Tiny E Ink phone promises 6-day battery life and way less screen time
As someone who constantly battles with their overly distracting phone, I'm glad to see more minimalist handsets on the scene that are designed to be used as little as possible – like the upcoming Mudita Kompakt.
Freshly minted on Kickstarter, this little phone from a Polish gadget brand comes with a custom OS, monochrome display, a limited collection of apps, and... that's mostly it. And that's the point. The idea behind the Kompakt is to help you get a grip on your screen time, so you can spend more touching grass and being out in the real world.
The Kompakt is built around a 4.3-inch 800x480-pixel E Ink touchscreen. It's powered by a quad-core MediaTek chip, with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. That makes for modest performance suitable for a phone running basic apps, in a package that's easy to grip and use.
It gets a 3.5-mm headphone jack, a fingerprint reader, a basic 8-MP camera with dual LED flash, NFC, a USB-C port, support for wireless charging, and a dual SIM tray that can also take a microSD card in place of one SIM.
The body is IP54-rated, so it should handle dust and splashes without a problem. And while you can buy optional covers and screen protectors, it looks like the phone will do fine without a case.
The Kompakt gets a unique hardware switch that engages Offline+ mode, for when you want to truly tune out the world. This not only disables cell networks, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth like Airplane mode, but also the three mics and onboard camera. Plus, it physically cuts off power to the phone's GSM module, so you are all the way offline.