u/topic-hopper

Hello! I hope you are all safe and well!

I’m sorry if this isn’t the correct sub.

I’m back and forth on cell phones and it’s exhausting lol but I’ve (unfortunately) accepted that the world truly has moved from what it was, tech wise, to what it is now: everything is on your cell phone. (And I hate that. Why is literally everything an app??)

I had an iPhone for maybe 6 or 7 years and started to get really anxious because of it. I’m not on social media (I literally JUST made this reddit account lol), I don’t scroll, I barely take photos, my phone is quite honestly just a tool, not a toy. I need something to call/text, and listen to my MP3s. So I’m not on my phone the way most are, but the screen moving quickly and the flashing lights (I even had my phone in greyscale) and everything in between just made me so anxious and also mad..? So I said “Okay, let me just get a flip phone."

So I did! I had a flip phone for a few months and loved it! I had that and my MP3 player and I was set. However, I had been eyeing the Mudita Kompakt for about a year (mainly because of the e-ink screen due to my “I can’t stand this screen” thing with my iPhone lol) and saw it basically brand new for a STEAL on ebay. So I bought it.

It’s okay! For what it is, it’s okay. I’ve side-loaded things that serve me and taken off things that don’t and it’s not bad. But…because it’s not a “real phone” (whatever that means) per the cell-phone companies (I have US Mobile), the service on it is just so bad… Calls/texts go through when they want, if they want. Also, things in my life (work and school) are all pushing me to get a smart phone due to 2FA, links I have to click IN MY EMAIL APP(??) and not on my desktop, things like this. And that sucks...

So, all this to say, I fear that I just need to get a smart phone and I’m looking for recommendations, but I’m hesitant to go back because of the screen thing making me anxious and mad, and also phones nowadays are just too freakin’ big! Why are phones so big??

Small would be preferred, even though I know that’s not really a thing anymore… I had a 12 mini and that was the PERFECT size. These phones that are “a small, handheld 6.1 inches” is bogus to me, that’s way too big lol

I honestly don’t even know if the phone that would serve me best even exists? Because I thought I had it with the Mudita Kompakt but again, everything needs 2FA or a link to be clicked and verified through your phone, not your desktop email.

I’m not sure I actually gave any helpful information, but if you have any questions, I’ll be glad to answer! I’m not a phone person (as we know lol) but I wanted to receive some guidance from anyone here who might be more aware of cell phone stuff than I am.

Thank you! Be well.

Before I got this phone, I scoured Reddit for posts like this, so I thought this would only help people (like me lol) who was looking to see how the MK acted as a daily driver, the pros, cons, and overall satisfaction of using this device.

I think it’s important to mention that I got this secondhand off of eBay! Basically brand new for $200? Yes please! I had been eyeing this phone for about a year and seeing it as cheap as I did, I jumped on it.

My current carrier is US Mobile. It was under the LightSpeed (T-Mobile) line. But before that, it was on Warp (Verizon) and it worked wonderfully— I literally only switched to LightSpeed because the US Mobile rep told me it would work better on LightSpeed? I will say, it was MUCH WORSE on the T-Mobile line, and I ended up switching back to the Verizon line. If you want to have Verizon on this phone, I’d encourage you to activate a Verizon sim on a separate phone, then just transfer the activated sim into the Kompakt.

I also want to say that this is the “global” version of the phone (I found this out after I bought it and plugged it into the Mudita Center lol) and I’m based in the states. It seems to work fine..? I don’t know how much different a US version would fare, but maybe I’ll try it if, I don’t know, I drop and crack my phone and need to replace it or something lol

Pros: ——

Ease of customization

I want to start by saying that the fact that you even have the option to toggle on developer options and tweak this little guy to a device that best serves you is awesome. With my terminal, I took off most of the native apps, with the exception of camera, calendar, and the music app — I kinda like them! I also kept the SMS app and the Phone app only because I don’t use WhatsApp and I’m personally not familiar with any other app that’s solely for texting and another solely for calling. (If you’re worried about WhatsApp functionality, I’d poke around reddit. But just from the looks of it, people say it works fine! Also music streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, etc. all seem to work fine based on other reddit posts, I just don’t have these).

But pretty much everything else is gone. The keyboard was terrible (I installed Gboard, not my first choice but haven’t found a better one yet). The maps app wasn’t really reliable (I installed HereWeGo), I never play chess lol, I meditate without the need for an app, the weather app is so bad I just had to get another one (the NOAA app), the eReader app is also not great (dare I say terrible). Only having the option for small, medium, and large text wasn’t enough for me to have kept it. I’m dyslexic and I love to read, so I sideloaded my preferred eReader app (BookFusion) so that I could change the font and page color so I could actually see what I was reading.

Originally, my main goal was to only sideload APKs and not an entire app store. However, I personally was having trouble getting individual APKs onto this thing, but somehow Aurora worked..? (much to my chagrin). So I put that on my phone and got all of my apps from there. I hide Aurora and open it up only to update my apps. The apps I currently have are the ones listed above, plus: AnyList (grocery shopping/meal planning app me and my partner use together), Clue (to track my period), DuckDuckGo (for the super infrequent “I need to look this up” moment), KillApps (I’ll get into this in a moment), Libby (I’m a librarian, of course this is on here lol) and Merlin Bird ID (I’m also a bird nerd lol). I have no issues with any of these apps! (I’m actually surprised how well the bird app works specifically)

The size

Enough said. Phones nowadays are just so huge and for what?? This thing fits in my front pocket pretty easily, size wise. The case is made of (what I think is) silicone, so that’s a lint catcher and it definitely hinders the effortless gliiiiiiide of putting it in your pocket. Not going to lie, I hate the case. However, I’m not gonna NOT have a case on my phone cause I’m not a freak lol so I’ll deal with the friction going into the pocket and the lint.

Privacy

Lately, I've been getting more and more concerned about my digital privacy and hate that everyone wants to track me, make money off me, and everything in between. The fact that this is a privacy-first device is wonderful. I love not having anything Google on this phone!! I love that there’s no tracking or data-selling. Also, I really value the Offline+ toggle and have used it here and there! Not that I feel like I need it for privacy reasons, given the privacy of the device in general, but flipping the Offline+ toggle on during Shabbat service, at night when I’m going to bed, or just when I don’t want to be notified is great. But just being a phone that focuses on privacy is great. Tech doesn’t really do that anymore...

E-ink

This thing is a literal joy to use. I don’t have social media, but even when I’m using my partner’s phone to check my bank balance or something, I’m just accosted with the brightness and the non-stop flashing lights. Not with this thing! My phone before this was a flip phone, so take that with a grain of salt lol, but the e-ink is just so nice to have on a phone. It encourages me to read my books more when I’m out and about and don’t want to bring my eReader.

Mudita Center (also a con, I’ll get there in a sec)

I LOVE the Mudita Center. I love being in charge of what books are on here, what music is on here, and everything in between. No algorithm here! This truly is MY device and I love being responsible for what it does for me. Getting things off and on my phone is a breeze.

The ability to expand memory space

Another thing phones just don’t do now lol but I popped a 512gb SD card in here (for music solely) and it’s been working great! I literally only chose the 512gb size because that’s what the site lists as the highest size they tested. But! I have seen people post that they’ve popped a 1-2tb card in there and it worked for them. 512gb is MORE than enough space for my music but if, for some insane reason lol, I need to bump up my space, I feel pretty confident that the Kompakt will allow for that.

Battery

This battery is insane lol a single charge gets me about 5-6 days of use. The only thing that really eats at my battery is definitely my bluetooth headphones (which pair wonderfully!). If I used wired headphones instead, I wouldn’t be surprised if I got 8-10 days of use from a single charge.

Cons: ——

(I will say that just because these are cons for me, doesn't mean they will be cons for you. Additionally, I truly do not know if there are settings in the phone to turn off/on something that takes these cons away. Maybe there is and I just haven’t found it yet? All of this is to my knowledge. So do with that what you will.)

Mudita Center

Again, the fact that I am in charge of everything that goes into and out of my phone is awesome. HOWEVER, it could definitely be more seamless when it comes to getting music OFF of the phone, specifically. I just find it really odd (and frustrating at times) that I can’t just….delete the song off my phone. I have to plug the phone up to the Mudita Center to get the song(s) off. It doesn’t make sense to not have the option to delete on the phone because I can delete pictures, contacts, texts, and pretty much everything in between….but I can’t take a song off my phone lol

I will say, that if you (as the Mudita Kompakt company lol) didn’t want to make that an option on the phone, AT LEAST make a search bar for your songs on the files section in the Mudita Center. It would make finding the song/artist way easier to remove if there were a search bar. u/UrszulaG if you’re reading this, please help a girl out lol

Music app

When you put your music onto the device, everything is organized by alphabetical order of the song. I haven’t found the ability to JUST listen to a certain artist. Even searching up the artist in the search bar, another song will play afterward from your entire library, not the artist you just searched. I’ve worked around this by making playlists and naming the playlist the name of the artist and moving their songs into the playlist.

Additionally, this music app only lets you listen to your music (either in the whole library or in the playlist) once. There’s no option to repeat the song or repeat the playlist. You can only listen to the playlist (or library) straight through, shuffled, and nothing else. Sometimes, I want to hear the song 20 times in row, not gonna lie lol but there’s no option to repeat it. There’s also an option to listen to the song 0.75x-2x the speed. I feel that that’s unnecessary — for me, at least. Because if I want to listen to the song, I want to listen to the song! Not slower or faster. So, I feel that that’s an option that didn’t really need to make it onto the phone.

Force stop apps

Again, to my knowledge, this isn’t something that’s currently an option. It makes sense because the phone isn’t meant to have sideloaded apps on here…but you gave us the option to be a developer, so having a toggle somewhere in the settings that let’s you force stop apps running in the background would be awesome. I ended up sideloading “KillApps” to achieve this, but it would be great if this were a thing that were already in the device. You CAN go into each app individually and force stop it. But having a button that does all of them at once would be helpful.

Lock screen

This feels so goofy to call it a con lol but I didn’t know where else to put this lol. When you turn the screen off, a lock will be on your screen telling you where to press to unlock your phone until you unlock it again. Peeeeerrrrrsonally, I think that’s a little silly. A blank white screen would have been fine! Because when you ACTUALLY turn the phone off, the screen says “powered off” on it, so you’d be able to tell whether or not your phone was just asleep, or off entirely. So, I’m hoping that with the next update, the lock either goes away completely OR you have the option to add a photo of your choosing for the lock screen — either from your personal gallery or from a stock album they let you choose from. Something. lol

Vibration

Girl…even when the phone is on silent, it will still vibrate when you get a text. I hate this more than any of the other cons. I’ve looked all over the internet to see how to turn this off, and I don’t think it is a thing — I don’t think you can turn off the vibration when you get a text, which is so weird cause this phone is designed to be an intentional phone….why are you trying to get my attention with a text? I don’t want to be notified every time I have a text; I'll see the text when God wants me to lol

Alarm

If you trying to set a timer/alarm, you can only do it in 5 minute increments. For example, if you had an alarm you needed to set for 12:42, you can’t do that. You can only do 12:40 or 12:45. I’d really love the option have a normal timer, perhaps separate from the alarm itself. My washer/dryers in my apartment laundry room have machines that run for…37 minutes. So having the option to open a timer and set up a 37 minute reminder from now would be great. I could always sideload a timer app (which I will probably end up doing) but I think it’s goofy to have to ask for this to be apart of the device natively.

Calendar

When setting an event in your calendar, you only have the option to have a 5-minute reminder before the event starts. Again….goofy. If you had an event at 12, I guess you could make the alarm for 11 and then set a 5 minute reminder? But I think having the option for your own reminder duration would be nice.

——

Overall, I’m incredibly happy with this phone! Like I mentioned previously, if something happened and needed to replace it, I would replace it with another Mudita Kompakt. The pros heavily outweigh the cons.

I hope this helps you with your search if you’re considering buying one! I needed a post like this when I was looking, so just thought I’d share my experience!

Digital Asset Management with MLIS degree

Digital Asset Management with MLIS degree