First of all I want to unreservedly praise the philosophy behind “Mudita Pure”. When I first became aware of the project in autumn 2019, I was immediately enthusiastic. It felt like the “Mudita Pure” was made for me. I followed the further development with great enthusiasm until the expected price was communicated. At first it seemed way too high and I lost interest a bit.
In the meantime, the first devices have been delivered and the first reactions from users have ranged, to put it politely, from cautious to disappointed. Nevertheless, I took advantage of the latest discount campaign and ordered the “Mudita Pure”. I want to give it a chance and I can now come to terms with the price.
However, the more early adopters share their experiences, the more skeptical I become. Shouldn’t a device that focuses on calls and text messages at least be able to handle these tasks satisfactorily? Is my impression correct that “Mudita Pure” was simply released in a state that can at most be described as alpha status?
I wished nothing more than that all problems could be solved in a short time. But unfortunately I am very skeptical. It will still be “a few weeks” (probably several months) before my device ships. Thanks to all the forum members who continue to share their experiences and I hope I don’t have to come to the conclusion that I have to cancel my order.
I intend to place an order for the Mudita Pure myself, but have been waiting until a few more reviews appeared on here. I am waiting until they have caught up with the backlog of kickstarters etc. I figure, by then, a few more software updates should have been released, which will hopefully have addressed the common issues people report on this forum. Hopefully by the time your phone is shipped, one of the updates will have corrected the worst of the issues.
Similarly, I hope that I don’t have to take advantage of this within the 14 days after I receive my Pure: “You have 14 calendar days to return an item from the date you received it.”
Maybe it’s just me but all other smartphones dropped with call quality recently? What’s your opinion? Also I got lots of connections problems in Poland.
I can’t confirm that. In particular, I can’t confirm that recently more people are saying: “I can hardly understand the person I’m talking to.” This phenomenon seems to be exclusive to “Mudita Pure”.
The call quality issue can also depend on the network. For instance, in the UK, I can’t understand a word spoken over EE (formerly the T-Mobile and Orange networks) or any MVNO that uses EE’s infrastructure. Yet Vodafone, O2 and their MVNOs are crystal-clear to my ear, even when I’m in coverage blackspots. It’s not a coverage issue, as EE is named “Everything Everywhere” for a reason. It’s purely the codecs and bandwidth allocated to the voice component of the signal.
With regards to call dropouts, I’ve noticed signal coverage has reduced in my area. I used to get a modest signal everywhere apart from one location, and now I have noticed the size of that location has increased, and at least two others have sprung up nearby. I suspect this will be related to the decommissioning of 3G and 2G infrastructure. Perhaps the capacity is lowered and resources diverted to 4G/5G, or the frequencies are gradually being shut-off altogether. This means that all phones suddenly have less “fall-back” options when the 4G/5G signal isn’t good enough.
I spent few hours testing the phone after receiving it. People on the other end of the line can hear me clear (the mic seems fine), however the speaker is so bad so listening to the other side is unpleasant. When on loudspeaker, the sound is okay though.
The major issue is however is half the time the phone has no reception - in the middle of a large Canadian city with 3G, 4G, and 5G coverage and a population of over 1 million people. The local mobile operators provide excellent coverage everywhere in the city, but the phone just can’t see the tower.
Apart from that I could not make Bluetooth to work no matter what I tried. Yes, I did make sure the Bluetooth is enabled. The phone just does not see the nearby Bluetooth devices, and is not discoverable by other Bluetooth devices.
Fundamentally the phone is a “no go” as far as I’m concerned. Trying to guess whether people can reach me on this handset is a gamble which completely defeats the purpose of having it in the pocket. It has to provide reliable means of communication. Period.
P.S. I really did not want to post my “experience” here, however it seems that mudita support just ignored my request for a refund. I suspect the team is trying to buy time while working hard fixing software bugs right now, but it is too little too late.
“Over-promised and under-delivered” - best way to describe it.
I think today is the right day to come back to my original post from May because now I have the first three days behind me where I had the Pure as the only phone in use. Yes, I actually dared to leave the house without a backup phone!
My first conclusion is surprisingly positive. I use the device in Germany in the O2 network in a metropolitan area. I had adequate to good reception throughout. I didn’t seem to miss any calls or messages. If I did, they were so unimportant that the senders didn’t get in touch.
The call quality was always good or at least good enough not to have to complain.
We all know that features like the address book or the music player are far from finished. But I can live with that for the moment. I won’t be using the music player anyway. After all, why do I have my beloved Minidisc Player?
But what is urgently needed is a clear documentation of the Mudita Pure. I have to laboriously answer all the questions that arise by browsing the forum myself. This could be so much easier if all the information was bundled somewhere.
All in all, I can say that I’m glad I stuck to my order. I think over time this will be exactly what we all hoped for and what the Mudita team is working hard to achieve
@thilodus Thanks for the feedback. We’re glad that everything is working out for now. Our team is diligently working on improving the function of Mudita Pure. We hope that with every update, the device will be be less & less buggy.
Nice to read from another user from Germany
Do you have no intermittent fluctuations in the signal? At home in the apartment I have mostly 2 sometimes but also only one bar. Outside it fluctuates then very much. Most of the time I have 3 bars, but sometimes in the same place only 2 bars. Only once I had for a very short time 4 bars.
And how does it look with the SMS? Do they sometimes arrive mixed with other messages? And some messages not at all?
By the way, I use the Vodafone network.
It’s a well-known phenomenon that technical forums are mainly populated by users who want to share their problems. In order to complete the overall impression of the reliability of the Mudita Pure, I would like to briefly report that I have been using it for a full three weeks without any problems worth mentioning.
It’s been about 15 days now that I’ve given the Pure another chance. I suspect that something must have happened with my provider Vodafone, because suddenly the signal quality was much better and reliable. I don’t know what exactly happened. But I have been using the Pure without any problems since then (except for the problem with the mixed SMS, which seems to have been solved now). I have made phone calls of 40 minutes and have been understood very well, the other party has often praised the good quality. There were no disconnections and everything went very well.
Now, with the new update, the problem with the SMS seems to have been solved and the responsiveness of the Pure has increased considerably. So I am really very satisfied.
Thanks Mudita for this great minimalist phone
@marko Thanks again for the feedback. We really want to make the Mudita Pure experience as pleasant as possible. We know we still have a long road ahead of us, but we’re getting there.
