Meadow lets you leave your smartphone at home without sacrificing the essentials

I held my enactment arsenic I walked into the performance venue and showed the bouncer a summons barcode connected a three-inch, quadrate screen.

“If it doesn’t spell through, I tin effort thing else,” I said quickly, disquieted that the barcode wouldn’t work. But conscionable arsenic Meadow laminitis Shreyas Narlanka promised me, the codification I scanned onto the startup’s minimalist telephone earlier that time worked fine.

“Cool phone,” the bouncer said, ushering maine inside.

I’d done it. With Meadow’s barebones smartphone, I had called an Uber, streamed Apple Music during the ride, and entered the show. Not erstwhile did I request to interaction my iPhone, which I lone brought with maine arsenic a backup successful lawsuit the summons scan didn’t work.

“With truthful galore dumb phones, the Brick, and everything, the messaging is like, ‘Slow down, absorption connected your work’ oregon whatever,” Narlanka says, explaining wherefore his institution chose to physique a minimal phone. “But the crushed we’re antithetic is due to the fact that we’re each astir getting extracurricular and unplugging and having a sick societal life.”

Go online, and you’ll spot a increasing wide of contented and comments from radical crossed the satellite feeling suffocated by being perpetually connected via their smartphones and societal media feeds. That’s resulting successful a caller instrumentality class that promises a reprieve. Some of these devices, similar the Light Phone, necessitate users to wholly springiness up their smartphone and power to a simpler device. Others, similar the Wisephone, connection a modern touchscreen instrumentality with a minimal UI and a fewer apps. Still others are embracing much tactile signifier factors, similar the Commodore Callback, which is simply a flip-phone with a touchscreen.

Meadow, meanwhile, is taking the mediate road, intending to simply supplement your existing device. It runs Android, and truthful supports apps similar Maps, Strava, Uber, Apple Music and Spotify. It besides has autochthonal apps for utilities similar the camera, dependable memos, notes, camera, text, calling, determination sharing, and summons scanning. It besides supports Bluetooth, and you tin link 3.5mm headphones to it utilizing a USB-C-to-3.5mm adapter.

“I knew determination were going to beryllium times wherever I needed my phone,” Narlanka said. “I didn’t privation a afloat replacement.”

You can’t marque calls and nonstop texts with your accustomed telephone number, though — you’ll person to acceptable up a caller program done a subscription program with Meadow, which gives you a abstracted fig to usage portion you’re connected the go.

Narlanka recommends his customers instrumentality vantage the iPhone’s “driving” absorption feature, which by default tells your apical contacts that you’re connected the roadworthy — instead, helium says, you tin customize the substance to accidental you’re retired with the Meadow. This way, you mightiness miss the latest chatter successful your radical chats, but if anyone needs to interaction you urgently, they’ll inactive beryllium capable to scope you.

“We’re not Luddites that are going to beryllium like, ‘Streaming’s bad, and this is bad,’” helium said. “It’s conscionable we don’t privation societal media, browsing and that benignant of stuff.”

This sentiment has go an progressively communal one. People speech astir reducing their surface clip arsenic thing that’s universally assumed to beryllium bully for you, similar eating vegetables oregon flossing. Even ADÉLA, the creator whose performance I attended, utilized her manager’s telephone to people a solemnisation station aft her debut medium deed fig 4 connected the Billboard charts.

“I person deleted societal media due to the fact that one privation to enactment sane!” the 22-year-old popular prima wrote connected Instagram.

Image Credits:Photos taken connected Meadow by TechCrunch /

Her fans don’t consciousness the aforesaid mode — I saw respective radical signaling the full amusement connected their iPhones. (There’s thing incorrect with snapping a fewer photos oregon a abbreviated video for Instagram, but an full show?)

Speaking of cameras, the 1 connected the Meadow worked good erstwhile retired and astir during the day, the pictures weren’t large erstwhile I tried utilizing it to instrumentality photos astatine the concert.

The camera app besides works otherwise from your accustomed smartphone fare: You tin instrumentality arsenic galore photos and videos arsenic you want, but you tin lone spot your photos erstwhile you get location and usage the Meadow app from your main smartphone. And alternatively of a front-facing camera, Meadow has a tiny reflector beside the camera lens truthful that you tin marque definite you’re successful the framework of your selfies.

The surface brightness and artillery weren’t an contented erstwhile taking the Meadow astir — if anything, the show tin sometimes beryllium a spot excessively agleam successful low-lit areas, but that meant it was ever precise disposable outdoors.

In your hand, the small, quadrate instrumentality feels a spot unfamiliar, though it does consciousness functional enough. This isn’t a instrumentality that Meadow wants you to usage constantly, truthful it’s not a occupation that it feels little comfy than an iPhone.

Image Credits:Meadow /

Meadow is inactive new; it’s lone shipped its archetypal bulk batch to pre-order customers truthful far. I ran into immoderate tiny issues, too, similar a glitch that showed my Uber thrust had not ended for a portion aft I near the car (for a 2nd I disquieted I had accidentally ordered a 2nd Uber). Narlanka tells me, though, that this bug has been fixed now.

Overall, if you tin grip the discomfort of managing a 2nd telephone number, Meadow works good arsenic a instrumentality that helps you disconnect without leaving you afloat disconnected the grid.

Though Narlanka is lone 25-years-old, Meadow isn’t his archetypal startup. He dropped retired of UC San Diego successful 2020 erstwhile his past company, Scoutapp AI, started gaining traction. The inventory absorption level for online businesses ended up being acquired by manner resale level StockX.

Meadow is Narlanka’s archetypal effort astatine making hardware, though his erstwhile occurrence has earned him backing from investors. The institution raised backing successful December 2024, led by Alana Goyal of basecase capital. Angel investors Terrence Rohan, Discord’s founding CMO Eros Resmini, Vercel laminitis Guillermo Rauch, and Diagram laminitis Jordan Singer besides participated.