I spent around eight days researching, testing, and thinking quite deeply about the Mudita Kompact. It was a bit of a roller coaster trying to figure out whether it would actually fit my needs. After using it for a couple of days, I ultimately decided to send it back, which honestly feels a little sad, because the phone and the idea behind it really grew on me. I usually don’t write reviews, but I wanted to share a few thoughts, mainly because I have a lot of respect for what Mudita is trying to build. There are many things they have done remarkably well.
What I loved
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Build quality: Fantastic. It feels great in the hand, the materials are excellent, and the overall physical experience is very polished.
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Software & UX: Brilliant. The simplicity and clarity of the interface are exactly my taste. There was very little I wanted to change.
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Phone calls: Absolutely fantastic. From the implementation and handling of contacts to the call quality itself, everything worked exactly as it should. The microphone quality is good, although I found the speaker somewhat average, especially compared with my iPhone 13, I think it lacks overall dynamics.
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SMS: Also very good. The keyboard in OS 1.5 works really well, and texting felt natural and reliable. I was slightly unsure about relying exclusively on SMS after being used to iMessage. I had read reports of messages occasionally not reaching contacts because of iMessage settings, although all of my own test messages went through. I was also unsure about switching back and forth between the Mudita and my iPhone, and about reaching some international contacts without additional fees. Overall, I was simply spoiled by iMessage and its end-to-end encryption.
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Notes: Simple and surprisingly pleasant to use. The keyboard works very well, including switching languages, copying, pasting, and editing. The main limitation for me is that notes can’t currently be exported.
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Voice recorder: Extremely straightforward and reliable. Start, pause, continue, it just works. Another example of very thoughtful UX. Recordings sounded clear and good when listened to through headphones. Voice recordings also can’t currently be exported.
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E-reader: This surprised me the most. Despite the small screen and limited resolution, reading was genuinely enjoyable, especially with the backlight off. I found the three font sizes perfectly sufficient and usually used the middle setting. It became a lovely little reading companion. Bookmarks, highlighting, and adding comments would be welcome additions, though. Still, the printed book has best UX Design imaginable (you can even leave it on a bench and imagine who reads it next).
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Chess: The playing strength is great, and overall I liked it. There was just something I would have needed to get used to, and somehow it felt a little less enjoyable than playing on Duolingo. Of course, Duolingo deliberately uses highly engaging mechanics to bring users back, perhaps a little too effectively for my taste, to the point where I eventually stopped using it and deleted my account entirely. So I wouldn’t necessarily call Mudita’s chess experience worse; it simply felt less engaging and took some getting used to.
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Maps: This was one of the more interesting areas for me. I really appreciated having an offline maps solution, especially in a time when so much data is collected, it felt surprisingly liberating. Unfortunately, the app was too limited for my needs. It seemed that I often had to enter the complete address rather than simply searching for a place by name. For example, it couldn’t find my favorite library, so I had to look up its address elsewhere and enter it manually. The route calculation itself worked fine, but I couldn’t see how long the journey would take. For me, this meant still depending on my iPhone or another computer for basic navigation tasks.
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Tethering: This worked brilliantly. I was particularly interested in using the Mudita as a hotspot for my iPhone, since I had decided not to use sideloading because of my security concerns. The connection worked very well, and I especially liked the automatically generated QR code, no need to manually enter a password. A perfect landing here.
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Meditation: Great to have on board. On my iPhone I use Ensö, and the Mudita meditation app is quite similar. It’s a simple, useful companion and I was glad it was included.
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E-ink ghosting: I know some people have criticized the amount of ghosting on the display, so I specifically paid attention to it. To be honest, I quite liked it. Not necessarily as a technical advantage, but almost as a feature. When I look at a printed book, I can also sometimes see traces of the previous page or the printing through the paper. Somehow, that made the display feel more natural to me rather than distracting. So personally, I wouldn’t consider the ghosting a problem at all.
Why I ultimately returned it
My initial concern was security, particularly around the discussions about Android versions and security. I never felt entirely comfortable enough with that aspect, so I decided that sideloading would not be an option for me. Initially, I thought sideloading might have allowed me to make the Mudita my true primary phone. Once I ruled that out, I considered using my iPhone as a kind of supercomputer in my pocket, mostly switched off and only there when needed, while making the Mudita my everyday phone.
But I realized there were still a few things I genuinely needed from the iPhone, particularly a more capable maps solution and some essential apps such as Signal, public transport directions, my public transport pass. At that point, the setup became a little too dependent on having both phones with me, which defeated part of the purpose for me.
And that’s ultimately why I decided to return the Mudita Compact. Not because I think it’s a bad phone, quite the opposite. I think it is an exceptionally thoughtful product with a remarkably good UX, and I genuinely hope Mudita continues developing it. It simply didn’t quite fit my personal use case yet.
Final thoughts on Mudita
One last thing I want to mention is how I perceive Mudita as a company. I genuinely get the feeling that they want to do things differently from the typical phone industry and they do it well enough that I truly want to support that idea. After only a few days of comparison, the contrast is striking. Even with very few apps on my iPhone, a grayscale display, and essentially the same functionality I had on the Mudita, I can feel how much the overall experience is designed to keep me engaged. Many UX decisions seem deliberately optimized around attention and continued usage, and I find that increasingly uncomfortable.
The fact that Mudita is consciously trying to move in the opposite direction is, to me, incredibly valuable. I genuinely appreciate that, and I feel a little sorry that I couldn’t become a long-term supporter of the idea. But carrying two phones simply wasn’t the right solution for me. And finally, customer support has been fantastic. Replies were extremely quick, helpful, and genuinely seemed to come from people who wanted to solve the problem. That’s worth mentioning, too: buying from Mudita feels like supporting real people who are genuinely trying to make a change.
I hope they keep going, all the best…!
