GSI compatibility

Mudita Products
1

It is becoming increasingly clear the Mudita team does not have a lot of experience with android. I am not demonizing the team for having a vision and wanting to see that vision through.

However, the Mudita team is engaging in anti-consumer practices. I don’t believe this is the intention, but it is the result of the development team’s actions. Legally in many countries, including the USA weirdly enough, you cannot void a warranty for unlocking the bootloader. I am grateful to the team for not obfuscating the unlocking of the bootloader, do not misquote me, but the policy of Mudita does not align to many EU countries or even USA law.

Additionally, something is clearly broken on a device that should be treble enabled. Here I want to remind Mudita, you do not own the hardware. You sell hardware to people, what they do with it is not up to you. It has been clear the development schedule of the team does not take into account any potential consequences. How can a disabled person use your phone? You don’t know clearly, because the team has overwritten the built in accessibility options. It is a development style of break first and remediate later.

Again, I don’t think the team is evil, but they are not considering anything other than the team’s viewpoint. This style is harmful to individuals that need to use accessibility options.

All that said, I do not understand why Mudita OS K isn’t opensource. Security questions have been answered disappointingly. The projected life of this device, supposedly for user freedom, is intentionally limited to a 3 year schedule.

How does producing 3 year e-waste support mindful consumption? How does not thinking about the most basic e-ink features support your users? How can your users believe security is your top priority when development increasingly shows the team is new to android?

Wanting a de-googled device does not excuse anti-Treble, anti-development, and other anti-consumer practices. Mindfulness includes mindfully engaging with the environment and ensuring the community can pick up your hardware to avoid ewaste and insecure communications.

The lack of support for features that can be found on flip phones, like audio over mms, exemplify the inexperience of the team.

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I get the frustration, especially when features you expect are missing or things don’t work the way you’d hoped. You raise some important points worth discussing, particularly around accessibility and feature gaps like audio MMS.

That said, I see a few things a bit differently:

On warranty law: My understanding of Magnuson-Moss (and similar EU laws) is that it protects consumers from having warranties voided just for unlocking bootloaders, but doesn’t require manufacturers to fix issues caused by modifications. If you unlock and something breaks because of what you flashed, they’re not obligated to cover it. If you unlock and the screen fails, they still should. Mudita’s policy seems pretty standard in this regard.

I’m 100% right-to-repair and would like to see a little more flexibility here, but I don’t think they’re outside the norms and there are plenty of people modding their Muditas. I can’t really blame them for saying they won’t fix problems after you modify the software - especially from a hardware perspective where diagnosing what went wrong can be genuinely difficult.

On Treble: I’m not sure Treble compliance is really relevant to what Mudita is doing. Treble matters most if you’re tracking Google’s Android releases or supporting custom ROMs. But Mudita is forking Android into their own thing - MuditaOS K is a focused, privacy-hardened system where they control the whole stack. Not being Treble-compliant isn’t necessarily anti-consumer in this context; it’s just a different development philosophy.

On the 3-year lifecycle: I’d love longer support too, but 3 years with transparency is actually better than most manufacturers offer. Google only recently went to 7 years. Fairphone does 5-7. Most phones get 2-3. I agree open-sourcing would help the community extend life beyond that, though.

On accessibility: This is worth considering. If accessibility features are limited, it could narrow the potential customer base. That said, Mudita seems focused on a specific minimalist vision, and it’s not uncommon for niche products to serve a narrower audience. Still, it’s something they should think about as they develop. I forgot who, but YouTube has a long video from an individual who says the Light Phone 3 is a non-possibility explicitly because of the lack of accessibility features.

Just to say, I think “anti-consumer” doesn’t quite fit what I’m seeing from a small team making deliberate choices about what they want to build. The real question is whether they’re responsive to feedback and willing to adjust course when needed. From what I’ve seen, they seem genuinely engaged with the community and open to listening.

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Where is the engagement and the listening?

We have a community manager that has to do the work of 3 people, and zero help from the rest of the company.

Zero engagement from the product manager and the technical team to keep customer expectations in check.

The accessibility feature was working properly when I bought this phone, it was broken in 1.2.0 and even after admitting it’s a bug, it hasn’t been fixed in 1.3.0 even though they said it’s gonna be a priority. And I have no idea if it will be fixed because they have not responded to it at all:
1.3.0 update - Issues (Accessibility Permission)

So where do you see this “engagement” or am I blind?

And I’ll completely ignore the rest of your paragraphs, because I don’t want to waste time.

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I will agree that @urszula does the work of three or four people.

Nothing is perfect but given all the options out there, I am really happy with my NA Kompakt. You are doing great things with InkOS.

It is a free market. No one has to buy the Kompakt. I have an LP2 and LP3. Compared to the light team, transparency and engagement from Mudita is light years ahead. LP3 is much less secure - everything runs off their servers. No hard switch kill. They are more right to repair friendly - in so far as you can change batteries.

I still use the 2, but the 3 is in the drawer.

I don’t know…easy to criticize but I, for one, appreciate what they’ve done. To me, an N of 1, this is hands down one of the best, if not the best, minimalist alternative to the walled garden of iOS. Are there things I want? sure.

You might like the Pine Phone - I have one of those two with PostmarketOS. 100% right to repair. 100% customizable. Can turn off camera, speaker, etc at the hardware level. NOWHERE near as enjoyable and reliable as the Mudita.

There are options. I am not a mark in the sense that I understand there are shortcomings. When I look at the balance, the Kompakt is a great tool that lets me regain some digital freedom. The Pine, that I love, is a never ending tinkering project.

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Dude no offense, but In a world of AI I can’t for sure say you’re a bot or not.

Other than the first sentence, I don’t know how anything else you said has to do with my response above. The rest of the sentences you wrote sound like SEO optimization keywords because you keep mentioning other phones and you’re comparing them to the Kompakt.

So to keep my sanity, I’ll stop replying to you after this.

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Fair. Not AI. Cheers!

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Guys calm down… let’s do what everyone on this forum does. Let’s pretend all is ok, there are no issues, and if there are, they will be fixed in one of the coming updates within the next 3000 years, as promised. Just don’t think about it, relax… take a break…

Dumita_Abstrakt_Commercial
Dumita_Abstrakt_Commercial917×489 105 KB

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To be fair, I think people are actually quite vocal about things that don’t work. It’s just extraordinary to me that it’s all with high level of courtesy, which may give the impression people are not that pissed. Personally, I have better things to do than to tinker with the phone. Maybe I regret I paid that much for an undercooked device but it does the job for me and I still hope it will get improved. Worst case, I’d be trying to buy a 2G dumbphone from the era I had 10-15 years ago.

Regarding GSI, wasn’t there that guy who got MK to tinker with it around that? Nobody can stop anyone from doing that.

Accessibility settings is a must on the phone, no doubt. It’s not a big deal to bring it back. I know what it’s like to be swamped with work as the only capable person in the team so I hope someone will help the dev prioritize properly. This task looks like a quick win, come on.

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Oh I’m more pissed than it seems, after having been asked countless questions by support, without rarely receiving any useful replies from them to my questions. I just don’t want to lower myself to the level of the Tangerine Toddler by calling people names. Instead I get somewhat sarcastic at times.

Same here, but here we are, trapped in an endless loop of empty promises that can and will never be fulfilled. But “thanks for your patience and cooperation”.

For experts like @gezimos it would be easy, but for this dev team it seems to be the task of a lifetime to fix all the things they broke themselves.

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Just to be clear. It is possible to flash GSI Android (above version 12). I’ve flashed it with Lineage 20 from Andy Yan’s builds.

The method is deeply confusing and convoluted and I’ve had a hard time reproducing. But it’s actually a matter of unlocking the bootloader and flashing.

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How did you turn off verity? It didnt work when I tried.

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Not according to the Developers: https://www.reddit.com/r/MuditaKompakt/comments/1orbo1q/comment/no3fkay/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Obviously it requires unlocking the bootloader, I’ve followed the directions to flash a GSI.

If you actually got it to boot you could do a great service to the community and post the steps you took to get it there.

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I was able to get it to boot on version 1.1. But I’m now struggling to do so on 1.3 :frowning: I’m not sure what changed between versions.

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So your saying mudita os 1.3+ prevents it from booting ? wow mudita must have removed treble support which would be shitty…
Did 1.2 boot? I think I have the 1.1 system dump on one of my laptops that we could technically flash back to.

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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hIrOKx59py4sSz792dgd3PIhysT26Zmb

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I dont think those otas are full system images though but I think I should have it. I dumped them with mtkclient

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https://old.reddit.com/r/MuditaKompakt/comments/1p6uubu/v130_extracted_images_for_rooting/

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To confirm was that 1.1.1 or 1.1.0? Did you try 1.2.0? I do have 1.1.1 and 1.2 system dumps for NAM model.

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I believe I got it working on 1.1. I now only have a mtkclient dump from 1.3 :frowning:

If you could upload 1.1 I would be so grateful. No need to include the large user partition (your personal data).

Sure would be nice if Mudita could help us developers provide options for the community :slight_smile:

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I hadn’t read this thread yet, and there’s a few things interesting here to me. @jppelt and @Whitefangoftheleaf I know you have difficulty believing the developers but I believe it was clarfied earlier on that updates would be continued 3 years after the last device is sold. Compared to many companies that offer transparency on that, it is extremely generous. Now, I agree though, it has become more unclear about what they would be updating in that time period.

On another note, I followed this and Jordan’s post about getting Android 16. I’m sticking to non-rooted for the life of the warranty, but will definitely consider rooting and upgrading the OS in the future. I appreciate all the productive developing work you guys are doing.

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