If you were looking for a sign to try out a “dumb phone,” here it is: the trendy, minimalist Light Phone is joining forces with Noble Mobile, a phone network founded by entrepreneur and politician Andrew Yang that gives you money back if you use less data.
On Tuesday, 500 Light Phone III models will be in stock and ready to ship through Noble Mobile. The catch is that you have to sign up for a two-year Noble Mobile phone plan at $50 per month, which comes out to $1,200 for the contract.
As those who have been curious about the Light Phone may know, this is the first time ever that the Light Phone III will be available immediately, and without paying its $699 cost up front. If you were to buy the Light Phone III without the Noble Mobile plan, the company estimates that you wouldn’t get your phone until September.
“I think what’s exciting about the Noble launch is not just that the barrier to entry is lower. It’s the first time that we’ve ever had the Light Phone III available for an immediate purchase,” Light co-founder Joe Hollier told TechCrunch.
Hollier and his co-founder Kaiwei Tang met in 2014 at Google’s 30 Weeks incubator, which was specifically geared toward artists and designers. They created the Light Phone, a device that has generated buzz and curiosity over the last decade.
The Light Phone offers a middle ground between a hyperconnected iPhone and a clunky flip phone with a T-9 keypad, appealing to an ever-growing audience of people who feel like they’re in a parasitic relationship with their smartphone. But as a small startup competing with mass producers like Samsung and Apple, Light Phone has struggled to ship its devices at an affordable rate without wait times; the ongoing RAM shortage isn’t exactly helping either. Since the Light Phone III launched last spring, the company has shipped 20,000 devices.
The hope is that for some customers, the “catch” of signing up for a Noble Mobile contract comes as a benefit. For a mobile plan with unlimited talk, text, and data, $50 per month is reasonable. But the gimmick behind Noble Mobile is that if you use less than 20 GB of data in a month …