen typing on glass? Like, in, in a very real way, you're like, we have to make it not look like this is a smartphone cut in half? We have to actually change the interaction system here?

• 19:02Speaker 03

  Well, I think, you know, there's no point touching the screen with the keypad. So I just, I always, I always say this. Uh, uh, the whole keypad, we, I, I, I'm, I'm a big fan of Dita Rhim, uh, uh, the calculator's buttons. And I wanna recreate those buttons, be so tactile, design well with the curvature. So it press down and travel down well. So I wanna recreate those buttons with navigation pad. And with that pad, there's no point touching your screen. And you flip it down, there's a screen, you flip it up, there's no confusion of where to touch, right? And versus the Light Phone 3, right? Light Phone 3 is a glass screen, it's a touchscreen, so it makes sense. And I want the product to look visually, like, you know, it still has a little, uh, uh, speaker grill on the Light Flip.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  And when you open it, there's a screen and there's a key. That's it. So it's just honest and straightforward. Uh, that's how I usually design. Thanks.

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• 22:04Speaker 00

  What kind of technology was hard to do here? I mean, I think, especially this long into the smartphone revolution, I would assume it's actually, in a lot of ways, probably easier to build a smartphone than it is to build a flip phone in 2026. Is that true?

• 22:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is true. It is true. The caveat being, the problem being, because no one is making mass-producing flip phones. So a lot of components are, we need to revive them, we need to talk to suppliers to build it for the flip phone. Compared to smartphone, there's a lot of common parts, which also contribute to the cost, right? Smartphone company, it builds smartphone, a lot of common parts, a lot of suppliers, so price are lower. But if you try to make a customized phone, like Lightphone 3 or Lightflip, your cost, it just, it just, it just higher. It just, there's nothing, no way out.

• 22:57Speaker 00

  So give me an example. What's a hard thing inside of the Lightflip?

• 23:01Speaker 03

  Well, like a hinge. Who is making hinge now? Hinge, no one's making it. So there's still some vintage phones being built, but there's not a lot of suppliers fighting to build hinge. So suppliers fighting to build really good display. Memory. We all know what happened there with the memory. So those are like common components, lots of supply, a lot of their memory. And costs are cheaper. And like hinge, you know, a smaller display, even smaller displays are hard to find, especially high resolution. Because, you know, all smartphone are huge and big and entertainment center, right? So all components, sourcing components,

• 23:44Speaker 03

  are going to be more difficult for the phone.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's an interesting mix of, there's almost no one out there trying to do this thing and do it in a high-end way. And I don't even necessarily mean that as a knock on other flip phones. It's just that most of their purpose is to be

• 24:03Speaker 03

  Retro.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Very simple, very straightforward, very retro and very cheap, right? Like that is their job.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  And that's easy thing to do.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  There aren't a lot out there trying to make this thing nice in a sort of meaningful way.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I guess that's where we come in. Because you could obviously buy a 20 years ago vintage flip phone, the Shaw, the God, and just rebrand it and sell it. That's easy. I mean, not easy, but relatively easier. But we want to intentionally build this device, phone hardware, software, replaceable battery, will stand behind the flip phone as long as we're here to repair your device. We also, I also want to make it really affordable, which is why we launched with a $39 per month contract offer, comes with a SIM card, 1GB data unlimited top. So you pay $39 a month for your phone and your service plan. That's it for Lightflip.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  So I want to make it accessible, too. And we get all this feedback from Lightphone 3 that, oh, Lightphone 3 is so expensive, $6.99. I mean, I'll argue all day about that, but you know, I get it.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  On that front, actually, I think the price is one of the things that was striking to me, because it feels like sort of a return to form from the original Lightphone. Like, again, in a certain way, I feel like you've come all the way back around to, I think you spent some time, and you can confirm or deny this, but I think you spent some time trying really hard to convince people to not buy smartphones. You mentioned, hopefully, shipping early next year.

• 25:36Speaker 00

  Tell me about life as a hardware company right now. It is, we are deep in Ramageddon. Are you worried about this moment in trying to actually build and ship consumer devices for people?

• 25:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's pretty difficult, to be honest with you. Like, the tariff implementation since last year is horrendous. Our cost is exponentially higher. You can't move your factories anywhere else, because there's no one making things here that's affordable. Or we can move to a different country, but the tariff is different. And now memory, it's all being bought by data centers, AI data centers. And suppliers, it's obviously, you know, understandable, shifting the focus to supplying memory, DRAM to the AI servers. And all the consumer electronics can increase price, because we can't buy memories, we can't buy cheap memories, because they're all being used in AI centers.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  So I expect this price of all consumer electronic to increase very soon. So our life is difficult, but at the same time, we've been here for 11 years. We went through COVID, we went through tariff. Now memory is just another thing. And we are, we believe in what we're doing, with things I think is important, that this society, we have the option like this. And so, you know, we de-risk, diversify our platform. We're using a MediaTek platform versus Qualcomm. Lightphone 3 is using Qualcomm, Lightflip are using MediaTek. They all have different memory-approved vendors, so we could choose from. So, you know, we're not, we're not just,

• 27:17Speaker 03

  you know, limited to certain suppliers. So we try to diversify our vendor base. So at the same time, diversify manufacturers, so we de-risk ourselves. And the last thing would be, the last thing would be just our service plan bundle sales. I'll shamelessly promoting it, because it helps us de-risk, too. So the hardware sales are less sensitive to us, because the value that our customers give us, customers give us is not just one of hardware sales, it's a continuous revenue stream to support our software development and software growth in the company as well. The last few years, it's definitely difficult, but I think we've been here for decades now.

• 28:02Speaker 03

  We know what we're trying to do. We know where we could diversify to de-risk. So, and I'm excited about Lightflip. I think, you know, something like that is an option is necessary.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay. And then, last thing. Do you think there is a looming trend in this kind of gadget? I think we've been waiting for the disintermediation of the smartphone for some time now. And there's been this trend where everybody's going and buying old Canon Powershots.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  Wired headphones.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, wired headphones is a great example. But I think what we haven't seen yet is a new spin on those old devices, right? Canon has not put out the 2026 version of that Powershot. People are buying old ones. Do you think, do you think we're due for a new round of this new thinking on these kinds of old, pre-smartphone gadgets? Because there is this real interest in them?

• 29:02Speaker 03

  A single-purpose device, single-purpose object are always a thing. We just, we just try, we just went too far on cramping everything in a piece of glass. But, you know, like, I don't know, a really good speaker, Canon still make the camera. I don't, I think it's less about going back in time, retro product, but it's more about started this trend of designing single-purpose object. A typewriter, a camera, a phone, a chair, like, when an object designed for single purpose, we as a customer, a consumer user, we feel that. That's why when you pick up a Canon

• 29:46Speaker 03

  camera, or you sit on a really well-designed chair, you feel that. And that experience are way different than try to do everything on a single piece of glass. When you try to do that, I mean, I think some famous designers said that, not me, but when you're trying to design a thing, build a thing for everyone in every purpose, nothing is special. Like, you don't feel anything, because like I said, play your piano on your phone and guitar on phone, like, nothing is special. I remember this commercial from Apple, that's horrendous, that it's like new iPads squash all the, all the, yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  The creativity hat.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  All the guitar, all the pianos, all the paintings are into like a new iPad. I was like, dude, that's not what I want.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  But yeah, I think this single-purpose tool, device, product will always be there. I think we just start to realize, you know, we're going too far. And more people start to want to experience that specialty, special feeling when you use a single-purpose thing.

• 30:54Speaker 00

  I like it. I hope so. I have been, I have been sort of begging for you to be right for about the last four years. Again, it feels like the cultural energy is there, there's proof in the market that there's interest in this stuff. It feels like, the thing that worries me is that all of the RAM and memory shortage stuff is going to scare away a lot of potential hardware startups. But my hope is, we get through this and people get through this. And on the other side, there is just an explosion of weird new gadgets. And I am very much looking forward to all of that.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  Me, too.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  All right. Kai, thank you for doing this. Keep us posted. We're gonna, we'll probably have you back on when the phone actually launches. And we'll just get weird about flip phone hinges here on The Vergecast. But until then, thank you for being here.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me.

• 31:39Speaker 00

  All right, that's it for the show. Thanks again to Kai for being here. And thank you, as always, for watching and listening. If you have thoughts, feelings, if you have feature requests for the Lightflip, if you want to build some software for it, you actually can, there's a new SDK. I want to hear all of your ideas about what a device like this needs to really work, like in a big mainstream way. So get at us. [email protected] is the email, 866-VERGE11 is the hotline. I want to hear from you about all of that and everything else. And as a reminder, the best thing you can do to support everything that we're up to here at The Verge and on The Vergecast is to subscribe to The Verge. Theverge.com/subscribe. It gets you all of our podcasts ad-free, including this one. It gets you all of our exclusive newsletters. It gets you all of our coverage. We've been covering the Lightphone for like 12 years now. And there's a lot of great stories.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  We had a reporter spend like a year trying to live with one of these things for a while and write about it a long time ago. Really fun story, totally holds up. Go get it all. Theverge.com/subscribe. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Box Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. We will see you next time. Rock and roll.

• 32:46Speaker 02

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