One week of Mudita Pure experience

Hi, I received my Mudita Pure device a week ago and I’d like to share my thoughts after using it.

The main concerns:

  • battery life is pretty poor and I find it really perplexing. For me it’s less than 2 full days! With display light off, no Bluetooth, and minimal usage (most of the time the phone stays idle). Did I get a bad battery unit which just should be replaced? I can see in reviews that others reported similar problems (typically 2 days are mentioned but for someone the phone is alive after charging for a week). I updated the OS at the very beginning, critical battery fixes were promised there. In the promo materials one can read about “Long-lasting battery”, “Peace of mind with a long battery life” and that “Our dedicated OS features super efficient power management.” It feels to be far from reality.
  • the network connection and signal strength. I live in a place with excellent network coverage, all my previous devices report full signal strength. But for Pure I usually have 2 bars (out of 4) indoors (sometimes 3, sometimes only 1) and 3 bars when I’m out. I’m afraid that in other areas (countryside where I go in the summer) I won’t have any network connection at all. Is it because of the low SAR level and the custom antenna (“Pure always chooses the lowest spectrum available to limit radiation.”)? After reading a bit more on this I believe that’s this is the case and likely nothing can be done with it.
  • there’s no ability to block specific numbers. From time to time I receive multiple spam/robo calls during a single day, frequently from the same number. On my previous phone I’m just able to block them to minimize the distraction. This is a real-world scenario. I’m aware of the DND mode, which can be used as a workaround, but making all my contacts the favorite ones will take the premise behind the DND mode away from me. Apart from the possibility to block specific numbers (and to bulk add them via the Center app) it would be nice to have more control over who is allowed in the DND mode (all contacts, groups, tags?).
  • there’s no message delivery confirmation so I don’t know if my message reached a recipient. I believe that notification would be a distraction, maybe an additional mark next to a message is against simplicity but why can’t I check in the message details? Perhaps the UI would tell me that sending a message failed but I’m not so sure about it.

Minor issues (a part of them likely will be fixed with software updates):

  • call quality is average (not bad but not premium either),
  • the loudspeaker is pretty quiet (may be a problem with the alarm or during a call when more people participate),
  • MMS is not supported (which was expected) but there’s no clue a particular person just sent me a MMS (instead: a message with unrecognized characters coming from some strange number),
  • once after charging (then phone went off and then on) the SIM card stopped to be recognized (and I didn’t notice this so a few calls were missed). I had to reinsert the card and restart the phone.
  • the phone crashed or froze a few times (crash on adding a contact, crash on an attempt to turn it off, froze when navigating from settings or messages to the main screen)
  • the sent messages don’t have the date attached to them (this is only visible for the last message, before entering a specific conversation), only the time
  • bugs: when the language is set to Polish I have only “ść” (the last two characters of “wiadomoŚĆ”/“messaGE”) displayed for rejecting a call and sending a message, SMS length is limited to a single message when sending with Mudita Center, pasting a text into a message resulted in having multiple blanks characters (spaces) instead of the text to be pasted and inserting new characters was not possible as they all were converted to spaces.

Other observations:

  • phone and screen size felt big in the initial impression, the decisions made here are fine IMO,
  • loudspeaker quality is good,
  • the phone material is OK (not cheap but not “premium” for me, it’s a personal taste I guess),
  • there’s no possibility to add notes to the calendar at the moment (it will be changed),
  • I struggled to enter “-” character (you had to enter the special characters section, it’s in the manual),
  • the phone is boring and this is a huge advantage,
  • I was looking for a flashlight button but it turned out that the flashlight and the button are the same,
  • the UI is simple and nice,
  • the keyboard is of good quality, no cracking sounds,
  • the font is nice but pretty small, it might be an issue for people with impaired vision,
  • you can set wallpaper for a locked screen but you cannot make the screen completely blank (or dark),
  • unlocking with the passcode is a bit tedious as you have to trigger unlocking and enter the passcode as two separate, consecutive steps,
  • after 30m+ call the phone became noticeably warm.

Final remarks: I was really excited after discovering this product and it was the first thing I have ever bought as a pre-order. Now I’m considering what to do. To hope that many issues will be fixed finally (but what with the battery and signal strength) or to return the device. And I’m posting it because I care and I’d like to see Mudita Pure successful.

Fix MMS via this workaround with Google Fi: Group Text MMS workaround in the US (Google Fi)