CD Projekt Co-founder Launches Kickstarter For Minimalist Phone – IGN India

Michał Kiciński, the co-founder of the Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt, has launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Mudita Pure, a minimalist mobile phone that “aims to improve your wellbeing.”

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How exactly does Kiciński’s minimalist phone improve your wellbeing? By ditching bright screens and the glut of features that most phones either come with or that we download for ourselves, like Twitter. Instead, the Pure phone has an E ink display that doesn’t strain the eyes and has no colorful logos vying for your attention, a global GSM module that allows you to make calls almost anywhere in the world, a battery life that lasts five days with normal use or 14 days on standby, and a SIM card slot that’ll hold two cards at once so you can switch it out if you’re traveling. There’s also a custom Mudita OS, a speaker and music player for said speaker or headphone jack.

Perhaps most importantly, it comes with a built-in meditation timer, and no wireless internet. The whole thing seems designed to minimize how distracted you are throughout a day, when you find yourself checking Twitter or Facebook instead of going for your morning jog. There’s also a slider on the side that switches it into a Do Not Disturb mode.

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Kiciński, who left CD Projekt in 2012 to co-found Mudita about a year later, says the idea for Mudita came after discovering a passion for Vipassana meditation, a self-exploratory form of meditation.

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“​Every day we are overloaded with information,” Kiciński says, “it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find inner peace. We believe that Mudita Pure can also be used as a second phone to help us unplug during evenings, weekends or holidays in order to spend quality time with our loved ones or enjoying solitude.”

After practicing Vipassana meditation for a while, Kiciński said he started feeling a greater sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation, which is commonly associated with the radio frequencies our phone antennas put out. Appropriately enough, the Mudita says the Pure phone features an antenna shielding that reduces that electromagnetic radiation.

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The Mudita Pure Kickstarter campaign has already rocketed past its pledge goal of $100,000 in just its first day. At publishing time, the Kickstarter is sitting at approximately $124,000.

You can pick up a single Pure phone for a starting rate of  of $258, which also gets you a charge cable.


Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.