Now that I’m used to the Mudita as my main phone, it’s time for some very long feedback.
Firstly, I want to point out that I’m very happy and don’t want any other phone. I’ve described on my blog how I “accepted” the Mudita design and how I find it very adapted to my situation.
- Hardware
In case there’s a Kompakt 2, I want to point out that I like the form factor very much. Don’t do it bigger! Small phones are so rare those days that being small add a lot of value to the phone. No bigger screen, no bigger case. On the other hand, if the Kompakt could be slimmer, that would be nice. If I was listening to my wildest dreams, I would say “the kompakt in the body of the pure”.
Also, keep the audio jack and the offline button at all cost.
Small form factor, audiojack and offline button makes people jealous, even those not wanting a minimalist phone at all.
To improve the design, a better camera and a selfie camera would be greatly appreciated. Selfie camera are used for many other things than selfie and I miss one for Signal video calls and for authentification with my bank.
And while 3 days of battery is cool, I would appreciate, for such a minimal phone, something closer to one week where you don’t even need to think about it. That’s what I had with the Hisense A5.
So, on the overall, the hardware design is really good. If there’s a Kompakt v2, I hope it would be in the same vein and not bigger/smarter.
I would also like the offline button to be a bit bigger with the red part more visible. And, by the way, it doesn’t make any sense to say “Offline+ connected” when I enable offline mode. I’m not connected! I’m disconnected!
- Global UI
I appreciate Mudita changes to Android. No swipe to the upper panel is nice. I hate swiping. The fact that modal dialog are clearer and take half the screen is good. No quick switch between apps (which is only an annoyance when using 2FA) makes the phone really “simpler” and “mindful”.
I also appreciate that you can’t reorder app or customize anything on the launcher. That’s the goal: use it when you need, that’s all. While it feels cumbersome at first, once you accept it, it feels liberating! One thing less to care about.
If you really need apps installed that you don’t use much, simply hide them. This is brilliant.
I miss having a clear view of my battery status. Having the clock and the battery percentage in the “panel” (the one you get when clicking the bottom right button) would be really helpful. Or maybe on the lockscreen.
Another problem seems to be the sound level: I don’t really understand it. It is sometimes too weak, sometimes too loud and hard to manage. I had never thought about it before but there’s clearly room for improvements here. Nothing critical.
One very strong point of the kompakt, if not the strongest, is the ability to sideload applications.
Without this, I would not have considered the Kompakt at all. But, regarding sideloading, it is a shame that we can’t easily remove a sideloaded application. That something very important and sometimes urgent. Like when, in the middle of a week of hiking, you discover that a rarely used app is eating all the battery.
Regarding sideloaded app, there’s also a huge miss in the preferences: default app selection. You can’t easily switch keyboard, phone app or anything like that. Not a big issue because it can be achieved through indirect means but, still a miss.
Which brings me to the topic of notifications. I’ve discussed the subject thoroughly in my blog post linked above. I do really like the stance of Mudita to hide all notifications. No notifications center. That’s fine. But notifications are still there because you can hear them. Which is not satisfactory.
I’ve a suggestion to solve this in the “Mudita way”.
Firstly, by allowing notifications on a per application basis in the “manage apps” preferences panel. A simple switch to enable/disable notifications for this paritcular app.
Secondly, by disabling notification by default for every sideloaded app. Enabling notifications for a sideloaded app should be done voluntarly.
And, thirdly, by having a notification badge on the “Apps” icon on the homescreen if any app other than Phone/SMS has a notification (and, of course, is allowed to notify). Bonus point if the notification badge is on the App icon itself inside the drawer.
That would be a simple and effective way to promote less notifications while making important ones usable.
While we are at it, the “manage apps” could also have a setting to enable/disable battery optimization for each app.
Last but not leat: I highly appreciate the no-cloud philosophy of Mudita. Using a cable and the Mudita center is the way forward and forces to be mindful about what you want to do.
- App
I particularly enjoy how minimal the default apps are:
- Phone: I would really like to be able to block range of numbers, not just individual numbers. In my country, spammers use rented numbers which change all the time but always start with the same 5 numbers.
- Message : nothing to say. Works fine for me. Unlike many complains on the forum, SMS are more reliable on the Kompakt that on my Hisense A5.
- Weather is doing its job. Nothing to say. It works fine enough to not require a sideloaded app.
- Maps too! That’s quite incredible. It is very simple and works better than Organic Maps to find a given address. It really does 80% of the job with 10% of the complexity. I appreciate it a lot. I don’t have any other map software !
- Camera is also super simple. The interface is good but there are annoying bug. It takes between 2 an 6 seconds (!) to take a picture after pressing the button. Often, the camera is not foud and I have to swith the offline button back and forth.
- Meditation is another extremely simple yet effective app. There’s only one annoyance: the intermediate bell is the same than the final one. Which makes me inconsciously count intermediate bells which is annoying. Two different bell or, even better, a double bell for the end time would be fantastic.
- Music: lot has been said on the forum. While using it, my Mudita suddenly feels like an iPod from 2005. What I urgently miss is the ability to play music by artists/albums. I believe listenning to a whole album is the new “mindful listenning” and Mudita should promote that. The album shoul also be visible on the “cover screen”
- Chess : I’m a really bad chess player and I’ve been “matted” a couple of times by the phone without understanding why. After a mat, the screen is hidden, which is really annoying to study the aftermath. Also, I would like to be able to cancel my previous move even after a mate.
- Ereader : that one was too slow and to faint for my taste. Obvious improvement: use the volume button to switch pages.
- Alarm : may be up to 7 minutes late, even after disabling battery optimization. There’s something wrong when an alarm cannot be trusted. Hopefully, this is not a major issue for my lifestyle but I understand it could be a huge problem.
- Calendar : without any way to synchronize it, I doubt it could really be useful. I’ve tried it and missed notifications. Not using it anyway as I use a calendar.txt file
See How I fell in love with calendar.txt
- Notes/Recorder: not used
All in all, I believe the biggest miss is not having those apps and the underlying OS Open Source. The MuditaOS of the Pure was a great achievement (albeit too ambitious for such a small structure). Open Sourcing Kompakt OS and apps could be really useful (but, as I’m teaching exactly that domain, I know that this is far from trivial and requires a lot of work)
- Sideloadeded apps
The strenght of the Kompakt is being able to sideload app. In fact, you only need to sideload one single App: F-Droid. From there, you can install Aurora Store and you are done.
- Apps I’ve installed only because Mudita OS is missing to do stuff properly: Activity Launcher (to disable notifications and disable battery optimizations), Heliboard (to switch keyboard easily as Heliboard open the android dialog by default), MuPDF (because Ereader can only read PDF uploaded through the Mudita center but is not a registered PDF reader on the system). Yet Another Call Blocker, to block range of numbers (like I’ve described previously).
That’s 4 F-Droid app I could remove if some minors changes where applied to Mudita OS. But that’s not critical because I could install those apps.
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F-Droid apps to customize my phone : Flickboard (a keyboard for small screens). Markor to read/edit my calendar.txt file.
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Auth: Aegis (2FA) and Proton Pass (both from F-Droid)
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Chat: Molly-foss (Signal without the Google code, from F-Droid). It works well even if discussions are hard to read on the washed out e-ink screen. A Signal client with the SMS UI would be awesome, that would be something to be done by the community.
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Small indulgence: Wikipedia (from F-Droid). Every feed on the homepage disabled except for “Places nearby”. It makes the phone feels really smart and full of knowledge without having a real web browser.
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Cloud solutions I use (from Aurora Store): Tresorit (for files), Proton Drive (to sync photos), Proton Calendar. (no Proton mail on purpose)
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Sports (from Aurora Store): Garmin, Wahoo, Komoot
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Train: SNCB (train schedule from Belgium, Aurora store)
All of them are working fine. It’s a lot of app for a mimimalist phone but, at the same time, not so much. Only 7 proprietary apps from Aurora Store and, for each one, I know why I use it.
The only big problem I have is with the N26 banking app, which requires a selfie camera to run!
- Conclusion
I had a dream: a dumb phone which allowed me to use Signal and the GPS on my bike. Well, I can say : mission accomplished !
Rhe kompakt works for me and it works well! I’m able to do what I need to do without doing what I don’t want to do. The Kompakt encouraged me to be better at chess and to meditate every day. I’ve even started to like the fact that the screen is smaller and lower quality than my Hisense A5.
I appreciate that the Kompakt is doing “less” and it requires you to really put you in the mood. You should not expect the Kompakt to do what you want. It will do what it can and you have to adapt yourself to that mindset.
The fact that you can sideload apps is a great help for those things which really expect you to have a smartphone or for which a smartphone is really useful (I could live without instant train schedule and Wikipedia on my phone. But those are useful without any downsides).
Cherry on the cake: Mudita seems to care about privacy and it is not linked to any proprietary cloud by default. If sentry could be disabled, that would be perfect.
Oh and the fact that there’s an official forum on which you can exchang with Mudita employees is what I considered “normal” 20 years ago but so rare those days that I want to thank the Mudita team for that.
So, yes, I’m really happy with Mudita. But it’s probably not for everyone. People are either expecting a true dumbphone or a full e-ink smartphone. Mudita is none of those, which is hard to understand.
So, good luck Mudita ! I hope to keep my Kompakt for a long time and replace it, whent really needed, by another Mudita phone.
Just a side note. And I think when adding the alarm to the whitelist on the Duraspeed app (which is native on the phone) it solves all the problems.
). So hopefully in the future it gets better out of the box for the early adapting minimalists who still feel like they need some extra stuff on the side.
The e-ink screen and ready availability really are special aspects of Mudita Kompakt, and it sounds like you’ve thought carefully about how it can fit into your daily life.
