Thank you Marcin for your spot on comment.
These are the questions that we ask ourselves and working on addressing them, so your input is very insightful for us.
The most frequent request we get is definitely about maps and we totally agree with that.
I wonder what’s your opinion on what kind of maps. I feel most of people got used to Google maps. Will you be willing to switch to different maps if we don’t want to include Google services?
We want a distraction phone that won’t be expressed only by B&W screen, at the same time we realise that there are very useful apps and in urban context especially, it’s hard to resign from the convenience they bring.
I have additional question for you - how about a browser and looking things up - essential?
Thank you Boris for your comment! I’ve added it to our list.
Good idea with the auto-reply like this!
I agree with you- endless scroll is a good way to distinguish addictive apps and yes, “no notifications” feature is something important for us. In Mudita Pure we have a dedicated physical slider to make it easy to switch between the modes that allow you to customise the way you want to be reached.
We’re still working out the exact features for this phone, so we’ll keep you posted!
There are very good suggestions here and I am very impressed about this initiative. Congrats to all the posters on this forum for wanting to live a more dis-connected life.
As I age, I find that there is really no substitute for high fidelity (in person) human-human interaction in how it communicates and enriches the human spirit. Whether it is getting the kids ready for school, meeting with fellow execs, mentoring employees, playing with your children after school, enjoying a glass of wine with your partner or enjoying a cigar alone on the patio after dark, for each of these interactions to be 100% fruitful, you need to be 100% present and 100% participating. Even as a career technologist, I get the premise of this product and I love it.
Some features I would love to see on the product:
The ability to choose which features/apps to turn on or off and for some apps like messaging, choose who to accept messages from…
… A mac/pc companion app to configure the phone to my liking
Bluetooth connectivity for my AirPods …
… so I can listen to spotify on my commutes/flights
Calendar to tell me where to go next during my busy day, or to remind me of birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
NFC for payments
A way to save digital boarding passes
I totally get the challenge to balance simplicity with convenience and I think achieving this balance (and the ability to allow users to choose the balance point) will be key to the success of this product. This is a great initiative and I look forward to participating in it’s success.
I’d say most “non-social-media” apps could be fair game. Definitely ride sharing like Uber and a simple music player, hopefully with Bluetooth for headphones.
You’re so right that human to human interaction is incredibly important. I particularly like your examples of ways to spend time offline. Although they aren’t directly relevant to me (no children, no cigars etc.) by even imagining those situations, the emotional response is spot on. Living our lives in the present moment, surrounded by the people we care about, is a truly beautiful thing.
There was a paper from about 2010, which suggested “an evolutionary framework to explore the dynamics of social interaction in an environment where social relationships can be developed in two possible ways: through face to face encounters (the FF strategy), or by means of a mix of actual meetings and online interactions (SN strategy).” Their findings suggested “that the new opportunities for participation offered by social networking may progressively lead a growing share x of the population to embrace the SN strategy.”[1] It would appear as though, in 2019, people have really embraced the SN strategy, without understanding the consequences of such a decision as it wasn’t really a decision they made consciously.
In terms of your suggested features, your ideas have been passed on to the design team and although some will not be available on Mudita Pure. Perhaps we will implement them in our second phone.
There will be several modes which allow you to control who calls or messages you.
There will be a desktop app which will connect to your phone.
There will be Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity.
There will be a music player.
There will be a calendar.
There will not be any Near-field communication (NFC).
There will be a note section but I don’t believe there will be a way to save digital boarding passes, as Mudita Pure will not connect to the internet.
Not relevant to the phone but rather to your interest in living a distraction free life, there’s a really nice interdisciplinary, multiscientific journal called ‘Human Technology’ which publishes articles on investigating the human role in existing and emerging technologies, which you might find interesting.
1. Antoci, Angelo and Sabatini, Fabio and Sodini, Mauro (2010): See you on Facebook: the effect of social networking on human interaction. [Online] https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/27661/ (Accessed: 22.08.2019)
So stoked someone is working on this. Been looking at dumber phones for a while now and have yet to find anything strong enough to pull me away. This looks incredibly promising. And pretty to boot!
I agree with a lot of the options discussed above. I had many a Nokia back in the day, and they were pretty solid as far as features go, considering the time period.
Glad to see an MP3 player will be included. Will the Pure accept microSD? If so, expandable to what capacity?
Some form of navigation would be handy, but not essential. I use public transport time table apps (TripView here in Sydney, Australia) and it would be cool if that kind of thing could still be accessed, even if updated only when connected to the desktop.
Some form of RSS-based news feed, or information search limited to sites with RSS feeds, configurable by category or something from the desktop client. That might be covered by the simple browsers discussed above though.
Is there a list of confirmed specs and not specs available? Tiffany provided a few (thank you!) but I’ve been struggling to find more. Specifically, what bands will it operate with? 3G has all but disappeared, and with 5G on its way, it won’t be long before 4G/LTE are dinosaurs also. Hoping for a long term “never think about a phone again” solution.
Anyway, brilliant idea. Looking forward to September’s kick start. I’m in
For me, the thing I think smartphones is really good at, is that it can replace a lot of other tools into one device. That meaning travel tickets, maps, camera, music device etc. I would love to have a smartphone, or “wisephone”, which would have most features; navigation system, chat apps (WhatsApp, Messenger, email etc.), weather app, music, music tools (metronome, audio recorder, tuning machine), bank apps, alarm app, notes, browser, travel apps and other kinds of tickets, meditation timer, camera (also for the front for meetings f.ex. Essentially most features of an smartphone, but made in a more conscious way, regarding how it is produced (fair materials, long-lasting, good working conditions, good way for reusing materials and recycling), low radiation and a better screen (non blue light. Would be amazing if it would be possible to have a kind of e ink colour screen.). What I could do without in a smartphone is the Facebook app, Instagram, Snapchat etc., but the most important for me would be how it’s produced, low radiation and a more healthy screen.
Would be interesting to have an in-built camera which stores your pictures without you seeing them until you plug it into a computer… much like an old film camera, bring the fun back to taking snaps on your phone. Maybe this is a way of keeping the E-ink screen and allowing photos to be stored directly in the phone.
some kind of simple internet search engine/email system would be great too.
I’ve spoken to the design team with regards to the colour so I will need to get back to you on that one. In terms of GPS, Mudita Pure won’t have it. It is as you say, truly off the grid.
That’s an interesting idea in terms of a camera that hides your photographs until you process them via a computer! It was always fun waiting to see which photographs were captured on rolls of film.
I think with analog cameras people used to take less photographs but they’d be more conscious of what they were doing, as the number of photographs you could take was limited, unlike with smartphones! Although Mudita Pure won’t have a camera and it won’t connect to the internet, perhaps these ideas could be developed further in future!
Hi Kasia!
(Do I correctly hear Polish heritage/origin? )
Google maps, indeed the titan in the room. I reckon that if you can have a custom map (a version of openstreetmaps for example) that incorporates live public transport information and ideally also maybe live traffic information then I would have totes zero probs with switching. I too prefer to not contribute to googles empire and would prefer to switch but at the same time, those functionalities tho!
To some extent it also depends on what your intended user profile is. Someone with or without a car?
I live in Berlin where getting around by public is something that everyone does as its super convenient, affordable and environmentally friendlier (than owning a car). When we do need a car we use a car-sharing thingy. In both cases when traversing the city I almost always check for connections or quickest routes and googlemaps doesn’t disappoint. However, from what I understand in the US (I presume your main initial target market?) it seems to be quite the contrary. Using public is deemed (obvs generalising here) a sign of not having gotten ahead in life and looked down upon and not convenient. Perhaps you just can’t have it both ways, or perhaps there is indeed a golden bullet…
Then onto browsers. Well this is a very complex question. If we consider or perhaps even accept that social media platforms are addictive then we should also take the logical next step of accepting that leaving a browser in will enable people to log in and use them. This in consequence stops them from being less connected which seems to be the main aim of the phone. But okay, so then lets say we have a browser but no apps at all. So if you need to look something up or if you really need to access a social network (to retrieve contact details for example) you can, but the phone won’t be prompting you all the time to do so. Also, if you have a browser you can use whatever map service you so desire to. Hmm, I’m suddenly feeling that you’ve directed to conversation towards a browser as that seems to be a viable option you’re considering as it offers all the good at a fairly easy development trajectory!
Well then yea, why not? Just a browser and a music player et viola! Although that negates the need for all the messaging apps or utilities, hmm. Tricky tricky. Perhaps it just boils down to: Can you dictate to your users what they will be able to and what they will not be able to do on their phone, even though considering that obviously the equipment itself is capable of doing it. The whole closed ecosystem schtick that angers so many users about apple for example.
But, I went on a tangent. To answer more directly: yes. Looking things up is actually also super important and useful in everyday life (even more so on holidays/when travelling). From figuring out the address to that one nice restaurant you went to a year ago to fact checking something on wikipedia your mate has just said that just sounds so very very wrong.
Do you guys have a preliminary ETA on the device release that can be shared here or is it still secret?
Thank you for such a positive message of support. Our founder had the same issue trying to find a classic phone that suited his needs, that’s one of the reasons he wanted to start Mudita. If you can’t find it, build it!
It won’t be possible to add storage to Mudita Pure and in terms of general specs, we’re going to reveal the full list of features during our Kickstarter campaign in September. We also won’t be including maps or GPS but your suggestions have been passed onto the relevant team!
Unless I really have to get a separate GPS device, maps would be a useful feature. Without any browser search at all there are inconvenient limitations that make it harder to decide to get rid of a smartphone. I would miss being able to look up addresses, opening hours and contact numbers of businesses. It’s not so much that I need to visit their full website but those few details that the Google search page displays would be handy.
Some people have considered using Mudita Pure as a secondary phone (myself included), for weekends, after work, camping trips or on holiday etc.
How often do you need to find new places? If it’s every day then understandably this device might not be for you. A lot of people don’t look up addresses, opening hours and contact numbers of businesses whilst on the go, as it’s often done in advance. I recently started using my computer to find any information like that, I try to write it down, or memorize it if possible.
Sometimes, I’ll even draw myself a map. I enjoy journeys more now that I’m conscious of the whole experience, being in the present moment and monotasking can be quite nice. Obviously no one likes getting lost if they have somewhere to be (and more importantly if they need to be somewhere on time) but there can be something quite beautiful in getting from one place to another. Things are often missed when we’re looking down at our devices rather than looking up at what’s ahead of us. Mudita Pure won’t have GPS or maps but the suggestions are appreciated.
The ability to block certain numbers is essential. That’s one of the few features of a standard smartphone that helps reduce anxiety. Also, a contacts app to store numbers…preferably one with the ability to add folders for organization (family, friends, work, etc.). Most people use their phone for a mix of business and personal, so being able to separate those contacts would help with work/life balance.
)