Senior phone or locked screen — what is the difference?

The four options, briefly

This is what there is to choose between today.

• Picture landline: buttons with photos, sitting on a table. Simple and stable, but tied to one room and useless outside the home.
• Senior mobile with speed-dial buttons: sturdy, often with physical keys, but the speed dials are numbers rather than faces, and the menus behind them are still there.
• An ordinary smartphone configured by hand: costs nothing extra, but somebody has to maintain it, and one update or one wrong tap can undo the setup.
• A locked calling screen on an Android phone: the phone becomes a calling screen with faces and cannot leave it. That is what CallByFace does.

What they cost

Prices vary, but the order of magnitude is roughly this: a picture landline usually runs from around a hundred to a few hundred pounds or euros. A senior mobile typically costs somewhere between a hundred and three hundred. Configuring an existing smartphone costs nothing in money, but takes time every time something changes.

A CallByFace licence costs {price} once per phone, and the phone can be one you already own. It is the only option here where the hardware is not a new cost.

What they handle in practice

Ask the questions in this order and the choice usually makes itself.

• Does the phone need to work outside the home? That rules out the picture landline.
• Are faces what is needed, rather than names or numbers? A senior mobile rarely covers that.
• Does the person tap into settings or apps by mistake? Then a locked mode is needed — a hand-configured smartphone can always be navigated away from.
• Does the person still need texting, banking or a browser? Then a locked screen is too narrow, and an ordinary phone is the right answer.

Who keeps it running

This is the point that usually decides things over time. A picture landline needs almost no upkeep. A senior mobile generally keeps working. A hand-configured smartphone needs someone to check regularly that nothing has changed.

A locked screen looks after itself in daily use, but photos and numbers are added by a relative or staff member through an admin menu. In CallByFace it opens by tapping the top bar ten times.