“It’s a phone. It’s not entertainment. It’s not social media.” – Light Phone’s co-founders on going from designing the Motorola Razr 20 years ago to launching the Light Flip, and why Gen Z is leading the anti-smartphone backlash.

Catch up on Equity 👉

With the Light Phone, Kaiwei Tang and Joe Hollier have spent over a decade exploring the value of simplicity in our relationship to technology, partnering along the way with players like Andrew Yang, Kendrick Lamar, and Pete Davidson. Now, with a new flip phone and a growing wave of “attention activists” pushing back on big tech, they think the rest of the world is finally catching up to them.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Amanda Silberling talks with Tang and Hollier about the company’s newly announced flip phone, why they think the anti-smartphone backlash is only just getting started, and what it takes to break an addiction that fits in your pocket.

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Chapters:

00:00 Intro

0:51 Building Light Phone

3:10 The user shift: why people are finally ready to unplug

7:54 Designing outside the Silicon Valley bubble

9:54 Why simple tech is making a comeback (CDs, iPods, flip phones)

13:50 From the Motorola Razr to the Light Flip

17:54 Pricing and the Noble Mobile phone plan

19:44 What actually happens when you switch (and the Flip Your Life program)

23:13 Building an open-source app library for Light Phone

26:38 Outro

AI artist Mick Mahler has a counterintuitive take: the more powerful the machines get, the less the technology actually matters. Showing delightful examples of his own art, from jazz-playing spiders to a Kafka-inspired beetle film, he explains how you can use new technology to serve your vision (not replace it). (Recorded at TEDNext 2025 on November 10, 2025)

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