Every year the newest and fastest and most feature-packed phones are announced, sold and then replaced by newer, more hyped-up phones with even more features.
Except there’s a very real concern about the impact that smartphones are having on users productivity and even their mental health.
The pros and cons of smartphones
Authors like Cal Newport warn about the dangers of social media and the world’s addiction to distraction. Even Google includes tools to help users manage their phone usage, baked right into Android 10.
Smartphones aren’t the enemy. They have a place and a lot of modern professions would be orders of magnitude harder without them.
Journalists the world over rely on smart devices daily, and smartphones have brought educational programmes to every corner of the globe.
Smartphones have unlimited potential to do good and influence lives. Yet most people are spending the majority of their time online catching up on Instagram stories and playing games designed to keep you in front of your screen.
The feature phone has long been the poor cousin of the smartphone – the only option for those who can’t afford smartphones.
However, there’s a rise in feature phones that are geared at users trying to reduce their smartphone usage or even get rid of their smartphones completely.
The Mudita Pure minimalist phone
The Mudita Pure is a crowd-funded project that is aiming to produce a stylish alternative for users who have had enough of their smartphones and need to commit to a digital detox.
The Mudita Pure’s shape is a throwback to the feature phones of the mid-2000s. The lines are cleaner, and the e-ink display immediately catches the eye.
The phone has a comparatively tiny 2.84-inch screen which a 640 x 480 resolution and the e-ink screen can display 16 shades of grey.
The e-ink display solves the problem of blue light that can disturb users sleep cycles and as kindle users will attest to is also a pleasure to read from. Most important, this phone is distraction-free – No colourful icons and no internet browser.
How does the minimalist phone work?
This phone is meant to be used as a phone as such it comes with physical number pad just like in the olden days. No doubt parents will be showing off their texting speed to their kids who have only ever known touch screens.
If the Mudita Pure wasn’t far enough off the grid for you, it has a physical switch that will let you enter Do Not Disturb mode or go completely offline when you want.
The phone will have a few essential apps such as a notepad, alarm clock, music player, flashlight, calculator, calendar, voice recorder, and a meditation timer.
It will also have built-in Harman speaker and a 3.5mm audio jack and will have Bluetooth. The battery is expected to last five days and will charge via USB-C.
The Kickstarter campaign has already raised more than double its goal of $100 000 and time is running out if you want to be one of the first to get their hands on one of these phones when they begin shipping in April 2020.
Watch: Mudita Pure’s minimalist phone
Tags: Mobile technology
