Mudita Pure Feedback & Questions

[Reposted as a new topic as I think it wasn’t seen where I first posted it.]


I received my Mudita Pure phone a week ago and wanted to share some observations and ask some questions.

  1. It would be great if the size of the text were adjustable. I’m referring to text in the menus and particularly in SMS messages and the emojis, where the text is tiny. Is this in the plan?

  2. It would be useful to have an apostrophe, @ and hyphen on key 1 rather than having to open the symbols screen.

  3. I’d like it if I didn’t need to press # as well as Unlock. Intuitively I expect the Unlock button to take me straight to entering the PIN. Pressing # first feels like an unnecessary additional step.

  4. The ability to order Contacts by first name rather than surname would be nice. E.g. I want Peter Smith under P not S. I guess I could enter both names in the first name field as a workaround but an option to choose alphabetical ordering would be useful.

  5. The screen display and button responsiveness can’t be turned off without turning the phone off. Therefore, when in standby mode it’s easy to touch buttons and prompt unlocking when this is not wanted (e.g. when putting the phone into a pocket or a case or just picking it up).

  6. How can I remove unwanted Menu items? Or rearrange them?

  7. It looks like sorting music by album, artist and playlist is provided for but not yet available. Will this be coming later?

  8. The bottom of the navigation button is so close to key 2 that it’s hard not to press 2 when navigating down, unless I use my thumbnail.

  9. In Mudita Centre there appears to be a maximum of 114 characters in sending an SMS, but not for received SMS messages and not when sending SMS messages on the phone itself. Will this maximum be removed? Otherwise Mudita Centre is effectively unusable for SMS messaging, which is the main reason I want to use it.

  10. The Unlock button sometimes doesn’t respond and the phone stays locked.

  11. Battery life isn’t as impressive as I expected, so far. I thought it would last for days without losing any power, like the old Amazon Kindle did, but it seems to lose power even when the phone is lying there inactive.

  12. Mobile signal strength is noticeably lower than on my previous phone.

  13. I echo other people’s call for predictive text. I hope this is a priority for the developers. It would be such a good improvement to the SMS experience. Interestingly, typing using the buttons came back to me from the early days of mobile phones very quickly and easily but predictive text would be even better.

  14. The connection to Mudita Centre via the USB is hit and miss. I frequently get messages saying the phone has crashed or disconnected.

  15. SMS messages sent from my UK number (O2/giffgaff) to a Norwegian number weren’t received, but my network provider confirms that they were sent and that I was charged for them. The same Norwegian number was able to send an SMS to my UK number. The Norwegian phone is also a Mudita Pure.

  16. I’m not sure how robust the screen would be if the phone were dropped or scratched.

  17. Will I be able to add my own ringtones in the future? Or will some classic ringtones be added in future software updates?

  18. The buttons make a clicking noise when pressed. I thought I read somewhere that they had been made silent but maybe I misunderstood?

  19. When composing an SMS while in Offline mode, switching to Connected when I’m ready to send the SMS deleted the message text.

  20. With one of my contacts, when they send me an SMS their number comes up in the format XXX-XXX-XXXXX so it’s not recognised as being a stored contact (which has the number with no hyphens). This also means I can’t reply directly to their SMS because it isn’t recognised as a valid number and the SMS won’t send, so I have to start a new message thread using my stored contact, meaning that incoming and outgoing messages are in separate threads.


I’ve been using my Android smartphone in a minimalist way for a couple of years now, so the transition to Mudita Pure isn’t a wrench for me. I intend Pure to be my main phone.

I really want to love the Pure and I was so excited to finally receive it, but at this stage I must say I’m debating whether to return it for a refund or whether I can trust that it will improve and various issues are fixed.

I love the concept, the absence of GPS, the open source OS, the e-ink display and the whole ethos of the product and its production, but if the phone won’t perform excellently in its basic functions then reluctantly I’d have to send it back and wait until the product is more developed or consider an alternative phone. It’s potentially a fantastic phone but in its current state I can’t help feeling like I’ve paid a lot of money for something that’s not quite ready for market.

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Remember that you have only 14 days to return it for a refund, per what I saw on the Mudita site.

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Thanks. 14 days if using the cancellation option under clause 7 but no time limit if returning the phone under clause 9 on the grounds of defective product. I would rather keep the phone though if I can have confidence that things will be fixed.

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@wzrd: I see what you mean:
§ 9

Liability for defects

  1. The Seller shall be obliged to deliver a defect-free product to the Buyer.
  2. The Seller shall be liable towards the Buyer if the sold product has a physical or legal defect (statutory warranty for defects).
  3. If the sold product has a defect, the Buyer may:
  4. demand replacement of the product with a one being defect-free,
  5. demand elimination of the defect,
  6. make a representation on price reduction,
  7. make a representation on withdrawal from the agreement.
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@wzrd Thank you so much for taking the time to outline your feedback in such an extensive way. It’s really helpful. I’ve done my best to answer all your points:
If there is anything you need clarification on, please do not hesitate to write back.

  1. It would be great if the size of the text were adjustable. I’m referring to text in the menus and particularly in SMS messages and the emojis, where the text is tiny. Is this in the plan? The devs are looking into this, however, it would involve a redesign of the whole UI.

  2. It would be useful to have an apostrophe, @ and hyphen on key 1 rather than having to open the symbols screen. I will pass this on to our team.

  3. I’d like it if I didn’t need to press # as well as Unlock. Intuitively I expect the Unlock button to take me straight to entering the PIN. Pressing # first feels like an unnecessary additional step. Thanks for the feedback. This step is actually intentional, by design.

  4. The ability to order Contacts by first name rather than surname would be nice. E.g. I want Peter Smith under P not S. I guess I could enter both names in the first name field as a workaround but an option to choose alphabetical ordering would be useful. I will pass this suggestion on to the devs.

  5. The screen display and button responsiveness can’t be turned off without turning the phone off. Therefore, when in standby mode it’s easy to touch buttons and prompt unlocking when this is not wanted (e.g. when putting the phone into a pocket or a case or just picking it up). This is why there is that extra step to unlock the phone- Press Unlock & then # (additionally you have the option to have a passcode). Very rarely can you unlock the phone accidentally in your pocket by pressing the unlock button + # and the correct passcode. :smiley:

  6. How can I remove unwanted Menu items? Or rearrange them? Unfortunately, this is currently not possible. However, I will pass this on to the devs.

  7. It looks like sorting music by album, artist and playlist is provided for but not yet available. Will this be coming later? The devs are working up updates to the music player & this is on the roadmap.

  8. The bottom of the navigation button is so close to key 2 that it’s hard not to press 2 when navigating down, unless I use my thumbnail. Thank you for the feedback. I will pass this on to the designers.

  9. In Mudita Centre there appears to be a maximum of 114 characters in sending an SMS, but not for received SMS messages and not when sending SMS messages on the phone itself. Will this maximum be removed? Otherwise Mudita Centre is effectively unusable for SMS messaging, which is the main reason I want to use it. The character length in Mudita Center will be increased in a subsequent update. The team is currently working ironing out the SMS issues.

  10. The Unlock button sometimes doesn’t respond and the phone stays locked. When something like this happens, it’s crucial to send logs from the phone to Mudita Center. When you’re experiencing issues & you send your logs to Mudita via Mudita Center, it helps our devs to recreate the issue & figure out what’s going on. Instructions on how to submit logs: How to send logs to Mudita via Mudita Center

  11. Battery life isn’t as impressive as I expected, so far. I thought it would last for days without losing any power, like the old Amazon Kindle did, but it seems to lose power even when the phone is lying there inactive. This is going to be greatly improved with the next software update that is coming next month. We are aiming for battery life to be about a week.

  12. Mobile signal strength is noticeably lower than on my previous phone. We are aware of this. This is mostly due to the fact that we have an ultra-low SAR antenna.

  13. I echo other people’s call for predictive text. I hope this is a priority for the developers. It would be such a good improvement to the SMS experience. Interestingly, typing using the buttons came back to me from the early days of mobile phones very quickly and easily but predictive text would be even better. Our devs are working on this. It’s on the roadmap & it’s a very high priority.

  14. The connection to Mudita Centre via the USB is hit and miss. I frequently get messages saying the phone has crashed or disconnected. When something like this happens, it’s crucial to send logs from the phone to Mudita Center. If you have trouble connecting, send me a DM with your Pure version, Mudita Center version, what kind of message you received regarding the synchronization: was it in progress / failure. If you exhausted all possibilities, i.e. tried different cables / ports / restarted the device, you can manually send the logs to our customer support mail from the ~ / Library / Application Support / @ mudita / mudita-center-app directory.

15 SMS messages sent from my UK number (O2/giffgaff) to a Norwegian number weren’t received, but my network provider confirms that they were sent and that I was charged for them. The same Norwegian number was able to send an SMS to my UK number. The Norwegian phone is also a Mudita Pure. It would help to have logs to diagnose this.

  1. I’m not sure how robust the screen would be if the phone were dropped or scratched. We designed Mudita Pure to be a long-lasting device. We performed drop tests prior to starting production. You can see the results here: Mudita Pure Videos - #5 by urszula

  2. Will I be able to add my own ringtones in the future? Or will some classic ringtones be added in future software updates? I believe that is the plan. I will confirm & get back to you.

  3. The buttons make a clicking noise when pressed. I thought I read somewhere that they had been made silent but maybe I misunderstood? They are not completely silent & they were not meant to be completely silent.

  4. When composing an SMS while in Offline mode, switching to Connected when I’m ready to send the SMS deleted the message text. I will pass this issue on to the devs.

  5. With one of my contacts, when they send me an SMS their number comes up in the format XXX-XXX-XXXXX so it’s not recognised as being a stored contact (which has the number with no hyphens). This also means I can’t reply directly to their SMS because it isn’t recognised as a valid number and the SMS won’t send, so I have to start a new message thread using my stored contact, meaning that incoming and outgoing messages are in separate threads. I will pass this on to the devs.

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@urszula Thanks very much for your fast and detailed response. It’s good to hear that many of those things are in the plan or will be looked at by the developers. I have sent logs through Mudita Centre and I look forward to hearing from you.

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@urszula: What does “physical or legal defect (statutory warranty for defects)” mean in Section 9 (“Liability for defects”)? Per what @wzrd wrote, a customer could return a Pure at any time after delivery for a full refund “on the grounds of defective product.”

For example, if a Pure owner cannot get a strong 4G LTE signal with the Pure but can get a strong 4G LTE signal with another cellphone, is the Pure eligible for return at any time?

What about for poor audio quality?

What about for partial SMS messages?

Etc.

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@kirkmahoneyphd I will ask for a clarification from from Customer Service dept.

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Wouldn’t it be appropriate to combine all the complaints in one thread - and clarify the same questions once and for all? 2G, 3G, 4G LTE - where does it work and where not?, What is covered by the OS updates - what is not? etc. Why are there still no graphical statistics in the form of a world map of where Pure users live and how accessible they are - wherever in the world? Green spots = very accessible, yellow spots = difficult connection, red spots = problematic…

A small query (Where do you live? What is the name of your provider? What is the quality - sending and receiving?) would already bring a lot of clarity.

And the more green spots you can find on the world map, the better for mudita’s marketing

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@anon90657299 I think it’s a really good idea. We’ve been discussion something like this. Some users might not read all my replies to each individual reviews. PLUS this forum is filled with so much info, I think it would be wide to centralize all of it. Let me talk to our team to see how best to do this.

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@kirkmahoneyphd Refunds under section 9 will be handled on a case by case basis. To be honest, we don’t expect our customers to keep the phone if it’s not usable in their area. We know we have a way to go to perfect Mudita Pure into the device we want it to be & although we would LOVE IT if people stuck around with us, we understand that some people might not be able to do that. However, if during that time you get frustrated & throw your Mudita Pure against a concrete wall and THEN you ask for a refund, we might say ‘NO’ LOL :rofl: :joy:. Otherwise, we will approach each return/refund after the 14 day period individually with a lot of understanding. Hopefully this helps.

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That sounds reasonable and fair, @urszula – thank you for clarifying this :blush:

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@urszula Here is an update about this issue. My girlfriend and I both have a Mudita Pure and we’re in the UK. I have only a UK SIM installed (giffgaff); she has both a UK SIM (giffgaff) and a Norwegian SIM (MyCall). We did some more tests and SMS messages from my UK SIM to her Norwegian SIM are not being received. SMS messages from another phone located in Norway are received on her Norwegian SIM here in the UK. So perhaps the problem is from having two different country SIMs in the same phone? Maybe the Norwegian SIM isn’t working when roaming here in the UK. We would expect that both SIMs should work in her phone, whether she’s in the UK, Norway or anywhere else and wherever the SMS is sent from.

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@urszula I’ve found a new issue. After turning the phone off, the ‘on’ button sometimes doesn’t work (battery level is high enough). I have to connect the phone to a charger or the computer to make it turn back on.

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@wzrd I’m reporting this to the devs.

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Today is 14 days since I received the phone. I wanted to post an update to say that I have decided to stick with Mudita and keep the phone. I am trusting that the bugs will be fixed over time and that it will be the amazing product that I and Mudita want it to be. If the problems aren’t resolved and the phone doesn’t work how it should, then I still have the option of invoking clause 9 of the Terms of Sale, but I hope I won’t have to :grinning:

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@wzrd Thank you so much for believing in us. Our tech team is continuously working on numerous fixes. There’s an update scheduled to be released next month which will address numerous bugs, as well as improvements in battery life & audio quality.

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