Possible.
People have opinions about lots of things. All the time.
Regarding services provided by the society that needs a smartphone, it’s a trade-off. You trade convenience against planning ahead.
Not always depending on the convenience of your phone is a good thing, it helps you stay connected with reality and not taking things for granted. I fear many kids and teens these days spend little to no time thinking about how the society works and how services are provided. “It’s just an app.”
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Thank you so much! I truly believe in this product, and look forward to placing my order on one in the Spring 
It will make the perfect birthday present for me!
Again - Thank you for all that you do!
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@anon13781037 Thank you!
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Jose,
I will strongly disagree with your take that maps and GPS are a must in the United States. GPS units are available for 1/3 the cost of a Mudita Pure. Offline maps works just fine on a tablet or old smartphone. Printing maps before you leave for a destination is still a viable option as well.
The justification for a podcast - “allows for one not to be super bored while on the go.” I do not think this aligns with the Mudita, and is not a good reason to include a feature in my opinion.
I’m not knocking you - I greatly value the work you have done getting r/dumbphones back to a working forum and it’s one of the handful of reddits I will visit. I respect your voice in this area.
However, I think the GPS feature is just not necessary for the Mudita.
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The only reason I would want GPS is for rideshare. I do ridesharing to cut down on my environmental impact. Also not very eco to have to print out directions.
In general, there are utilitarian aspects of smartphones that I don’t see as harmful rather as helpful. Things you can’t be “addicted” to… weather, GPS, calculator, group call/text, music, dictionary/thesaurus, etc.
I want a phone that is minimalist, and above all functional. Something that improves my quality of life without distraction. It should still be a 21st century tool. Just because it is mindful and low-distraction doesn’t mean it has to be less functional.
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Simply put, I’d like a phone like the Pure with low radiation, no tracking and lack of distraction. That’s why I preordered the Pure.
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@nickusa I did not mean that GPS are a must in the US as in “they have to be on the phone”, but that GPS/Maps are very necessary in every day living for most people (either a GPS unit or a map or an app in this case). I apologize if it came off that way.
I believe an app to look up addresses or businesses and get turn by turn directions can be extremely helpful for users who are riding the bus or biking and for those driving as well. Getting a secondary device is an option (I have a Garmin in my car and love it), but having the ability to do it in phone is also convenient for when the user is traveling.
Now, on the podcast front, sure it doesn’t align with the Mudita Philosophy and I understand why it may not be added, but there is a decent amount of users who benefit from this feature being present on their devices.
The reality is that not everyone’s digital minimalism journey is the same and that everyone needs different things to be added for their transition out of smartphone land to be complete. However, there is plenty of common ground among most users (aka the things that will turn them back to their smartphone), here are my findings:
- Calls (Contact Sync, Notes on Contacts preferred)
- Texts (MMS, SMS, Group messages)
- GPS (It doesn’t have to be Google Maps, but something is better than nothing)
- Rideshare (This is a big city user request and those in similar locations)
- Podcasts/Music Player
- Spotify (This one is mostly an issue with how the music industry has evolved)
- Signal/WhatsApp (SMS is not king everywhere and a chat integration would help people for sure)
- General Tools (Calendar, Calculator, Notes, Alarms, etc.)
I think we can agree that this is not a huge list and that while most of these would not be used by some, a phone with these apps/tools would be extremely successful. Mudita has an advantage in that the OS is open source, but until we get the units, it’ll be hard to determine if the FreeRTOS is enough to deal with a device like this. Also, Mudita on their Kickstarter were going to add directions if they reached their goal. I know they did not, but it was in the philosophy at least.
One last thing that I’d like to add is that phones could be customized and tools enabled or not (like the Light Phone, you enable tools from the dashboard) depending on needs/preferences.
Agree with you on certain respects and love the dialogue
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At the end of the day, I think you need to give people what they need, not what they want. At the core of your companies principles you know why you have chosen to make the phone the way you have, and I think you should stick to that, not bend at the whim of humanity. You have become the parent, that has told the child they cannot have a cookie, and this our platform to see how hard your boundaries are. How cunning our excuses and reasoning are. To convince you to let us feed our addiction, but just a little.
Playing out our fascination with making excuses for behavior we know doesn’t help us, and does quite the opposite. And kind of bummed at seeing the “customers always right”, self-important attitude of people trying to, from the outside, change the devices entire philosophical platform, so you can have audiobooks, or maps. Just let the idea be pure.
I just feel like some of you are just missing the point.
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I think it is important to realize that people do not necessarily believe they are changing the devices entire philosophical platform when they suggest features such as maps or audiobooks. Many people find feature phones like the Mudita Pure or the Light Phone appealing because they are advertised as a way to escape the distractions and data-collecting that are a part of modern smartphones. They (quite reasonably) do not feel that conveniences such as maps, ride-sharing, or music players are part of the problems with modern smartphones, and hence they suggest that these features be included. I don’t think we should be accusing the people suggesting these features as intentionally trying to convince Mudita to feed our cellphone addictions or change anything about the philosophy of the phone. I think that the goal of these forums should be to educate people as to why Mudita is making these choices instead of accusing people of having a self-important attitude when they have questions about these choices.
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Good point Alejandro. Also, @maizimoth I don’t understand how audiobooks, music, or maps can be addicting or against the philosophy that Mudita proposes. They clearly had a stretch goal for GPS on their Kickstarter, so we are just asking that the device has a way or two to integrate these features.
Also, as a customer here, I am providing feedback. For example, for my job I have long commutes and often find myself inputting addresses to do visitation work. I have a dedicated GPS for that and it works great, but when I travel without my car or go to a new location, it would be handy to have quick access to these. Moreover, others don’t have the privilege of having cars and use public transport or ridesharing, these are tools that would help Mudita owners stay disconnected from their smartphones altogether.
Mudita can implement these if they think they align, if they don’t, that’s fine. I am providing feedback and rationale behind these ideas and as to why they can be helpful and allow more people to get into the feature phone life once again. I know Mudita’s competition is developing these features and when it comes down to it, the consumer will choose, so we’ll have to wait and see how these implementations work in the future. Again, thank you for the continued discussion.
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@ALEJANDRO_LOPEZ and @Jose_Briones
Very well put. Just wanted to say that I completely agree with this sentiment. We’re here discussing to discuss, not because we want to run the company! I’m obviously a huge proponent of non-addictive features around here too. While some people really just want a wireless homephone, I — broken record — just want a functional tool that is treated like a tool, not part of my identity the way that smartphones are.
The Mudita is simply the next option I am interested in, but who knows, it might not really be what I’m looking for still!
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I just need a phone with a contact list. Period.
No apps or maps, no music, no spyware, no tracking.
Keep it Pure.
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This is an awesome thread, just thought i’d chip in. I love how the forum allows for such direct interaction between Mudita devs and the customer by the way.
One thing I think often missed is the benefit of device fragmentation. I think one of the issues was my smartphone was that it made itself indispensable to the point where being without it was uncomfortable.
I hope it’s alright to share my personal experience of, in waiting for the Mudita, switching to a Nokia flip phone. Instead I now carry around a nice little compact camera I picked up on eBay for £200 (Sony RX100 II if anyone wants a recommendation), a digital audio player which runs android, and that completes really my set up.
The obvious issue here is that it appears that less has rapidly become more, but it absorbs far less of my time and the individual quality of the products is better.
The camera is a fairly simple one, it takes better photos than any phone camera does or will do for a while, to the point where I have been able to print them large full size and hung around my flat. I used to try this with my smartphone, but the gorgeous on screen photo never quite looked right printed at the size I wanted.
The DAP allows me to listen to music in higher res than on any smartphone (other than perhaps the LG V20/V30) but is small and doesn’t run the full version of android, it has spotify and audible, thats it. No bloat, just what I need. Even if I could install all my cluttered apps, it would barely run them as the internals are slow and old, it is small, has a nice screen, designed to play music and nothing else.
There is another effect of this other than improved quality, but segmentation of my own processes. When i have the camera out, I think about it more, I do not just point and shoot because its easy and I plan on uploading it to Instagram, I take it home, plug it into the computer, look through, sort and analyse. It takes an extra 10 minutes perhaps, or if I have been out on a long walk or taken many photos, it takes 20. Leave it for a week and I spend maybe an hour on the weekend sorting them.
As for audio, the quality is awesome, I have actually started to go out and get FLAC files for my favourite songs, getting a quality bump, but also having that connection with the artist that you used to get when buying music. To be sure I still use Spotify for music discovery and most of my music, for my absolute favourite tracks I have FLAC files. The effect is comparable to the camera, I now end up listening to music more deliberately, curating tracks. This took maybe an hour to set up, but 5 minutes whenever I want to add a song/songs. I do this about once a month. The device runs android, but its heavily modded and based on the mostly open source version, no google, no play store, no services hogging battery. Given that the only info it has is my music choice, I am happy with it privacy wise.
Regarding maps, this was the biggest give away when making the move, carrying a camera, DAP, and phone is one thing, but carrying a SatNav is pretty much out of the question.
I have found I just look things up on the tablet before I go on a tablet that sits at home, i find that it is just as good, I asked for directions from a police officer once, he knew the way and pointed it out. My partner is a cyclist, and even though she uses a smartphone, has a dedicated bike SatNav anyway. On long drives the car has one built in, and on long walks I tend to take a map anyway just in case there is no signal/it rains/my phone dies. For even more intensive walks i’d take a proper garmin thing anyway. That being said, I think that Maps is definitely the most compelling addition, yeah, you cant become addicted to maps, but I would say there could be an argument for the problem of outsourcing your brain to apps. I used to be fairly good at finding my way, then when google maps became really functional, I got awful at it, sometimes even navigating myself to places I actually knew where to go, now I ditched the phone, its coming back (albeit not there yet).
In short, I fully get the point about a phone as a functional tool. However, I think to qualify it needs a phone, text (for many parts of the world, this means data based services like signal), battery life, simple calculator, notes, contacts, calendar, and an alarm. Additional niceties would be some timer tools, stopwatch etc. With the internals to power it swiftly, and the chips to work anywhere in the world. I actually plan on doing my best to remove the meditation timer and any other well meaning stuff on there.
To be fair, I have lived in the US, UK, and China, and I would say the only country where a smartphone would be impossible to live without is China. So it isn’t for everyone, but the US and UK are certainly geared up for it.
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I suscribe to this almost entierly. Listen to a few tunes is still something that I’d like to do. But trust me, I’ve try to get back to the portable CD-player, wich has its charm… but there is another problem : The map, plus the portable gps, plus the phone, plus the portable cd-player, plus the camera… it starts to make a long list of divices to bring with you, just to avoid a smartphone. I’m well aware that I’m pushing things in the corner here.
But, You don’t need. a camera every day, neither a map every day etc…
Listenning to music on my phone, is something that I can’t give up.
Phil
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All I need is group messaging. The difference between group messaging and the lack of other features is that I am choosing to inconvenience myself with the other features, but with group messaging I am inconveniencing other people (or excluding myself). I already don’t have social media, I’m fine to tell someone I can’t access the internet on my phone, I’m willing to tell someone that I can’t use What’sApp/GroupMe, but to have no ability outside of a desktop application to communicate as a group means I am now making other people jump through hoops to keep me informed. Group messaging is not a Smartphone convenience, it should be a new baseline feature for any dedicated communication device with text messaging if you want that device to be able to interact with the rest of the world.
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Except group messaging on the built in chat app. I don’t mean to be a spammer, but I would love to get a movement of Mudita hopefuls asking for the same thing. I just want to be able to communicate with my family or a church group as a part of the group and not have to tell everyone that they have to contact me separately because I won’t be able to follow the group messages.
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@urszula I ended up pre-ordering one today, so it’s still the spring! Haha 
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@anon13781037 AWESOME! Thanks for your support!
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My main issue is that I need some type of connectivity for my freelance art business to be honest. I get clients send offers to me and I don’t want to miss any of those. I’m finding many work arounds which is good. I had to previously cancel my Mudita Pure Pre-order due to family emergencies but I hope to pre-order again soon if possible. For the time being, I ordered a Nokia 3310 (and it should be arriving soon) so I can start a trial period and see what works and doesn’t work for me. My main device for work is my iPad Pro which usually stays at home.
Any advice from anyone would be greatly appreciated.
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How do they send you offers? Social media, email, text? If internet connection is a must, hotspot is essential. An android MP3 player that you can install 1-2 apps extra like the Fiio can be a good alternative.
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