Ready for a cell phone that doesn't sing and dance?

By Jim Bray
August 28, 2025

Tired of your smartphone and looking for something simpler and less intrusive, or that doesn't watch everything you do?

You may be the target market for Polish company Mudita's Kompakt, a so-called dumb phone.

The Kompakt, according to the original press release I received, is "a minimalist mobile phone designed to help users reclaim their focus and well-being. As digital distractions continue to grow, the Mudita Kompakt offers a streamlined, clutter-free experience that supports a more balanced lifestyle. It's an ideal gift that helps users regain control of their time and becoming more present in life."

That means it doesn't offer stuff like a web browser, email and the like. But it does offer you a cell phone that will let you text, take pictures, play music, even play some games and partake of some lifestyle thingies that struck me as being warm and fuzzy nonsense, especially in a telephone.

Naturally, your mileage may vary…

The Kompakt features what the company calls a distraction-free interface (I guess they don't charge you for the distractions…), a lovely though monochrome E Ink screen that works great in bright sunlight, and its own, custom-built interface – so you aren't having to bow down to the Google and/or Apple gods.

It's a neat concept and I was quite excited to give it a whack. I also asked my son and my best friend (yeah, there's someone who can stand hanging out with me) to have a kick at it and give me their impressions. I'll include them a bit further down in this piece.

The Kompakt is different from the dumb phones of days gone by – the old-fashioned cellular phones we had available before the likes of Blackberry and Apple changed the market. This one should really be described as more "minimalist" than "dumb" because rather than not offering you diddly squat besides a phone, it eschews "distractions" in favour of basics – without being so dumb it's only useful for making phone calls.

Therefore, you can phone, you can text, play music and take/view pictures (my sample only had 32 gig storage, so music and photos may be limited depending on your library). There's also a weather app, a chess app, calendar, e-reader, maps, a voice recorder and even a "meditation" app that I'd rather be torn apart by wild dogs than use.

That particular thingy gives you a countdown and then a loud "bong" (a bell pealing, not a cannabis consumption thingy) sounds and it counts down from 30 minutes – time I could be wasting otherwise on beer or something equally productive.

The screen, while monochrome, is very good. Being E Ink, as mentioned, it works great in bright sunlight and it's said uses less battery than one of the colour LED-based screens. That contributes to what Mudita claims is a battery life of six days (in standby mode).

I found the screen a tad small for the e-book I downloaded onto it (I'm old and require reading glasses) but it worked fine. And it took me a moment to figure out why a colour picture of my dear wife I had loaded onto it displayed in black and white. Then, of course, I felt like an idiot for expecting colour on a monochrome screen. Duh!

It works fine as a music player, and it will connect to your playback devices via Bluetooth. And of course, it also includes Wi-Fi. Even better in this day and age, it comes with a real headphone jack! Take that, Apple! I had to buy an adapter to use my noise cancelling ear buds for my iPhone 7 because I like the buds I have and didn't want to be forced into what Apple was trying to force me into.

Another reason for a "dumb" phone?

What the dumb phone, this one anyway, won't work fine as is a web browser or e-mail client, so you can forget about those functions – remaining free from those distractions until you really want them.

It's quite a small phone compared to some of the behemoths you can get today. It's a tad shorter than my iPhone 7, though thicker, and my sample came with a nice case that should protect it well.

Inside, at least as far inside as you can get without throwing it hard against a wall, is a dual SIM card slot, for extra flexibility, and one of the slots is a hybrid that can be used for either a SIM card or a Micro SD. It'll even let us use an e-SIM, though that disables the second slot for SIM use (but still allows for a Micro SD card). This will undoubtedly address any storage issues you may have if you want lots of music or pics on the phone.

You can charge the Kompakt via USB or wirelessly (if your vehicle/etc. is compatible. Mine aren't).

I didn't like texting with the Kompakt because, to me, the screen was a tad unresponsive. Oh, it works, and works fine overall, but one thing it lacks is the ability to "swipe" with one finger like I can do on my iPhone and you can do with Androids. The Apple version is annoying in that it autocorrects my cussing (I have to type those words in completely by hand, which is ducking ridiculous) but I'm a lot faster using that method than typing on a tiny screen with my fat fingers.

Here, it's moot. You have to type and that wore thin quite quickly.

Loading photos and music can be done via USB using the Mudita Center app, which works like a simpler version of iTunes or apps like that. I dragged and dropped both photos and tunes and it worked fine.

My friend reminded me after he played with the Kompakt that the screen comes on really quickly, unlike his "old" Android, which he described as painfully slow with frequently glitches.

He found the camera to be the phone's weakest feature, with images that appeared blurry and with a noticeable lag when the camera moved quickly.

But he loved how the Kompakt performs under bright sunlight, saying that the display gets even better when introduced to more light. "It was impressive and blew my socks off," he said.

His conclusion was that this is worth a look for people who want simple, easy to use cell phone without "all the fluff. It feels good in the hand plus it is nice and compact with a reasonable screen size."

My son wasn't as kind, more on the actual concept than this particular phone. He did note that the E Ink display doesn't disappear when power is cut, even supposedly by a dead battery (which, he notes, also means if the battery dies on a particularly NSFW screen, you could be in real trouble!). That said, "the blandness of the e-ink could be a feature if trying to stave off distractions."

I'd say that's a feature, not a bug.

But here's his main counter to these "minimalist" devices: that their primary selling feature is a lack of apps, whereas one could take a cheap Android phone (which he noted can be had for under a hundred Canadian bucks) and simply remove the apps you aren't using. "The cost difference is huge, and you have the flexibility to do what you want (don't like the default eBook reader? Try another). All it requires is a little bit of self-control."

And, he says, if that self-control is in really short supply, you only need exercise it once (for less hassle than buying a new phone) by installing a self-control app, which can limit such things as how long you can browse, or what time of day you can watch Netflix.

I haven't tried any such apps (the last thing I want to display is self control) but a quick web search will bring up plenty of them.

Since I received the phone, they've released a software update, MuditaOS K 1.2.0, which the company says delivers "a broad range of more than 150 additional features and software improvements that further refine the user experience and strengthen Mudita Kompakt's position as a leading device in the mindful tech space."

The update introduces stuff like "offline navigation with voice guidance, the ability to sideload third-party apps with ease via Mudita Center desktop app, and more than 150 improvements and fixes that touch nearly every part of the system."

According to the founder of the company, Michal Kicinski, "This release marks an important milestone in our journey to create technology that serves the user, not the other way around. These enhancements were driven directly by feedback from our community, and we are deeply grateful for their input and trust."

Or as they say, that and three bucks buys you a coffee.

I shouldn't be so cynical, though; I believe there's a market for such a phone as this – more phone than "device", though as my son pointed out one can merely buy an ultra-cheap smart phone and then delete the apps you don't want.

I used the phone for a couple of weeks and was impressed by the concept and most of the execution. But it was just too minimalist for my lifestyle and I was more comfortable returning to my old smart phone, which is plenty for me but pales in comparison to what's out there now. I'm kind of splitting the difference. And I'm happy that way – especially since I only paid about $150 for a refurbished iPhone 7 about five years ago and it has been flawless except for the cussing issue.

So, it appears that what we have here is a phone for people who only want a phone and do little else with it. And if that's you, this Mudita Kompakt is well worth a look.

And right now, it's on sale for $349USD on their website, marked down from $439.