IS the Mudita Kompakt a smartphone?

thanks for giving me an explanation. I get it, but still wish there had been more of an attempt to make the lower emf antenna work better. :confused: Maybe you did and itā€™s not possible. But I still feel like the kompakt is too much like a smartphone for what I want, and not worth the expense for me in that case. I was willing to shell out that price for the Pure due to the low emfs.

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well, not for the ā€œentireā€ community. :confused: Some of us are still upset about the Pure not being kept on and made to work out with the low emfs. And the Kompakt isnā€™t a ā€œdumb phoneā€ to my knowledge, that would require no internet access. Just had to chime in a response on behalf of those of us still missing what the Pure offered.

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yes! But also for me, the lowest emfs. And nothing Iā€™ve seen so far offers that. So NO phone except a land line for me.

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It is a dumbphone, out of the box it is a dumbphone, if someone wants to learn how to sideload apps they can but out of the box it has no browser or any apps that are time wasters, facebook, instagram etc

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When You said ā€œit is not possibleā€ you kind of nailed it. With Pure we went full monty;) to cut the EMF. At the same time we were inexperienced regarding the technical requirements of some US Carriers. So range-wise the product worked quite well in the EU, in the US, depending on the region/signal strength (in US coverage is less dense than EU). But more importantly, in the US was at risk of being blacklisted by certain carriers. What never happened, but legal wise, it is possible - that is why, we, as a company, cannot offer products like that.

Theoretically we could have tried to improve our antennas, to get better coverage in the US, but at the same time it was nearly impossible to make them compatible with technical requirements of US Carriers. And if we focus on meeting those requirements, then the SAR will go up. So to sum up, we had two options.

1 not meeting the requirements, having improved antenna and coverage, but still being at risk that the device can be blacklisted for certain networks

2 meeting the requirements but then we will end up in more ā€œnormalā€ range of SAR.

So the only option (IMHO) for uncompromised low EMF in mobile devices is actually getting out first Pure, which software-wise works now quite nicely. But it is discontinued so getting one is more and more difficult.

And if we ever come back to dumb phones (which is not planned as for today), the SAR, unfortunately, wonā€™t be anywhere close to what we had in Pure :confused:

I hope this clarifies the situation a bit.

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Great reply Michal. I donā€™t believe youā€™d be where you are today and the Kompakt would not be so popular etc if it werenā€™t for the Pure. I still use my Pure to this day and I love it. Yes I admit, the signal drops out from time to time but itā€™s something I have learned to live with (for the time being, until the Kompakt is in my hands) and if I miss a phone call then perhaps I was never meant to get that phone call :wink: Hereā€™s to Muditaā€™s future! :slight_smile:

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What part of it is like a smartphone? All you can do is call, text, meditation and play chess lol, yes it has the possibility of sideloading apps but that is at the users discretion which in the long run was a smart move by Mudita, they are going to get a lot of sales from LP3 because majority of people want a phone that gives you the option to customize it the way you choose but they are not making anyone do that, that is individual choice.

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thanks so much. It is, as usual, disappointing to know that once again the U.S. makes it harder to be healthier. So why would you discontinue the Pure if it works in EU instead of just sell it there? Considering moving.

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Love that attitude! I always say I donā€™t need to be connected to everyone all the time, itā€™s not healthy. Sometimes, having space is the answer.

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To my knowledge it has internet and Bluetooth, correct? That makes it a smartphone. Add to that the high emfs, which in my research show it in the same range as smartphones, make it a smartphone. Again, for me, a dumbphone is one without any internet access and with very low emfs.

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It has no access to the internet at all, there is no broswer, there is no google playstore, to me that is a smartphone, a phone that uses either IOS or Android playstore and the Kompakt (thank god) uses none of them

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ā€œThe Ship of Theseus , also known as Theseusā€™s Paradox , is a paradox and a common thought experiment about whether an object is the same object after having all of its original components replaced over time, typically one after the other.ā€

Wikipedia

Now, instead, what if you took apart a boat piece by piece. At what point does it stop being a boat? At what point does a smartphone stop being a smartphone? For example, I had a few phones 15+ years ago before the iPhone that had a browser that I would still consider dumb.

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Iā€™m not intending to start a flamewar, you just reminded me a fun fact that good olā€™ Nokia 6310 (sigh) had GPRS and Bluetooth - we are in that ā€œsmartphoneā€ criteria for a very long time already. New Nokia 8110 4G (ā€œbanana phoneā€ with one of the crappiest OSes possible) as well, but it was a feature phone with significant limitations (unless customizing Kai OS code yourself), the difference is the screens in both of them are way smaller and they were not touchscreens.

Late this hour it drags me down a philosophical rabbit hole. :wink:

What is a smartphone? Are smartphone characteristics making a phone inherently bad by definition? What is wrong with smartphones? Are there smartphones that donā€™t have those features, or can those features be removed?

I think the most fair definition is rise in compute power and data transmission providing full spectrum of possible ways of using a phone besides itā€™s core function - being a phone.

That being said, even feature phones should be labeled smartphones, including Mudita Pure or Nokia 8110 4G.

If we consider any smartphone a bad thing just because, thereā€™s nothing much to discuss about.

If not, we can have a mind play. Products like Mudita Kompakt, LP3, Minimalist Phone, GrapheneOS, Unihertz Jelly Star (alongside smaller mini-smartphones) could be considered smartphones that are or can be limited in a degree when it comes to the negative aspects. For some, Jelly is a sweetspot being to small to be comfortable for a smartphone addiction. For others, a phone with GrapheneOS allows to do everything thatā€™s needed to benefit versatility and features with less surveillance and health challenges. For others, Minimalist can be fair enough for health, but it is not de-googled. LP3, I remember much about it now. Mudita Kompakt seems to be the strictest feature/smartphone becoming available right now, as regards either surveillance, security, health, or addictiveness.

Personally, Iā€™d be good with a $100 bar dumb/feature(smart)phone but they are poorly coded and their audio sucks. Landline is awesome to leave a mobile phone in the car. I wanna give Mudita a shot to get a good hardware that can help me in situations where I may need some help without prior planning and prep (camera to document a car crash, navigation, maybe Revolut app, weather, stuff like that).

Moving to the SAR/EMF issue, I have an impression that dumbphones tend to have not necessarily lower SAR than smartphones. Samsung took an aim to minimize SAR by different antenna build to emit outwards from the user. But I can imagine SAR is some arbitrary value while the actual impact depends on the way phone is used.

With any phone, Iā€™d keep a rule of thumb to not keep it in your pocket, use wired earphones for calls, and with Mudita Kompakt I hope the Offline Mode switch will be helpful to make the EMF impact even smaller.

If thatā€™s not your thing, you could still have a look at a bar phone like Nokia or Alcatel produce, but yeah, most dumbphones have SAR something in range of 1.0-1.6. Sunbeam F1 and Lively Jitterbug Flip2 have lower SAR than 1 when aiming for the head from what I just found.

Not willing to tell you what to do, trying to find all possible solutions to the case. By the end of the day, Iā€™m down for a landline, too.

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Thank you @Michal_Kicinski for this very helpful explanation, and thank you also to @urszula for linking it in the Technical thread. Can you tell us what EMF emissions remain when Kompakt is on flight mode? And how does that compare with EMF emitted when flight mode is not on?

From reading @kirkmahoneyphd posting about offline + mode and airplane mode, at least in some countries emergency alerts and calls to emergency services continue in airplane mode. Is this a legal requirement Mudita must meet with Kompakt?

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@neatsolutions Iā€™ll ask our team if the tested this & get back to you.

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Thanks @urszula

Thinking further about this, and about people like @calebsmum wanting a very low SAR phone, leads me to be curious what the SAR is when Kompakt is on flight mode. For people who are able to use Kompakt via ethernet cabled internet connection while itā€™s switched onto flight mode, that would be their level of radiation exposure. Iā€™m very aware that even low radiation levels affect some people so badly that mobile phones are not useable. Even landline phones are not useable for some. - I know a woman in that situation. I am also aware that, like any manufacturer, Mudita must make products commercially viable for the products to be able to exist. So finding work-arounds such as ethernet cabled internet based calling while on flight mode is crucial.

Is testing SAR level something that is possible for Mudita to do, or is it only available through expensive external testing? Just wondering how costly my question might be!

SAR values for comparison on and off flight mode would make for the easiest compairson as itā€™s the common widely used measure. Of course other testing, using appropriate, quality EMF meters could also give relevant information, but not as easy to compare widely.

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@neatsolutions I asked our team about this and they told me that since we follow standard testing protocols, which require measuring EMC levels in ā€œfull powerā€ mode to assess maximum levels rather than the minimum, we donā€™t test in specific scenarios. So you can rest assured, all emissions remain well within the safe limits established by regulations. However, we do know that this issue is of particular interest to the Mudita Community, so while we do not typically test in flight mode, we made an exception for Offline+ mode, as it is a key feature of Mudita Kompakt, and itā€™s designed to function, not only as a privacy feature, but also as an enhanced version of airplane mode.

The test was conducted in collaboration with one of Polandā€™s leading mobile operators, and the results showed that the RF spectrum in Offline+ mode is comparable to that of an empty chamber. This confirms that the mode effectively disables RF emissions. The measured level (-115, -110 dBm) is at the natural noise threshold, meaning there is no RF exposure in this state.

A measured RF level of -115 dBm to -110 dBm is extremely low, close to the natural background noise level in radio frequency (RF) measurements. However, it does not mean absolute zero EMFsā€”it means that the signal is so weak that it is indistinguishable from environmental noise. Hopefully this helps.

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Iā€™m glad your team made an exception and did formal testing of radio frequency radiation levels for Offline + mode, @urszula.

Measuring different modes with EMF meters will provide missing information. Iā€™m sure several of us will do that.

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If it works in Europe, and itā€™s only sometimes that the signal falls away, isnā€™t there an option to bring it out again only for Europe? I really would love to get my hands on a Mudita Pure. But I only learned about the product today. Really hoping it might come back one day. Maybe as a limited European option?

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@clara thereā€™s still some being sold in the Mudita Outlet Store online - good condition not brand new. So it is not too late.

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