Wise Phone vs Light Phone: Which Minimalist Phone is Better?

Wise phone and Light phone II have minimalist designs and features. Both phones have standard features, such as phone calls, text messaging, and GPS systems, but I think they have excellent side benefits and are unnecessary. One of the phones stood out as the clear winner in every category.

Let’s compare the Light phone vs the Wise phone to know which phone stands out in 2024.

Wise Phone vs Light Phone 2

GPS

Wise Phone: Wisephone’s GPS is a pleasure after experiencing the Lightphone II. When you enter your destination, you can immediately receive directions. The display is full-screen and includes a blue line showing my route.

The audio turn-by-turn direction is correct. You can search for a destination by name alone; no address is required. Every time, Wisephone was able to find me and guide me to the nearest location.

Light Phone II: GPS is a big deal on any phone. Soft Phone 2 can’t have GPS installed, but functionally, it is better to save memory space, and not install couldn’t get started; it may take 5 to 10 minutes to connect to the satellite and start getting real-time directions.

This is revealed the first time you start your phone. Because of this, using GPS requires planning. You can’t open it while sitting in your car, ready to drive. Even when the phone moved, it couldn’t recognize my location.

The Lightphone 2 does have audio guidance. With just my kids driving, we couldn’t use GPS because reading your phone screen while going is dangerous.

Screen

Wisephone comes with a complete and responsive touchscreen. Easily send texts with a tap. It features the elegance of Wise Phone’s typography and colour scheme to the familiar smartphone keyboard.

The Light Phone II features a matte e-ink screen. Outdoor visibility is good, but the e-ink technology feels slow. The Light Phone’s e-ink screen also leaves behind ghosting when changing screens.

If you’ve ever read on a Kindle or similar e-reader, you know that ghosting can be annoying when trying to read small print. And since the Light Phone has a 2.8-inch screen, texting can be difficult due to ghosting and slow refresh.

Sending Text message

Sending text messages on both phone models differs slightly from sending them on smartphones. Neither phone can send emojis, but tII’smojis will appear in the text messages you both receive.

Wise Phone: Sending text messages on the Wisephone is much easier than on the Lightphone II but less accessible than with a traditional smartphone. Wise Phone is the same size as a smartphone, so there is no need to rotate the screen to fit the keyboard. You can also quickly scroll and proofread long texts before sending them.

No severe errors occurred when sending or receiving text messages. Unlike Lightphone II, Wisephone supports pictures in text. The website from which Wisephone sends a text message on your phone can be accessed through FamilyPortal on your computer.

Wisephone falls short in two areas: speech-to-text and auto-correction. Currently, Wisephone does not have speech-to-text software. It’s easy to type, so I didn’t miss it too much, but this could be a deal breaker for someone with limited dexterity.

Wisephone’s auto-correction and predictive text aren’t as good as regular smartphones. The auto-correction feature works to some extent, but you often have to correct words manually. When correcting spelling manually, WisePhone does not consider what you type as part of an existing word but instead tries to place a capital letter in the middle of the corrected word. This forces me to go back and fix it.

Light Phone 2: The physical size of the Lightphone II is much smaller than modern smartphones. We appreciate having phones in our pockets, but sending text messages is difficult. When writing a text message, the screen automatically rotates to portrait orientation. Even with the screen turned, the Lightphone II’s keyboard is smaller than a standard smartphone.

Adding to the difficulty of use, the screen only shows two lines of text at a time, making it difficult to scroll up and read longer texts before sending them.

Fortunately, Lightphone II supports voice-to–text. During my trial period, I texted almost exclusively this way. It usually took two or three tries to reflect my words accurately in the text, but it was still easier than typing on the tiny keyboard.

A severe error occurred when sending a text message; the entire text draft was deleted when the phone restarted. However difficult it was to write, this encounter remains vivid.

One additional note is that the Lightphone II does not support MMS. When an image or link is texted to your Lightphone II, the text is automatically delivered to the email address registered on that phone.

You can also view the links and photos on your computer. I found this an easy solution for rendering MMS on an e-ink screen.

Online dashboard

Light Phone II and Wisephone have customizable online dashboards that allow you to adjust your phone’s settings and tools. However, Wisephone offers a more robust and secure dashboard called Family Portal (Beta).

Wise Phone

Light Phone II

Conclusion

If you want to escape the frenzy of social media and the wider digital world, there’s no harm in choosing one of the minimalist phones.

But we believe Wisephone offers a broader appeal. This is a phone that children can proudly carry without their parents worrying about. It’s affordable enough to be your first phone yet durable enough to last for years. It’s also a phone for professionals and adults who want to organize their digital lives.

So Wise phone is the clear winner in this trial. You can make calls and send and receive messages continuously, and there are I’mar GPS instructions. Wisephone also has an alarm, notes, flashlight, camera and storage, and a calculator.