Thanks for the link. I am obviously late to the party.
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I preordered the phone in October hoping I would get it by Januaryā¦
Donāt think thatāll be happening.
If thereās 900 backers and I think it was said they were dropping production down to 50 phones a month.
Well, you can do the math.
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If it was easy to make a solid estimate on when all the phones would ship out surely they would be making one. Giving you a date isnāt getting you a phone any sooner. It is setting an expectation they are likely to break.
If someone needs a phone now they shouldnāt pre-order something that hasnāt been shipped before; is a wholly new manufacturing process and product. Posting about it isnāt going to make it ship any faster either. Not sure what contribution to the conversation posts like these are making?
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You are right. Those comments wonāt make the phones arrive quickly. But it is about how much one can wait. November is not like january, especialy when november was anounced, and it is definitly not like march or aprilā¦ So the real question is : can we have a precise information so each one can decide if he has to ask for a refund or not. It is way more concret than just expressing unsatisfaction.
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What I meant was that if they could give you a precise enough date they would have already. They can give you another optimistic or pessimistic estimate but unfortunately estimates are not a precise thing in general.
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We totally understand everyoneās frustrations with the speed of the production. They are all valid concerns. However, the situation is a bit more complicated than just pumping out as many phones as possible & shipping them out at the fastest possible rate. There are plenty of posts on this forum about other mindful tech phones, where users expressed their opinions that first iteration of certain phones were hit or miss. Some were buggy, crashed often & some were even unusable. Others were, of course, perfectly fine. We knew all of this going into this project, thatās why wanted to do everything we could to not rush things & start off the production slowly.
Starting a production process slowly is known to produce more quality results and adds distinctive value to a product. We produced a few hundred phones the first weeks of production, however, not all of them met our strict requirements. We believe starting out slowly increases the quality of our product, giving it the uniqueness and excellence that we could be proud of.
Itās not easy to build quality hardware and software. Hardware is hard, and making mobile phone hardware from scratch is even harder. However, we can confidently say that we are working out tails off trying to make this happen as fast as possible. Despite covid & workforce shortages because people were out sick, supply chain issues & lockdowns, we kept working. During the holidays, when people usually take time to be with their families, we keep working, because we know this is important & we want to get this done right- the first time.
Above all, we want to make sure you get a good, quality-made product that will last for years. We want to avoid typical mass production issues, where we miss critical flaws which impact your user experience.
This is why we are being very careful with every step. We know itās tough to wait, but weāll get there.
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I donāt know about everyone else, but personally I would rather wait & get a decent device than get a quickly produced phone- enough to placate all the customers and then if itās a shitty device, which I hate using, have to deal with returns and getting a new phone.
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These are all solid points, and much appreciated.
However, multiple people are asking you for an updated timeline, given the slowdown that has happened. We were originally told that our phones would arrive by February (if not sooner).
What should we expect now?
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I think I was just a bit worried. I know Itās an open source and MuditaOS looks amazing trust me. Like I said, Iām just worried because I donāt have it in my hands yet
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Having taken a gamble in October 2019 on Mudita as my first Kickstarter, I greatly appreciate this. I have been talking about this phone to anyone who will listen since, especially my likeminded friends and IT buddies. Even though it has been a while, the moment I get it and are able to show them it will be worth the wait. Even if it doesnāt knock it out of the park, although doubtful that will be the case, I will still be happy I was able to help, even a tiny bit (a drop in the bucket really). I sure couldnāt get something like this going! And well if it does knock it out of the park, I got some friends that will lining up for this!
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hey @joel, really appreciate this thorough review, and reassured by your thumbs-up to call quality.
I know itās very early days but I have to askā¦ on balance, which of the two phones (Punkt & Mudita) do you prefer - and why? 
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I see your point, but still I disagree. I am not so patient that Iām willing to wait indefinitely for a āperfectā product.
As I told @urszula in the production update thread, I will surely cancel my order and request a refund if they let us know that our phones are unlikely to be delivered until March, or later.
I donāt think Iām alone in this feeling.
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@bksparrow Oh it wonāt be that long. This week we are testing a bigger batch of devices than what I wrote about before the new year & if all works out, we hope to be producing 300-500 phones per week soon, so we can fulfill all orders in a few short weeks.
However, one thing to keep in mind is this- ( from a purely commercial perspective) If we do send out faulty devices which donāt meet peopleās expectations & then we come out with a different (BRAND NEW) product- how likely are people to pre-order something thatās still being produced, if the first product was buggy & didnāt work as well as it should have.
Thatās why we have agreed to replace the phones of all the people who reported that they were experiencing that issue with the 4-way navigation key.
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Thank you for your reply.
Letās hope all goes well, and the phones can be shipped out within a few weeks. That would be excellent news, more or less inline with the original targets given when I ordered.
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But should we still expect a more detailed production update to be announced this week?
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@bksparrow Last week was a short week for us. It was still the holidays here in Poland- Thursday was the Epiphany (Three Kings) & Friday was Eastern Orthodox Christmas. So most of our office was out & I am still waiting on some info from the factory about how many units they produced last week.
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Thank you for keeping us all updated.
Iām still waiting for a positive confirmation that production is moving ahead rapidly before finally letting go out of my doubts about having purchased this phone.
For now, I wonāt ask for a refund. But if the factory says that things are still moving slow, and so I should not expect my phone to arrive for a couple months, Iāll have to cancel my order. My current phone is really on its last legs, and I just canāt afford to wait too long to replace it.
p.s. it is not reassuring to see other customers on this forum having such difficulty initiating refunds. A smooth and hassle-free refund process is really key to having customers trust a company.
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I really love this phone although I never had one in my hands. Still, due to the absence of GPS I canāt convince myself to own it as GPS is a must for me (location family members in case of emergency and basic routing).
Where there any reasons not to include this?
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I understand where youāre coming from. I too appreciate the convenience of a good navigation app. However, you donāt really need it, if you donāt want. There are several ways to circumvent this:
- There are dedicated GPS-Units for your car, or even motorbikes, cyclists and hikers. Specific smartwatches, directed at runners and such might do the trick too.
- Use the navigation application on a secondary smartphone device. You donāt even have to have a Sim Card in it, since many navigation apps, including Google Maps allow to download offline maps for large areas, so there is no additional celluar data required.
- Go old school. Have Road, City and Hiking Paper Maps in your Car or Bag. Read signs and ask for directions.
This is not to say, that you therefore should get that phone. That is entirely up to you. I most likely wonāt get it and will probably continue to use navigation apps on smartphones. But if this is truly the only thing holding you back to get a dumbphone, then I would think about it again. For my part, I learned, that these apparent āneedsā are often (but not always) an excuse, that I make for myself, so I donāt have to do something, that might be difficult, but necessary. But, of course, that is just me. Your personal situtation might be entirely different and I donāt mean to project onto you. Just wanted to offer some perspective.
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the whole power of our consumerist/advertising/society is here.
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