š¾ Archived View for idiomdrottning.org āŗ kompakt-lp3 captured on 2024-12-17 at 12:07:43. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Talking about Light Phone 3 and Mudita Kompakt while having seen neither device, and also some talk about InkPalm Plus, Nokia 8210, iPad Pro, and the old Mudita Pure, all of which Iāve used extensively.
The Mudita Kompakt is shipping April 2025:
I like that it can read epubs and I like the offline button.
The one thing itās really missing is a hotspot feature! The original Pure made a big deal of how it had a wired equivalent of a hotspot, letting you do email on a computer in a focused way then unplug it when you were on the go. You work through your emails with a real keyboard at a real work station, and donāt get sucked into jankily thumbing at them on the train when you could be reading. That was a great ideaā¦ that didnāt work with iPad, only with laptops. Having a hotspot feature would be a way to realize that dream. Maybe there is a hotspot feature, itās just not clear from the Kickstarter campaign.
I preordered Light Phone 3 which (if everything stays on track) is shipping January. My current Nokia dumbphone is a mess that keeps crashingātoday was especially rough as I was dealing with a family emergency and my Nokia phone kept crashing so hard that I had to take out the battery to restart it, so January canāt come soon enough.
And (please please please don't boo me too much, I'm already regretting it so much) I got an InkPalm Plus too, as a ācompanion deviceā. It sucksāthe battery life on the InkPalm is really really bad (and this is a brand new deviceā¦ And the battery is not replaceable so this InkPalm is a living piece of e-waste) and Delta Chat crashes so my only hope for doing email from it is ConnectBot. Itās actually really really good at reading books, but I had Simonās decade-old used Kindle to do that. While the InkPalm is much much better at it, I didnāt need ābetterā when I already had āgood enoughā. I use the InkPalm currently to listen to podcasts but the LP3 will handle podcasts when it comes.
If-and-only-if there is a hotspot feature on the Kompakt (and it otherwise delivers on its promises), that makes me really kick myself for going with the LP3+InkPalm combo. Because this seems like both-in-one in a good way. The dimensions of the Kompakt, 128 x 70 x 12.6 mm, are really great for me. (That's also why I don't have Fairphone, the new ones are way too big.)
I still have my Mudita Pure (I helped work on itā„ļø) in a drawer here. I love the shape of it but the build quality (button feel, slider quality etc) was not good and I had lots of dropped calls and audio issues. Itās one of my few phones that never brokeāI keep it āas a spareāābut itās just too janky to use. But thereās nothing to say that the Mudita Kompakt will make the same mistakes. They might and they mightnāt, but Iād be willing to risk getting āfooled againā, betting that they learned from the Pure. Weāll see. šš»āāļø
Camera: while the Kompaktās 8MP camera is nothing compared to LP3ās 50 MP camera, itās way better than my Nokia 8210s crappy 0.3 MP camera and even the 2DSā 0.5 MP camera, although theyāre worse than my iPadās 12 MP. And Iām fine with the photos being in eink on-device, theyāll be in color when moved to another device.
Now to the second best part (after reading ebooks):
can, before you leave,Unlike the Light Phone, but like the InkPalm, you can sideload some APKs onto the Mudita Kompakt. It requires ADB and a separate computer. Hacking an LP2, and most likely LP3, you can jump out into Android itself and run other apps that way, but what sucks is they donāt show up in the LP3 UI and app list, but they do on InkPalm and Kompakt, which is great.
So you can put AntennaPod and ConnectBot on there. The InkPalm doesnāt even require any ADB hoops, you can just download F-Droid from the device itself.
Now, because there are no Google services, there are many apps that just donāt work even if theyāre in Aurora, and because of e-ink being e-ink, even some F-Droid apps (like TextFiction) donāt work, but some do work really well.
Thereās an upside to having to do ADB hoops to install apps: you can keep apps like email and web firmly uninstalled for your day-to-day life when you, at some point during your normal week, will have access to a computer and focused email time, and then when youāre about go on a longer trip away from your computer, thatās when you can connect the phone to ADB and put those apps on there. Then those apps become like a foldable travel toothbrush: way too janky for home use but wonderful for a light and small bag. Emailing on phone might be janky, but if that means not having to bring the entire computer, it can make for a lighter packed bag and an easier journey. Sometimes just being able to do something at all can be be enough.
Conclusion:
Actually pondering if I can some how wriggle out of the LP3 preorder (and just chalk the InkPalm up as a mistake) and switch to the Kompakt. One factor in my self-kicking regret will be how well the sideloading situation is on LP3. LP3 has six gigs of RAM while the InkPalm has two, which might be why Delta Chat is crashing. (Even though having two entire gigabytes is mindblowing to me as a Xennial.)
While I like the ability to just bring the LP3 and leave the InkPalm at home, the Kompakt is small enough.
Now the fact that I have a tablet instead of a laptop (since I hate laptops) makes the InkPalm an even more stupid and redundant part of my combo setup and an even bigger mistake. I should just have bought a bigger bag š¤¦š»āāļø. But there is something about the iPad (maybe the screen?) that makes me fatigued and addictedāI canāt put it down. I need it if I want to do computer work, like programming (everything Iāve posted the three years whether writings, images, or code, Iāve done on it), but I always feel much better when Iāve been away for it for a few weeks or even a few days.
Going on a trip away from home but bringing the iPad would be pointless because it wouldnāt be getting away from anything. The destination would have to be killer, like visiting loved ones always is š„° (iPad or no iPad), but when traveling without bringing the iPad, even just going to a cafĆ© or a random subway station or neighboring city feels awesome and liberating.
I get hypnotized by the screen somehow, I dunno. That sounds like woo; I donāt know whatās going on, it just is this way and an Android tablet had the same problem, when inheriting grandmaās Android tablet ended my dumbphone experience in 2020. My new apartment is too small for a desktop.
I thought one pro about the ācombo setupā wouldāve been to use the companion device for podcasts on long, multi-hour train trips to make sure I donāt eat up the battery of the phone I need to call my host when I arrive to their city, but since the battery life of InkPalm is so weak, that plan is pretty flawed.
Time to review the phone that I helped make!
I have since heard about the Unihertz Jelly Star. So that means that there are three phones, either of which might be a good fit for me. Iāve decided to stick with the Light Phone III. It has been delayed to shipping in March which probably means an April or May arrival for me here in Sweden. Iām really looking forward to having some of the smart phone conveniences available again.
And I still regret getting that InkPalm Plus. Itās so clunky as a work tool. It works well as an entertainment device, but I already had plenty of those.
Iām going to try to cancel my preorder. Not to get a Jelly Star or a Kompakt either. I donāt know what Iāll do. The new ad from Light Phone, and the reaction from the existing fan base, made it clear that trusting the privacy story for any of these phones is a huge ask. Without auditable FOSS code and signed builds what do we even have?
Here is a rando blogger pointing out how digital minimalism and privacy is not the same:
On Giving Light Phone my Contacts List
And I knew that. And I was more into unplugging than cypherpunk bonafides so thatās why these three phones were on my radar. But seeing the so-called community (on Reddit) bite the heads off of anyone who brings up the very real privacy asks here after the ad makes inexplicable claims really reminds me that maybe it is something I do care about.
And, Iām already in a situation where my entire setup is compromised as heck. I am typing this on a Debian machine, sureābut SSHād from an iPad. Apple could be keyloggin every password for all I know. That goes for Xiaomiās InkPalm too. If I really want to start caring about this again Iād have a lot of work ahead of me. But thatās no excuse for piling more straws onto that camel back.
I thought these guys were clueless about infosec, but that they were āgood guysā who would āprobablyā not do anything bad, and that text messages and contact lists were inherently insecure anyway. I still kind of think or hope thatās the case. But donāt then make an ad trying to say that infosec is an USP with your phone.
MMS texts or even any texts with links are sent via their cloud (so they can be emailed to you for some reasonā¦?!), even voice-to-text input does, and so do direction queries. And putting music files on this thing, that goes over their cloud too, right? Pretty much everything does. Even your contacts list apparently. āNo, donāt worry, we donāt do anything with it.ā
I canceled the Light Phone preorder. Iām sad about it because it still feels like least bad in many ways. But not good enough. None of the ones that exist are good enough. I hate iPad and InkPalm too, and Linode/Akamai. Everything is bad, everything feels gross and untrustworthy.