A bit sad to see that you have to fill out a typeform to get access to the code. I'm sure if it is actually FOSS (GPL or MIT or such) then there will be public forks on gitlab or whatnot.
Looks cool though. Might be viable to adapt to different screen sizes too? I know the remarkable is already hackable, but can't hurt to have competing UI concepts there, right ? :)
The code is on GitHub and we will be letting people in batches to MuditaOS private repository. We're currently finishing working on documentation, CLA, etc. so that anybody who joins the repo will be able to start contributing as soon as possible.
This is happening on top of our day-to-day development activities so bear with us - we'll send out emails with next steps to all people interested soon.
I ask this with no malice: What makes people work on projects like this? I'm willing to bet that the phone is bound to fail and their OS will be doomed to obscurity. How do the creators not see this?
Three reasons I don't think it will work out:
1. A huge number of people use WatsApp, Facetime, Messenger, etc., for sending messages and making calls. This OS won't support any of these apps.
2. We may hate our phones at times but we use them for a variety of daily tasks, all of which are difficult on this phone: Navigation (Google Maps >>> Any other Sat Nav system), transportation (Uber, etc.), food delivery, information retrieval (Google, etc.).
3. Even if you wanted a minimalist phone, you could probably just get a cheap feature phone instead of this one.
I somewhat agree with your comment from the perspective of using e-ink as a replacement for mobile.
However, I do think an opportunity exists for us to use e-ink device in new ways.
I ordered a Boox Note Air on the weekend to replace my kindle (12 years old now) with something I can read and write on.
The Boox runs full android OS, but I really think the only things I'll need are note-taking, drawing, kindle app.
Is there an opportunity to really do something great in replacement of notebooks?
How about a new paradigm for what kids go to school with? The size of the bags kids are using to carry all their textbooks and notebooks is ridiculous. Of course, it breaks the model of the publishing industry, but screw that. The learning hardware is destroying kids backs.
How great would it be to go into an office meeting (when we're back in offices) and rather than having everyone sitting there with a laptop open, we have these thin e-ink devices where we can comfortably share data and notes between us.
Sure, there are millions of excuses for why these sorts of things can't happen, but I don't think an OS that is targeted at black and white, somewhat limited devices should be treated as not having value.
Well, I am sympathetic to your point about the appeal of e-ink devices: great battery life, easier on the eyes, and lower costs. Things like the Kindle, the Remarkable tablet, or the Boox have great potential.
I'm just skeptical about an e-ink phone on a custom OS that doesn't support modern apps. Some apps may be unnecessary, but most users IMO expect to have things like GMail, WatsApp, Zoom, etc., on their phone.
Interesting. Thanks for highlighting the Boox, I hadn't heard about it. I've been a Remarkable fan since their Kickstarter and it's good but the box has many more features it looks like - better app integration, better battery life, bigger storage etc
What if I want a minimalist phone that isn't cheap? So far my options are Light Phone and Punkt. MP-02. Not everyone is so tethered to consumption that they want all that stuff on their person at all times, but quality is still worth pursuing. I use calls, SMS, MMS, and data tethering. Sometimes an alarm clock. I don't want any of that other stuff, and I'd pay a lot for a good, high quality phone that focuses on the baseline and doesn't require me to offload everything to some megacorporation.
Not everybody can afford a smartphone. And "dumb" phones like this provide the much needed mobility and connectivity to low-income group of our society (especially in a developing country like mine). Apart from this, the other reasons to consider these phones is the long battery life, and the less distractions they offer.
> I'm willing to bet that the phone is bound to fail and their OS will be doomed to obscurity. How do the creators not see this?
Yes, the phone will fail. But not for the exact reasons you cited.
They will fail because they are targeting a niche market - people with good income who have chosen a minimalist lifestyle. And that's why it is priced at the nonsensical price of $314 dollar ("discounted" from the "original" price of $369). The pricing makes no sense when you consider that Nokia offers 4g capable dumb phones for $40 to $48.
I would love to dualboot a minimalist OS that is supported on my device (e.g. Galaxy S[6-10]), works for basic things like calls and sms, and doubles my battery life. Then, when I need the full-featured experience, I'd just boot into Android.
The reason this won't work is rather the device manufacturers, sadly. I agree with your conclusion that these OSes seem to be doomed to failure, but I strongly disagree with the premise.
The unstated part of crossing the chasm and everything that deals with new tech is there's potential social value in market failure.
Personally I'd rather spend my career at one Xerox Parc failed project after another instead of working on profitable but ultimately empty products
For some it's not about money or a career, it's about building new things
In an ideal world people like me would be academics. But that institution is also excessively career and status oriented so without many options, we run off to the private sector.
Your reaction helps solidify a heretical stance I've had recently, that money has been a corrupting influence on technology and has actually stagnated it by perversing the incentives towards strictly monetary goals without regard for the social. It's like we replaced traditional banking with casinos.
The people who went to the moon, built the atomic bomb and invented the internet did so on a modest government salary.
You can still do that, though. Most countries have multiple scientific institutes aimed at defense, climate or space research. For the US, orgs like NOAA and NASA need engineers. For Europe, there's all the national institutes like DLR for Germany, and European communities like ESO and ESA. You can make a contribution to science there.
I don't think going back to SMS and GSM based phone calls is really a viable option. They are just too insecure. You can say a lot of things about mobile internet, but at least it made end-to-end encrypted communication the norm.
This idea is common but a strange one at least to me. Going back to GSM would of course be a regression due to their repeatedly broken crypto, but modern LTE networks have many desirable properties absent from Internet-based messaging.
Perhaps it matters less to a US user, but as a European the fact an intra-country communication need not traverse any border nor be observable by any non-domestic entity is a huge deal for me, due to much stronger data protection laws in these parts covering both message content and metadata
Then there is the trustworthiness of the communication medium itself. WhatsApp is being advocated in this thread, but WhatsApp is a massive chunk of unaudited code running on your handset that is published by an advertising company, code that by design steals your phonebook without telling you every time you run it. At least in the UK, telecom providers generally act for the most part as commodity infrastructure, we don't seem to have quite as many scummy behaviours as are reported in the US. Both approaches require a central counterparty with either absolute trust to protect your cleartext message in transit, or provide otherwise unaudited code claiming to protect the same.
The bottom line for me is probably who gets to keep the metadata, a US advertising company or a local telco. I am certainly happier with the latter.
I mean people get repeatedly owned through SIM swapping either due to socially engineering the absurdly poor security of the telcos or buying access to the zero security internal network (SS7).
IP-based communication doesn't mandate giving away control to a third-party. The advantages of GSM-based communication that you mention are totally possible with IP-based communications, and in fact in pure LTE networks (without 3G/2G fallback, also called CSFB), "standard" phone calls and texts are actually carried over IP (towards a SIP server hosted by the carrier).
The thing has Bluetooth though. I'm seriously considering getting one to see if I can get scuttlebutt running on it :D
That would be a realnice fit actually. Mostly disconnected, synced with other devices when physically close, private messages end to end encrypted, and the full OS/app stack being built to not be attention-hogging. :P
Pretty much. There isn't any real scientific backing to anything they claim.
In fact, they admit several times that most studies are "inconclusive" then go on to site single studies that may indicate "the potential" for harm. Like my phone could also theoretically increase my potential for getting eaten by a tiger.
Somewhat, it mixes 2 main talking points very well to the point it wants to present them as the same thing in a way that presents a lot of uncertainty and doubt (and a tiny bit of fear about that uncertainty) from information that doesn't necessarily back up that mixture. The main talking points:
- What EM and SAR is and that anything in large enough amounts can be harmful with a bunch of info around the histories and studies that led to this understanding
- The implied need to worry about EM SAR significantly more than the above regulations and studies talked about suggest with the implication the numbers aren't already padded for safety to start with.
The former part is general product regulation which the page even admits was around before cell phones took off that nobody really has to know or think about, the latter is wrapping it in FUD.
It's also important to note that while they link an enormous number of references it doesn't mean all of the claims on the page are backed up by any of them (again, look at the two main categories above for the majority of that split). E.g. the section on "Radiation-free areas should be established. Electrohypersensitive people can’t live near any electronic devices which emit radiation." has widely failed to have any robust result showing it as a "real" (as in actually caused by EMF) effect but this section doesn't mention that it just flows right into the section saying peer reviewed studies have verified "effects" without defining what effects, to what level, from what level of source, and if the effects were deemed a risk/harmful or just something that's possible to notice (e.g. if you turn on a lamp right next to you your arm gets warmer, this is an observable effect in extreme cases with no ill effect).
The last thing I'll mention is there are some "dubious at best" transitions like the section explaining the difference between non-ionizing and ionizing radiation following up the claim "That is not to say that extended exposure to non-ionizing radiation isn’t harmful, we know that it is." with "Most of us know that a little bit of UV radiation can be useful" which not only gets into the main conflation mentioned at the beginning of the comment but also throws in extra conflation about something that both spans ionizing and non ionizing radiation being compared to a completely different part of the non-ionizing EM spectrum without note.
.
I think it's important to note that I come from a healthcare networking background and have been biased/predisposed to a certain viewpoint on the matter prior to reading the article as I've had to work with the health system on basically anything that communicates via RF (Wi-Fi, 4G, DAS, RFID, special frequency voice communication systems, one off device radios) which included review of any and all patient health risks related to deployment of the equipment.
It all looks relatively reasonable to me. They don't seem to make extreme claims anywhere in that page. There's a section that talks about some meta research regarding impact of non-ionizing radiation -- I'm not sure how accurate that is. But, again, they're not saying that you will suffer if you don't get their phone. Just that the radiation could be harmful, so they designed a phone w minimal SAR.
Yeah I remember, the german mobile phone magazines did thorough radiation tests and people actually avoided phones with too much radiation. Many people were even calling it „Elektro-Smog“.
Everyone in this thread is talking about how this is just a user space on Linux without RTFA. It uses the FreeRTOS kernel, which isn’t Linux last time I checked.
Also, it specifies LTE in the specs. I think the GSM tethering is a mistype or mistranslation; I don’t see why they wouldn’t allow it to tether the LTE data.
Under “Network”, “Pure as data modem”, Second Paragraph, Second Sentence:
“We decided to enable tethering via USB C cable so that Pure can be used as an external GSM modem.”
This implies a 3G connection, so I checked the specs. This phone is pretty close to exactly what I want, so I’m considering buying it for myself and my spouse.
Seriously considering purchasing a pair (this coming from someone who imported and ran two Nokia N9s for several years; I still miss that phone!); hope it’s everything it seems to be!
I'm old enough to remember when announcements of new OSs centered on how it implemented multitasking, how it managed memory and how the filesystem worked.
The announcement focuses on an app and barely touched what's under it.
Most "OS" releases these days are not operating systems. They're new user space layers on top of Linux. Actually OS development doesn't happen much, and the word has been repurposed.
Even that is overstating it. They're just slightly different arrangements of the same set of user space components layered on top of the Linux kernel.
I think there's a lot of potential for actually completely replacing the user space layer on top of Linux, but no one has done that except Google with Android.
If you wanna do digital detox and still need a phone, get an used Motorola F3.
- It can't do more than talk and same very bare texting (Mudita already got a calendar, something that wants to get your attention and don't get me started on that mediation timer)
- costs almost nothing (Mudita Pure costs >300)
- flat and small, therefore easy to put away in any bag or pouch and forget
- doesn't has any big display where you need to take care of it
- upcycles an old phone for what is likely a, perhaps repeating, but still temporary use case
Sort of off-topic, but for digital detox I've found that a phone that doesn't at least support WhatsApp, Signal, and a few other Android apps would be useless as a phone for me. I can't remember the last time I've used my phone for something that doesn't involve data, so I would rather detox temporarily with no phone at all.
In case anyone has any suggestions: For a more sustainable long-term detox to avoid extensive screen time, I'm trying to find a very minimal Android device that can preferably be de-Googled (with Lineage or related Roms) but definitely at least supports a few basic Android applications but isn't very comfortable to use for just browsing. It's surprisingly difficult to find a small-display Android device these days...
Agreed. Calls and SMS[0] are the least used features for me personally. Messaging apps would be required, unless you're going completely off the grid.
I think the best/simplest digital detox method is turning off most notifications - nowadays there are quite granular controls. If you want to go completely off the grid while keeping a phone for emergencies, any dumbphone would do.
[0] If you don't count receiving 2FA, delivery confirmations etc.
I tried it with an S3 mini, u could get a reasonably up to date version of android on it for current versions of whatsapp and co, but most of them had significant problems, especially with the hardware support.
There was the Nokia 1, don't know how well available that still is.
otherwise the kaios devices, I think they do have WhatsApp, but can't remember about the others.
Therefore for everyday I just setup my phone to not annoy me and when I want to shut off completely, I switch to the F3, which gets thrown deep into the bag, just as an emergency thingy next to the basic first aid kit and I don't see it again until I got to go to work.
I would be perfectly happy with this mind of phone if it did support whatsapp and Line. Those are the only applications I use to message anyway. Even better if all the protocols are connected into a single application that just does ‘messaging’.
I interpret this as a phone that can do the basics like agenda and such, but does them in an unintrusive way, and givesyou full control over when and how it's allowed to interrupt you. If so, that would definitely change the dynamics between me and my phone. Basically all apps on ios / android (modulo some positive exceptions) are out to grab my attention all the time, and the OSs make it quite hard to really control that.
I guess that would be more sustainable than trying to disconnect entirely.
Besides this, the link here is actually the OS, so this is actually OT.
There is a quick setting with a bar inside a circle, which shuts of any attention grabbers. If you still need some of those, you can allow them in the app-details notifications settings. Back on blackberry you controlled that similarly by defining important contacts, who are allowed to ignore mute. Even the palm pre had that functionality.
I love the design - very clean! Loved the design of the website too. Would have been great to have a screenshot gallery or video with a demonstration though.
Not having Internet is both a feature as well as a problem. If I could have a phone which I can use for regular applications but which requires me to tether via USB etc to upload apps but can function without internet and GPS, I would actually consider it.
I quite like the visual design. The "No Internet" bit I understand, as a concept, but if it were hackable I'd at least add a syncable calendar and a weather forecast (those are the two things I look at every morning anyway).
There should be a non-SMS messaging app built into all those pure/light/offline phones. I have a lot of international friends and international texting is prohibitively expensive. Even if they would need a special app just to communicate with me, it would still be miles better than having no option at all. Same goes for VoIP calls, I don't care that it doesn't have WhatsApp/Telegram/Discord but I do care that there's no option to contact people from other countries without selling my kidney to afford it all.
Making a good general UI for E-ink is tough. Amazon would have been the ones to do it, but they put their attention to the Kindle Fire and left the regular Kindles as dedicated e-readers. Probably this was a good thing. Even so, I've noticed that tablet swipe gestures have made their way into the Kindle UI which just doesn't work with the slow refresh time of E-ink.
I like the idea of a non-intrusive phone, but this wouldn't be enough for me. So here is my wish list for a non-intrusive phone
- e-ink
- phone calls
- SMS (I don't send them, but I need them for 2FA)
- contact book synced with Google
- calendar synced with Google
- clock with alarms, timer and stopwatch
- weather
- music, it would be nice to use Spotify because I've invested a lot of time creating playlists but local files would do
- bluetooth to send music to speakers
- flashlight
- sound recording (for calls recording and voice notes)
- Whatsapp, it's my most used form of communication with family, friends and colleagues. But only text, no videos or images
Optional but nice:
- tethering
- QR codes store for things like tickets that I could send from another device
It would be enough for most of my day. I would have a second device for web browsing, maps and navigation, email, banking, QR reading, documents, gaming, etc., that I would only use when I really want to do those things.
I think this is the paradox that distraction-free phones always run into. Everyone including myself wants the useful or convenient niceties of a modern smartphone like maps, Spotify, various messaging tools, notes etc. without the dreck of social media. At this point, a stripped-down android launcher makes more sense than trying to bring back the candybar phone or some weird hardware middle ground. There are a bunch of minimalist launchers out there, but I haven't found anything really great. I was using "A Decluttered Launcher" until an update screwed up its handling of soft keys and have moved to Niagra.
I swear I'm not trying to get the last word in, but my phone life hack was to get a spare Android phone to keep in my office where I install only a minimal set of apps. It's worked pretty well and I might even try putting on a VOIP app so I can use it for calls. I don't care about getting distracted when I'm stuck in a long line at the grocery store.
The balance I think I'd want is... basically an equivalent to old slider-style phones but with modern messaging/communication apps. Give me a slider phone with Matrix/XMPP/SIP support for messaging and calls and I would be very happy.
Ideally FOSS too, so I don't have to worry about it being unpatchable in 3 years and can keep using it as long as it's useful.
I just need the basics: phone, maps, contacts, banking, Uber, spotify, etc. But I don't want the dopamine slot machines on my phone: facebook, twitter, snapchat, etc. I struggled to find a solution that could address this. Then I followed some suggestions from others on here to enable parental controls. So far it's worked great for me! Only my wife knows the password to unlock. I wish the industry could provide a better solution, but so far this has been working out well. I get to enjoy being out more without having that itch go waste time on my phone.
No, I really like the idea of e-Ink and little or no notifications. What I really want is a phone that I can control, not a device that asks for more attention than a toddler.
I'm with you here. I think your list is pretty close to mine. The only exception is whatsapp and maps. I want to be able to navigate and I'm fine with just a list of directions. I'd add podcasts as a must have as well.
I was following the light phone 2 for a long time and ultimately decided not to buy it because I wanted access it from my desktop. I really like the approach they're going for here. Signed up for the beta so we'll see. If it doesn't work out, I'm just going to have to roll up my sleeves and make my own eink phone.
No internet. No internet?! If I can't check my whatsapp/Telegram messages on a phone, I might as well go without a phone - none of my friends are going to send me an SMS/a regular phone call. No internet is a bad idea.
It’s not ‘no internet’, it has 4G connectivity, and you can use it as an external modem. It’s just that they haven’t built it into the OS by default.
Personally my thoughts were more along the lines of: That’s a cool phone, but thank god the OS is open source so someone can add the connected apps we need.
I do like the premise but I would've expected a few more specs; battery life? water and drop resistance? It's clear they've spent a lot of time on the form (over self-indulgently perhaps) but I hope it's not at the expense of function
You can use a Kobo offline, see this guide [1]. A Kobo runs Linux under the hood, IIRC Android (probably some old version which is why I keep my WLAN offline and only allow on guest network. This also helps with battery). You can also install custom applications on it, for example Cool Reader [2].
A ReMarkable you can just SSH into. Which seems far more friendlier for customization, but its also a different price class and purpose.
Sorry, I never used any custom firmware on our Kobos. You see, I keep them offline, so I'd care less about security vulnerabilities in them (plus if they go online, its via guest network). Also, I am very content with the software on our Kobo readers (Aura One and Aura Two). I do use Calibre + USB sometimes. What am I missing out on?
I still haven't understood the advantages these custom mobile UIs have over a basic X11 DE with a software keyboard.
PalmOS had it's own GUI because the whole OS was this insane feat of software engineering and something like X11 didn't fit on the abstractions they built. The result was something that could run forever on a couple of AAA batteries. If you're just sticking things on top of X/Wayland/Linux anyway at least make it usable.
Rather than a "insane feat of software engineering" I would define PalmOS as rather "extremely simple", complexity-wise on the level of classic macOS despite appearing a decade later.
Right now, mobile stacks are usually even more complex that desktop stacks.
One of the neat things about PalmOS is that it ran apps directly from where they were stored. No need to load them into "memory".
I loved the stylus because it allowed apps to be quite functional (I remember EasyCalc which could do wonders) on a 160x160 screen. 320x320 meant that you could do anything.
> One of the neat things about PalmOS is that it ran apps directly from where they were stored. No need to load them into "memory".
In practice this is not the way it worked on PalmOS on actual hardware past a certain point, and the way it actually worked is not that different from how code is loaded in a conventional desktop operating system.
Last time I made a similar comment here, someone linked the 'Sxmo : Simple X Mobile'[1] for PinePhone and I'm returning the favour to anyone who needs it.
Looks cool though. Might be viable to adapt to different screen sizes too? I know the remarkable is already hackable, but can't hurt to have competing UI concepts there, right ? :)