I just received my Pure last week and have some feedback for the Mudita team; my apologies if this isn’t the best place for this kind of information to be shared. My overall experience thus far has been positive, despite the fact that only negatives are listed below. I feel that the product marketing adequately expresses the Pure’s virtues, so I am choosing to focus my comments on items that I would suggest improvements to be made upon. Additionally, I have accepted that this is effectively a beta product and I am supporting the further development of the product by being an early adopter; I feel certain that can’t be said by most purchasers at this point in time.
I felt like I was going to break the back panel when removing it because of the force required. The fitment of the battery in the device was tight enough that I had to use a screwdriver to pry it out and ended up causing cosmetic damage to the plastic battery casing and the internal plastic around the battery pry point.
The plastic construction of the sim card tray seemed questionable and not very reliable, especially long-term with frequent sim card swaps.
The sound quality of the ear speaker is beyond substandard - easily the worst sounding mobile phone that I’ve ever used. Sound quality of the speakerphone speaker is better but still not what I would describe as good. The best sounding phone calls were experienced when using wired earbuds, with the caveat of the earbud microphone issue below. (I haven’t tried bluetooth yet.)
When using wired earbuds with a microphone (standard 4-wire connection of left audio, right audio, microphone, and ground), no sound from the microphone was transmitted at all. I am not sure if this by design or not, as I cannot find any documentation on what kind of wired earbuds / microphones are supported.
The built-in microphone quality is good, as callers on the other end of the conversation said that I sounded equivalent to any other phone I use.
The response time of the screen took some getting used to but is acceptable to me considering I understand the underlying e-ink technology. I am not so sure the standard customer would be so understanding, especially when unlocking the device.
Viewing text messages of any length is troublesome. When displayed on the phone screen, only a certain percentage of the message is shown with no indication that there is more that needs to be scrolled through. I had to press the up arrow to select the message in question, then use the down arrow to scroll that particular message within the message bubble.
Documentation of the phone’s features is lacking. I was especially frustrated about the lack of clarity, both in the phone’s interface and the full owner’s manual, about exactly how messages and calls would be handled based on phone modes (Connected vs. Do Not Disturb vs. Offline, as well as the additional settings regarding Favorites, Notifications when locked, Flight Mode, etc.). I ended up making a grid of the different permutations of which settings were turned on & off and testing each so I would be confident that I could get the results I wanted.
Once again, I really like many things about the product, and I hope my comments are helpful in improving the areas that I feel are current weaknesses. I would be happy to clarify anything if needed.
@jason-bxtn Thank you so much for taking the time to write such an extensive & detailed review. I have passed this on to our team.
We appreciate the fact that you recognize that Mudita Pure is a work in progress and we are working round the clock to make it a great piece of mindful technology.
I think I just found the answer to my own question here:
It was indeed Apple headphones that I tried. I use them with lots of other devices successfully (multiple laptops & chromebooks, several other phones, my desktop PC at work) and have never experienced the mic not working except with the Mudita Pure. The explanation in the other thread of “Apple doesn’t play well with others” doesn’t seem sufficient, considering my personal experience.
@jason-bxtn Let me see if I understand this correctly- When you’re using wired headphones, the microphone on those headphones is not sending sound to the person on the other end & they cannot hear you? Did I summarize this correctly? What headphones are you using?
Yeah, If you’re using apple earphones, they don’t always play well with other products. What I mean by that is that Apple uses proprietary technology, and some BIG TECH companies will pay to be compatible with Apple products because a large portion of the users are Apple users as well.
Just to be clear, your description is exactly what happens when I use the Apple headphones with mic. Today I tried a pair of Sony headphones with mic and they work exactly as expected.
Good day,
I too have found my iphone headphones mic dose not work, neither do any of my Jabra Evolve 40 headsets. I would prefer to not have to buy and carry separate headsets for use with the mudita pure.
What is the pin out of the 3.5mm headphone jack in the Pure? The apple headset and my Jabra both use TRRS where: tip is left audio (L), the ring closest to the tip is right audio (R), the ring closest to the sleeve is ground (G), and the sleeve is the microphone connection.
TLDR: Mudita Pure only works with older OMTP headsets with and one control button, not the newer CTIA headsets that have the additional volume up and down control buttons.
Full Answer: There are apparently two different TRRS (Tip-Ring-Ring-Sleeve) wiring standards that use the same 3.5mm 4-pin connector. One is an older standard called OMTP which is wired LRMG (Left-Right-Mic-Ground) and is supposed to have black rings around each connector. The other newer standard (most notably used by Apple) is called CTIA which is wired LRGM (Left-Right-Ground-Mic) and is supposed to have white rings around each connector. Besides the differentiating black vs. white rings between connectors, I understand that OMTP headphones only have one control button, where CTIA headphones have three control buttons (volume up, center, volume down). These additional buttons are apparently why the CTIA standard was even created, and they work by using electrical pulses with variable amplitude and timing to distinguish which button is being pressed. My assumption is that most modern cell phones, laptops, etc. have the ability to distinguish which type of headphone has been connected to the 3.5mm jack and then respond by swapping the Ground and Mic connections accordingly. In my experience, my Mudita Pure only works properly with the older OMTP headphones; therefore, the conclusion that I’ve come to is that Mudita has not included the ability to distinguish between the OMTP and CTIA standards when headphones are connected and swap the Mic and Ground connections as needed.