Mobiclick review

The Pocket-lint review website was given the chance to look at a pre-production model of a new device that will offer the older generation a chance to have a mobile phone without the confusion of a modern day device. The reviewer was not too happy with this new mobile phone for the elderly, though.

With mobile phones becoming more and more confusing, how are members of the older generation supposed to get used to a phone with so many bells and whistles? Surely there are times when you just want a device that allows you to dial your three most important numbers and the emergency services in case anything goes wrong.

The approach may be a bit condescending, but there does seem to be a market for it. There are times that you don’t want to be bothered with MP3 players, built-in digital cameras and the latest downloadable games or applications, you just want a simple device that lets you call people.

In steps Mobi-click, the company behind the SilverPhone. The SilverPhone is a mobile phone that, once configured, allows you to call just three numbers and the emergency services.

The phone’s design is simple, but annoyingly bulky and unstylish. The cheap-looking grey box has three large colored buttons on the front. Those three buttons are the shortcuts for dialing the numbers, and no other manually entered numbers may be dialed.

In addition to the three numbers, though, the phone doubles as a monitoring service to make sure the user is alive and alert. The unit can be set to beep at timed intervals requesting an answer to make sure the user is available. Intervals can be set to as often as you wish, however it could become annoying if the time between beeps is too short.

Once you’re convinced that the concept is a good one, there are still problems with the device. The setup was very troublesome, requiring the user to deactivate the phone’s sim card and then send text messages to set the numbers. Those of us with maturing parents who learned to program VCRs and send text messages with ordinary handsets can see the elderly population avoiding this like the plague.

Source: Pocket-Lint