Hi there,
Purchased a Mudita Kompact which was delivered last week and wanted to share the new user experience I had.
- During initial setup prompted to update to the latest version but as the battery was almost drained I had to charge it for a couple of hours before continuing. Obviously not a deal breaker but I’ve not received a device almost fully discharged for a long time which made me wonder how long this had been sitting in a warehouse somewhere. My battery was manufactured over 2 years ago which doesn’t feel like a good thing.
- The backlight even at minimum is very bright when used at night, why is there no option to turn on a night mode which flips to white on black like a Kindle or Kobo can do? I know it possible as KOreader side loaded can do it. A warm setting for the backlight would also be welcome for evening use but I assume would need to be in later hardware revision.
- The ebook and music player are so bare bones you might as well not have bothered including them.
- The music player (as noted elsewhere on the forum) doesn’t read track number or anything and gives purely an A to Z listing which is ridiculous. I owned a Diamond Rio MP3 player over 20 years ago which could do this.
- Playlists are also difficult and very manual. I have found posts where Mudita asked for feedback on how they imagine playlists working… I don’t think this is a new feature, again iPods 20 years ago could do this.
- The ebook reader only has 3 text sizes, no font options, no ability to bold the text to make it more readable, no controls for anything, you can select specific chapters and turn pages and that’s it.
- Side loading KO reader is a great option for people who want to do that but given this phone has been around for 2 years the lack of any basic functionality in the supplied apps is not a great reflection on Mudita.
- Maps doesn’t recognise post codes in the UK, I’ve never had a maps app which can’t do that, it just finds bizarre post boxes… even after I struggled to actually find the address manually it couldn’t actually direct me and said it was too far and complicated. And even searching for the street and town directly while connected on WiFi didn’t work and it couldn’t find it and found other unrelated streets in other towns.
- I use Antenna pod for podcasts, great app and works fine on the Kompact but there are no playing controls shown like you’d get with the music player, this makes it a faff to skip or control the playback. Ideally this would show on the lock screen too.
- No wallpapers, I’m okay with not having one on the home screen when unlocked if this somehow negatively impacted the icons and clock, but having something on the lock screen would be very nice and help to personalise the phone.
I know this is all very negative but making the switch from a regular smartphone is difficult and I do applaude Mudita for creating something different but think they need to consider the onboarding journey for new users, particularly people who are less tech savvy.
I work in IT so installing control centre and side loading is no bother to me, although it was a bit faffy and the phone wasn’t recognised quite a few times by CC before finally showing up.
I basically want to go back 20 years, as you can probably tell from my examples above, simpler times. But I don’t really want to carry an MP3 player on me when I leave the house when this phone should be more than capable of playing an album in order.
I do like the size and feel of the phone, it is very compact but has quite a weight to it and feels very solid in a positive way.
I understand the 2.0 update is supposedly coming soon and may address a number of the issues above but I’ll be honest I’m thinking I might be better off returning the phone under the 14 day policy and wait to see what actually gets delivered OS and app wise.
iPhone is so annoying now