I have read some articles about the Light Phone and other “minimalist” phones. As someone who wrote not one but two articles on my “ideal” phone concept (creative concept photography included), I am always interested in seeing new ideas in the space. I called for open source software, QWERTY keyboard, and an e-ink screen. The Light Phone, which seems to be one of the more oft-covered “minimalist” phones, checks the e-ink box, but not the other two. Does that change with the new Light Phone? Not so, according to Brad Linder’s insightful report titled Light Flip is a flip phone with minimalist design and features (plus a keypad and T9 predictive text). Alas, “T9 predictive test” gives away the failure. I had a non-BlackBerry QWERTY “dumb” phone back in my high school days in the latter half of the 2000s. How are the smartphone alternatives still failing this? With that being said, while I am not so interested in a phone to fight smart phone addiction, as I am not a smart phone addict and do not think that is the way to defeat smart phone addiction in any event, a QWERTY keyboard would make the Light Phone plausibly interesting at the new model’s $300 price point. Hint: Focus more on making a genuinely good and interesting phone and less on convincing people who like to humble brag about their struggles with “phone addiction” in newspaper op-eds.