I think this phone could be an extremely useful device, both because of how few materials it uses, battery life, and simple and inclusive UI. In addition, I think the desire to address the negative impacts of technology on health and quality of life are deeply important! However, I wonder why the obvious usefulness of this device should be so cost prohibitive! It would seem, to an outsider, that the minimalist goals and relative health safety of this design might be subverted by its exclusivity as a luxury item. I’m sure that Mudita would like this device to be accessible as well as useful, but I am curious as to how your team arrived a price that sadly excludes working-class people. Can you provide some insight into the decision to price the phone at >$350 USD?
Unfortunately, not everyone can afford everything they want. That is the bare, hard truth of it, especially with all the work that goes into making a deceptively simple device as a “dumbphone”. Every single part costs money to design, manufacture, and put together. Every line of code needs somebody to write it, fit it all together with as few bugs as possible, and maintain it indefinitely. Every test, certification, and government approval process costs money. This website costs money.
As a working class person myself, who scrimped and saved for several months to afford this, it confounds me to hear that you would rather the makers of this product get underpaid so you can have what is, in truth, an unnecessary item. Working class people in most countries have access to cheap dumbphones if they want them. I got my previous one on ebay for $30.
To quote the Rolling Stones… you can’t always get what you want, but if you try, you can get what you need.
There are plenty of existing feature phones that are extremely affordable and quite decent. You can get help finding something for every budget on the “r/dumbphones” subreddit. I’ve been happily using my Samsung GT-E1200 for many years, personally.
But you get what you pay for. Budget-priced phones tend to have much worse audio quality on both ends of the line, lower-quality displays that are hard to see in the wrong light conditions, unwieldy UIs, more limited SMS storage and organisation, etc. The Pure aims to improve on all of these things. That takes time and money. Especially when that niche is left vacant by the major manufacturers and must be filled by a small startup that doesn’t get to benefit from the same economies of scale and transferrable existing IP and such. If they deliver on their promises, it’ll be money well-spent.
The other aspect is that many other manufacturers (Microsoft, Apple, Google) can sell expensive items at a loss and make back money on ongoing services like office 365 subscriptions, app store cut of 30%, or advertising and data harvesting revenue embedded in the OS.
It also doesn’t hurt that most r&d is done by government funded universities (wifi, Bluetooth) around the world. But that’s probably a trivial component where the tech is ubiquitous now.