Get All Access for $5/mo

This Is the Teeny-Tiny Phone That Wants You to Leave Your Real Phone Behind The Light Phone is a credit-card sized phone that does basically nothing.

By Catherine Clifford

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

The Light Phone

You are sitting at dinner with friends and, in between bites, you look down at your email. You are in a meeting at the office and, as your boss drones on, you check your Instagram feed. You are at a party and you break your dance jam every 10 minutes to see if you've had any action on your online dating profile. Your grandpa is talking to you about his childhood and you glance down at your Twitter feed.

The beauty of smartphones is that they are mini computers we can take with us anywhere. They are tiny and portable and powerful and it's easy to let them slide into our lives at any moment, in all moments.

But that's the problem. Often, they take us out of the moment.

That's why visual artist Joe Hollier and a phone designer Kaiwei Tang are creating The Light Phone. It's a credit-card sized gadget that runs in partnership with your smartphone, but only allows a user to take and make phone calls. It lasts for 20 days on a single battery charge.

Related: Reality Check: You Need to Care About More Than Your Business

The idea is for you to leave your smartphone at home and venture into the great wide world with your eyes open and looking around you, seeing what there is to see, without being able to obsessively check your smartphone. At the same time, you won't have to miss a call from mom. Or your husband or wife or kid. The Light Phone app will allow you to forward calls from only the numbers you want to get forwarded. Your helicopter boss? Nope, not getting forwarded.

Hollier and Tang met at the Google's 30 Weeks incubator in New York City and are currently raising money for their first production run of The Light Phone on Kickstarter. So far, they have raised $113,000 and, with 39 days left in the campaign, are looking to raise $200,000.

A campaign backer who contributes $100 or more will receive a non-phone phone. The projected ship date for the phones is a year from now -- May of 2016.


Related: While You Obsess About Your Business, Don't Forget About Your Body
Catherine Clifford

Frequently covers crowdfunding, the sharing economy and social entrepreneurship.

Catherine Clifford is a senior writer at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was the small business reporter at CNNMoney and an assistant in the New York bureau for CNN. Catherine attended Columbia University where she earned a bachelor's degree. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. Email her at CClifford@entrepreneur.com. You can follow her on Twitter at @CatClifford.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick

Starting a Business

How to Connect With Buyers and Get Your Products on Store Shelves, According to the Founder of Daring and Cadence

Ross MacKay, founder and original CEO of the plant-based food company Daring Foods and co-founder of performance beverage brand Cadence, shares the strategies that have landed his products in over 40,000 stores nationwide.

Growing a Business

Being a Good Manager Isn't Enough — Here Are 5 Leadership Skills That Will Keep Your Employees Around

The article outlines five key leadership skills — engagement culture, effective staffing strategies, AI utilization, shared team reality, and work-life balance — that can improve team performance and reduce turnover, fostering sustainable growth and innovation.

Starting a Business

'Wait, I Have to Pay to Donate to You?' How Nonprofits Are Flipping the Script With 'For Profit' Strategies to 10X Their Impact

Spiraling donations and outdated dogmas around fundraising and operating costs have left many charities struggling to stay afloat. Some are trying new strategies to make money.

Business Solutions

Amp up Productivity with MS Office 2021 for Just $60

Unlock the full potential of your business with a lifetime license to the suite of beloved apps.

Leadership

Joe Biden's Job Is Finished, Now What? Lessons and Cautionary Tales About Life After Power From Former Presidents.

In the book, "Life After Power," author Jared Cohen examines seven presidents' search for purpose after leaving the White House.

Starting a Business

How to Find the Right Programmers: A Brief Guideline for Startup Founders

For startup founders under a plethora of challenges like timing, investors and changing market demand, it is extremely hard to hire programmers who can deliver.