Now Light’s minimalist telephone can simply name an Uber

More than a decade after its Kickstarter proposed a “cell phone designed to be used as little as possible,” Light is adding a direct connection to Uber and Lyft with a brand new Rideshare software. For house owners of both the Light Phone III or the upcoming Light Flip, they’ll use it to search out choose up / drop off places, see fares and ETA, and choose completely different journey choices or saved places they regularly go to. They can use it to e book the trip, after which see details about the driving force and ETA, and name the driving force if obligatory.

It’s an early preview of the LightOS “tool library” SDK that may permit builders to develop the telephones’ options whereas nonetheless promising to attenuate feeds and notifications. A weblog put up from Light says that “We’ll open up user submissions for the Tool Library by the end of this month, and look forward to having those available to everyone a few weeks after that!”

The rideshare integration works through a partnership with Tremp, which already operates an SMS-based approach to order rideshares, and customers arrange entry through Light’s dashboard web site, identical to different LightOS instruments. It’s not free to make use of, nonetheless, as Tremp costs a ten % service payment with a $2 minimal, however it can waive that payment for the primary 5 rides inside 30 days of making an account.

The photos present all the required options working, though we should see it in operation to search out out if there are any hang-ups. The enlargement of app-like options on a minimalist smartphone might sound counterintuitive, however Light cofounder Kaiwei Tang has addressed that beforehand, saying, “I’m not trying to design vintage phones… I want to design all this modern technology, from the ground up, and eliminate all the bullshit.”

That’s why including one characteristic customers completely want entry to — whether or not it’s a approach to name for a trip, entry to Spotify playlists, or one thing else — may be a approach to preserve them from swapping again to a different system with extra algorithms and alerts that consistently pop up.