The initial setup was compete madness, I was terribly frustrated, the software was simply not ready. But this is a new product by a small company, they surely couldn’t announce that it needed another 6 months to ship. Nor do they have unlimited resources as the large monopolies have in order to release completely polished products. This is what it is, a niche product released by a small company, that needs the help of the early adopters. Not in for that? Well you could buy a Kompakt after all of us have pulled our hair out working out all the bugs. I would have loved to have the experience I had with a Light Phone 2, where I simply put my sim card in, and enjoyed not paying attention to it. But you have to factor in the slick software of the Light Phone 2 came from a company that did not develop the hardware but repurposed a Japanese product.
I really enjoy the slow pace of the screen, and the keyboard. Typing brings you to a slower pace, you need to be patient, and precise with what you say. It isn’t for blabbering, or fast conversations.
There are several complaints I read about the Kompakt which would have never been a thought in my mind, the screen resolution looks fine to me, and the speaker sounds great. But of course I do like when things are lo-fi… I like the sound of a small crappy speaker, I enjoy the sound of good large speakers as well, but those are Large speakers. I love the gong sound of the meditation timer, it cuts off, it sounds fake, yes!! That is a good thing, because it isn’t a gong, it is a tiny speaker on the phone, and I want it to sound like a tiny speaker on a phone, because that is real. If I want fake, if I want a premium experience, I’ll get an iPhone, I want real, I want crude, I want to a see it for what it is, I want to see some pixels.
Apple uses EQ/compression and effect audio before they get to the crappy little speakers in their products to make them sound bigger and fuller, it does not sound bigger to me, it sound like a little speaker with effects on it. The tiny camera sends the pictures through endless filters to make them look better, they do not look better to me, they look like they have been processed.
I am not attracted to people with plastic surgeries, botox, and makeup. They look fake, tacky. Just as the audio coming out of a major manufactured audio products sounds compressed fake tacky, and the photography looks jarring from their filtering. And the slick screen sucks my head into an alternate reality, one that brings me fear, anxiety, and depression. I want to look AT the phone, not within it, simply to gather information it presents me, but not as entertainment. Smartphones are bimbos, and I ain’t no bimbo, I’m no fancy pants, I’m a dirty raw real person, and where’s my phone? It’s too late for flip phones, that’s old. Here it is, it’s the Kompakt, it’s a phone for me. It feels raw, and I say hooray!
So I love the imperfections of the Kompakt, the sound, the visual, the camera. It’s all so real to me, I love it like I love a wrinkle or freckle. And I love that it does not look back at me, there is no camera eye starring me down. Whether or not there is anyone looking on the other side, it is still a symbolic eye watching me down. My only real complaint is let it be more minimal, let it be able to be stripped down to the most basic element of being a telephone, no clock, no weather, no games, apps. Let one choose exactly what they want.
Sideloaded apps:
Quik
I had an extremely difficult time setting up Quik, after much trial and error here is the sequence of actions that worked for me:
- Enable bold text through accessibility setting, open accessibility settings via ADB:
adb shell am start -a android.settings.ACCESSIBILITY_SETTINGS - disable the stock SMS app: adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 package:com.mudita.messages
- Change font: adb shell settings put system font_scale 0.50
- Install Fossify Messages, open and set Quik to default, uninstall Fossify Messages: adb shell cmd package uninstall -k --user 0 org.fossify.messages
- Change font: adb shell settings put system font_scale 1.0
I found Quik unreadable without bold text, and it wouldn’t recognize bold text until I uninstalled/reinstalled, so I recommend setting bold first. The default dialog would not come up with Quik, so I installed Fossify Messages (which I prefer but group messaging didn’t work) to set Quik to default.
I don’t recommend setting the font size beyond 1.0, it causes problems with the interface.
Olauncher Clutter Free
I like this launcher, I don’t mind that it doesn’t have notifications, I see the notifications on the lock screen before I swipe up, so this works well. I don’t mind the default launcher, I just had to scroll down to get to Quik and avoid tapping the default SMS icon, but once that is worked out, I may not need to use a custom luncher.
K-9 Mail
It’s clumsy and I love that, if I reallllly need to use email I can, but it’s not very pleasant so I won’t unless I really need to.
Organic Maps
Works great, I don’t mind the map on e-paper.
Tone Selector
I didn’t like any of the stock sounds, so I changed them to sounds I stole from the Light Phone 2, along with oLuncher I really have made this into what I wish the Light Phone 3 should have been.
Nova Launcher
I used this to remove the clock from the status bar, to do so, see my post Please Remove The Clocks
Fossify Music Player
Fossify File Manager
Oh Fossify, once Simple. I have never owned an Android phone without replacing stock apps with these well made replacements.
And that is all, it works, that’s all I really have wanted, a phone that works, does not emit light, and I can very well forgot about it. As long as it functions I won’t be messing with it. Once these updates work out the kinks, I’ll remove some of these sideloaded apps like Quik.
I’m going to get off the internet now, go back to reality, and thankfully I have a phone that looks like reality, it looks like a piece of paper, so miraculously I don’t feel any need to look at it, unless I really need to use it. Thank you Mudita.