Mudita Pure Production Update - February

With a lot of activities moving forward in the Mudita Pure production process, we’re here with another update. As always, we want to keep you informed about all of the important steps and decisions, both the positive and the challenging.

Molding forms & production schedule

In October, we communicated that we were experiencing a problem with one of the molding forms and its rubber overflow. The issue resulted in a delay of the production. Since then, we have been, above all, focused on addressing and fixing this issue with the tooling company.

After implementing all the required changes and adjustments to the 3D model, we performed computer simulations in order to project the end result. These simulations were indicating that we’re on the right path to resolving the issue of the delay. They demonstrated that the material is flowing correctly, hence, we started implementing this solution.

Last Friday, full of confidence, we proceeded to conduct real-life tests. Although these tests revealed that we have made substantial progress, the problem is still not resolved. Currently, the tooling company responsible for delivering this molding form is working at its full capacity to assess the problem and come up with the action plan to fix it as soon as possible. 

Before (October):

Overflow - view from the outside

Current status:

You can see that we improved the overflow of the material. Right now, the main problem is that the white rubber is not filling in all the required spaces in the phone. 

Goal (The red lines are showing the expected flow of the rubber):

In the next two weeks, we will be performing the next series of tests and assessments in order to determine the exact impact this issue might have on the production schedule. Therefore, as soon as we know the results, we will share them with you. 

We would like to assure you, that our focus is concentrated on resolving this issue and delivering the phone as soon as possible. As you know we have always been transparent about all our successes and challenges. We appreciate you standing by us through all of our achievements and difficulties over the past months. It really means a lot to us. It  gives us a lot of motivation to overcome all the hurdles we encounter along the way and demonstrates the importance of our shared mission.

MuditaOS

As we announced in October, we have started granting access to a Developer Preview of the MuditaOS source code before fully open-sourcing it. Every week, we're adding more and more community members to our GitHub community as a part of the preview.  

We are already acting on issues brought up by our community and waiting for their input regarding the localization of MuditaOS GUI (French and Italian localizations on the way!). 

Fun fact: our first community Pull Request has been created and merged in less than 24h after boarding the repository. It was a typo fix, but still - it counts :)

If you haven't received a MuditaOS Developer Preview invitation yet, please be patient - we currently have more than 600 people waiting in line.

When it comes to Pure's operating system itself - our engineering team is at full speed.

For the last month, we were focusing on increasing Mudita Pure's power-saving capabilities such as checking the critical power level of the battery and a CPU frequency shifting mechanism, which will reduce Pure's power usage. We have also added battery brownout detection. Brownout is a sudden drop in voltage in an electrical power supply system. This is a crucial step in creating a mechanism that will prevent sudden blackouts of the Pure phone resulting in damaging the data crucial to its functioning. A follow-up task is to handle these brownouts by a clean shutdown of the operating system. 

We have changed the way the top-bar manager works and made it application-wide, rather than system-wide. This means,  now any MuditaOS application can customize its top bar which until recently, has been a homogenous system-wide entity.

We have improved the E Ink screen responsiveness and screen light control. 

At the same time, our software team devoted a big chunk of their time to fix all the bugs detected in the field tests. Since the beginning of 2021 the team has resolved over 100 issues.

Mudita Center

There is a lot of interest from our community regarding the desktop app, which will be available alongside Mudita Pure. Mudita Center will be available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It has to be emphasized that Mudita Center is privacy-focused - it will not store nor share any contact details or any other data with Mudita nor any third parties.  

A lot of work has been done on the backend to enable smoother cooperation between the Mudita Center and MuditaOS developer teams. We have introduced an API to communicate between the app and the device and added a small Command Line Interface for the development team to communicate with Mudita Pure in the same way as Mudita Center does.

Last month was mostly about enabling syncing Mudita Pure contacts and calendar events with outside service providers (Google, Apple) and importing this data from files without compromising user's privacy. 

We have separated syncing with Google Calendar and Google Contacts - whenever importing data from Google, the user now gives access rights to Google Calendar and Google Contacts separately. We remind you that syncing with Google is optional, you can choose if you want to use it or not. 

As requested by many Mudita Pure supporters: You can also import contacts from a VCF file and calendar events from an ICS file inside Mudita Center and synchronize them with your Mudita Pure.

Hardware development

E Ink Screen

We used the X-Rite i1Studio device, which is commonly used for calibrating screens and printers, for rough measurements of screen frontlight parameters.

This picture shows an X-Rite device in action

The results of the tests show that our front light generates more than 10 times less melatonic lux than smartphones with a standard display. Also the summary of the test includes the color temperature of our frontlight, which is over 6000K (according to the measurement from about 6100K to 6500K).

New E ink Frontlight developed

We received two pieces of prototype screens with frontlight, with improved homogeneity.

Both photos of the illuminated screens were taken with a smartphone. The screen with the Mudita logo is the new display

Also, while on the topic of E Ink screen, a design of a Jig for precise link of E Ink into Pure housing was created. It will be used on a production line.

This picture shows an E Ink jig

Flashlight button

Most of the team members during their tests of the Mudita Pure prototypes concluded that the flashlight button is very rigid and difficult to press and could sink into the case. Additionally, clicking on the sides of the button caused the button to not click or collapse into the body.

Appropriate modifications made by the engineering team resulted in the button no longer collapsing and the flashlight button functions as it should.

There's a new way of flashlight control - long-press (above  second of button hold) to select warm light and short-press to select cold light.

Good Design Award for Mudita Pure

At the end of our update, we would love to announce that the Mudita Pure phone has received the 2020 Good Design Award in the Electronics category from the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Center for Architecture, Design, Art and Urban Planning.

The GOOD DESIGN award is the third distinction recognizing the unique design of  the Mudita Pure phone. 

We are proud of our design team! Thank you guys!