I liked everything about the design and feel of the phone. It transported me back to the 1990’s for sure, back to iPod land. This was a joyous thing. The problem is that I was looking for a SIMPLE, easy, stripped-down experience and that was not what I ended up with. I was completely willing to not have a browser on the phone – yay! – but I didn’t have the ability to see what I was doing later on in the day because the native Calendar doesn’t sync with my Calendar (a health-app based Calendar for my therapy practice, which – by necessity – does sync with Google because Google owns and operates everything, apparently. I was hoping to sync directly from Sessions’ healthcare to Kompakt and that was naive in the extreme. Neither Sessions nor Kompakt was interested in making that happen.) Then I realized the camera on the phone was, to put it kindly, grossly insufficient to actually use. I could live with seeing the shots in black and white until later, but…the quality wasn’t there at all. The Maps app seemed unusable. I don’t play chess, nor do I want to start. Then I realized the music app is terrible and I’d need to “side-load” other music apps, with streaming being impossible (no browser, right), making for less simplicity, more work, more tech issues (side-loading, “workarounds”/hacks, etc.) and, to top it off, the speakers in the phone are subpar as well. Then came messaging as an issue – having to disable bad-Google-company’s RCS and explaining to my wife why certain group text messages probably wouldn’t work anymore. But…there’s a workaround for that, with some side loading necessary, etc…I could live with no banking apps on the phone (that’s a good thing, to me), but…no ability to respond to verification-requests (I’m sure there’s a workaround/side-loading for that)…no ability to see my garage’s Ring camera without reaching for my other phone, which would remain with me – I guess at all times – because it was now wifi connected, having to be concerned with 2 devices to travel with….it just didn’t add up to anything resembling a calm or simple set of solutions. So I initiated a return request and it was granted. I took it to Fed Ex, as directed and – guess what? The local Fed Ex said it’d cost $455/U.S. dollars to return it to Poland that way. I said no, and am reaching out to Mudita to print me up a $80 Fed Ex return pre-printed label as their email says they’d do if I have any problems returning it. So….I still have it, and that’s my experience, while I’m waiting to return it.
What strikes me here – might seem very obvious – is that it is NOT about inventing a piece of attractive hardware; it is about how it all seamlessly fits into your life with what you like to/need to go. I realized that I can significantly de-Google my present Android (Motorola) phone by using Proton for email and other services instead of Google Mail and by using texting services other than what Google provides. Yes, they still have their hooks in me for underlying Google Services and Maps.
The experience has let me fall in love with the potential of the Motorola phone again, once carefully curated.
I hope your experience is greatly different from mine, and I thank Mudita for trying and coming up with a beautiful little piece of hardware.