Discussion: No group text or call on the Mudita Pure

I agree completely… I’m all for this product and company - however a " dumb " phone still needs modern features… without being “smart!” //

Group convos is a must and group voice chats or some sort of walkey talky feature would be amazing… I wonder if their patented 2G would allow this???

My vision is wide spread rural third world country use… and this could achieve my goals!

I also love the strong focus on audio and speaker quality.

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It’s going to be kinda difficult to get support for Arabic, Devaganari, Hebrew, or Chinese text on this thing anytime soon. Not in time for an April release, most likely.

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Am I correct in assuming that, whilst the Pure won’t do true group texts where everyone is talking to everyone else, you’ll still be able to send a single message to multiple recipients? My GT-E1200 can certainly do that. Those recipients won’t see each other’s replies or be brought into conversation with each other in any way, but if I want to send an update to everyone who’s coming to a dinner party or whatever, I can certainly do that. If the Pure will do the same, then @textbook_quest’s main concerns would seem not to be an issue. If it won’t, then I’d certainly share those concerns, as it seems like a really needless omission that will just reduce the effectiveness of the tool for no tradeoff.

I’m much more ambivalent about true group texting, though. I can certainly see how it would be useful in some situations, and I can understand how some unfortunate souls might require it for their work, but I’ve never used it nor felt like I was missing anything by not doing so. I guess the smartphone I had for half a year nearly a decade ago probably supported it, but my Samsung certainly doesn’t, and I’m just fine with that. Group texting seems like a bit of a borderline case for Mudita’s ethos—which seems to be virtually indistinguishable from my own—that could improve or degrade your quality of life depending on how the other people in your life use it. I can easily see this functionality being exploited to create the state of being constantly, passively connected that many of us are so committed to avoiding.

I definitely wouldn’t want to be part of some group text(s) where people are constantly chattering with each other. @sandra’s comparison of group texting to a newsfeed strikes a chord for sure. Either that becomes a constant draw on my finite attention, or it becomes something that I have to expend willpower ignoring, and these are exactly the impulses that kept me from adopting a smartphone. By having a phone that can only convert group messages into one-to-one SMS, you don’t have to justify your not wanting to be a part of some chatty group text. You don’t have to worry about offending someone by declining to join—or leaving or blocking or whatever it is you do with this feature—a group text. You don’t have to worry about getting sucked in when your once in a while purely functional group text starts morphing into something else.
You don’t have to worry about being brought into a group conversation that includes someone you don’t really want to deal with. Etc.

Like so many “smart” features, I can see how, if used in an appropriately limited way, group texting could be a useful addition. But I also can’t see how you can enforce those appropriate limits effectively without placing unwanted demands on the user. On balance, I think I’m probably glad that the Pure won’t support this feature. (At least provided that my assumption about multiple-recipient SMS is correct.)

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Per the instructions on that page, I text-messaged “#new test” to 9734196864 within the USA but never got back a unique group-phone-number.

I now doubt whether GroupMe SMS works.

I have the same question.

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Two thumbs up i also am a IRC and XMPP user on my pinebook pro linux laptop i also like to do that stuff when im at my laptop at home and i dedicate time to go on and chat in the FOSS communities im apart of on IRC and when out and about i too like to unplug and leave all that behind at home and just live in the moment when out and about . Glad to see more people use FOSS chat and social tools i like mastodon and the such vs big corporation spyware like facebook whatsapp twitter etc etc type tools.

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@kirkmahoneyphd I’ve been experimenting with this myself on my current iPhone XR. As of December, 2021, the SMS command for starting a new GroupMe group is “start”. From there, GroupMe sends you a text from a different number where you can proceed to add members with commands like “#add 0123456789” where “0123456789” is the phone number you’re trying to add.

The only gotcha I’ve experienced so far is that if the other person has already used GroupMe before then they might not have their notifications quite right.

If I remember correctly, GroupMe has SMS enabled by default, but some people might choose to disable it after having experienced a particularly chatty or noisy group thread from a church small group or school group text.

Therefore, there is some “out-of-band” conversation required to make sure your group texts are going through properly.

I’m optimistic, however, about the GroupMe option. It’s owned by Microsoft and is solid over SMS for group texts while also offering both web and mobile app (e.g., iPad) interfaces.

I’m currently in the process of persuading my peers at work to switch to a solution such as GroupMe for our company group text. Currently, it’s done via iMessage, and I’ve been unable to receive anything from it since setting my iPhone to only use SMS as a practice run for the implications of switching to a phone like Mudita.

Me, my wife, and a self-described neo-luddite friend with a flip phone have been doing some experiments to get this all up and running in anticipation of the switch.

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