I got a task to buy a smart phone for my grandparents, they are not techsavy but they know how to use basic functions. Iam looking for an andoid because it has language pack i need. I dont need it to have lots of functions, onley a good camera and a big screen. Bonus points if it can be flashed with some kind of simplefied version of android.
if you’re located in europe, fairphones might be an option. pretty expensive for what they are, but they get 7 years of software support. plus they’re easily fixable if your grandparents are a bit clumsy.
they have been getting bigger every generation, and the cameras are quite usable under normal lighting conditions.
My mother is 84. I got her a Motorola phone for around €170 / $180 and did the setup for her (increase text size, setup whatsapp etc.). It is perfect. Main consideration was a decent battery life, reasonable camera and a not awful processor.
At her age all she wants is phone calls, texts, youtube and whatsapp and most androids in that price range or higher ticks those boxes IMO.
I’d double check that language you need isn’t already on iPhone. They’ve added pretty much every language spoken by at least 100k people.
iPhone is really the only choice for the computer/smartphone illiterate. You can’t easily put the device in an unrecognizable state, you can’t install a launcher that drastically changes the GUI from the app store. iPhone justifiably gets tons of shit, but this is the exact use case it’s designed for. They also have really good accessibility features, and they actually work in apps.
Android has tons of benefits, and I’ve had only android for the last 14 years. I think if you are planning on removing the settings app all together, you know it’s not a great choice for them.
Depends massively on your budget, i would buy any 400ish dollar phone from any well known chinese brand (Redmi, Realme) and flash it with something like lineage OS, the hardware is good enough and will last a few years, if you have a higher budget, something like the asus zenfone is also good and you probably won’t need to modify the software (unless you want to)
Stay away from samsung imo, they are harder to mod and their budget phones are far from the best, they may look decent on paper but the software and speed are very lackluster
You can basically make a dumb smartphone with grapheneos so a pixel would be good for them. If you dont need a dumb phone set it up with the playstore and whatever apps they use and boom good to go
Edit: I would also setup accessibility features. Forgot to mention regardless of os add some kind of network firewall or DNS solution to block malicious/phishing domains. The elderly are often victims of scams
If its an iPhone I would go with an iPhone plus for the screen size.
If its android, I would go with a Samsung A device. They’re usually big in size, affordable, comes with a lot of accessibility features, good battery, and relatively easy to find accessories and spare parts.
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