A New Phone Aimed At Older People
Highlights from The Pat Kenny Show- 1,380 views
- 9 Feb 2021
On this weeks tech slot we hear about a new phone aimed at older people.
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The part Kenny show on news talk with Marter private network during current restrictions. Don't ignore your health concerns. Our expert team is ready to help. Jess, good morning. Morning, Pat, how are you? I'm very well know you want to talk to us about a smartphone from Unposed, which has a particular market in mind?
Yeah, absolutely. It's called the Emporia Smart four. And this is a device that's been specifically designed for older people. And I'm not putting an age bracket on that because I know people of all ages who can't get their heads around smartphones, find them too busy, just want a device for calls and texts. However, obviously, things have changed now and people are using things like Zoom and WhatsApp video to stay in touch with friends and family. And so this phone very much ticks that box.
It is a five inch screen, so it's a solid size. It looks very similar to, do you remember the iPhone three or the iPod Touch that sort of curved back design. It feels very solid in the hand, so it's not going to slip. Some of the ones that we spoke about recently have glass box and they feel like they could drop or smash at any given moment. This is not one of those. And I want to talk about the unboxing process because it is exactly what you would want for an older person who is not tech savvy.
You opened the box on. The first thing you see is I think it's like a 100 page handbook on how to use the phone, complete with instructions and graphics of what you need to do every step of the way you put the battery in. So again, it's like one of the old school Nokia phones. You pop the battery in yourself, you put the cover on the back and then you set it up. It runs Android. But lying over the basic Android operating system is what's what's called the Emporia UI.
And this makes it very easy to use so you can set it up so that it looks like a normal phone or you can set it up so that you only have five icons on the home screen. So I have one in my hand here now and I have the call button the messages, button the pictures button on the camera button. So that's what I have on my home screen now.
But if you can set it up to have you know, if you wanted WhatsApp, you could do that, you could add that in and so on and so forth.
As much complexity as you desire. Exactly, yes, so it comes with all of the basic ups that you would have on any smartphone, so whether that is, you know, the calculator, you can put WhatsApp on it, you can put Zoom on it. It has a very good five megapixel front camera and a 13 megapixel camera. So that's ideal for the video calls. But what a lot of people will like about this phone for their elderly relatives, I think, is that when you swipe to the left, there are five different slots there where you can put in emergency contacts and then there's a button beneath the rear lens of the camera that you can press.
So if someone gets into trouble, if they have a fall or if they just need a. Press the small button under the camera lens on a message gets sent urgently to those five contacts, which gives people that peace of mind, particularly at the moment. That's very, very good.
How much does it cost? So it's 140 euro now. It is locked to unposed mobile and it's the 140 euro price point if you move your number over to post and then it's 15 year old month, but for your 15 year or a month, you are getting a lot. You're getting 50 gigs of data, 3000 minutes and text per month as well. So that is plenty to guess the majority of people through. And so it is definitely worth looking at.
You can find the full details of one on post.com.
Very good. OK. And, you know, if it does matter what age you are, if you want a simpler phone, don't want to be bothered by loads of complexity, why not give that a try?
Now, some of the queries coming in, I have a Nokia 15 X. Please help. Nothing wrong with the phone, but I feel I need to update. I'm in my late 70s. I'm not techie. OK, that's completely fine, something like that, Emporia smart for that we just mentioned would be ideal because the Nokia 15 X, it had a particular operating system on it that was very basic. So, again, something like the Emporia would be ideal.
It wouldn't take you a lot to get used to the new phone. So something like that is worth looking at. Alternatively, Nokia have a great number of phones. I think it's the Nokia three point two that is brilliant. Again, very basic, very solid, and will do all the bits and pieces that you need the next one.
As a homeschooling parent, my children are using Google classroom. I have both their accounts on my phone so I can keep track. However, I'm reaching my 15 gig storage on Google. How can I free up storage or add more, please?
That's from Lisa. OK, so it depends if you're using your Google storage yourself for all of your photographs, for example, and if your phone automatically sends off every photograph that you take directly to the cloud, if that's the case, it's worth going in and typing in screenshots into the search bar and that'll pull up any screenshots that you've taken. You know, if you see something online you want to remind yourself of, if you don't want any more, you can delete them.
Obviously, video files are huge. So go through and remove any video files that you don't need. You can also, if you want pay to increase your storage I to ninety nine a month. And that gives me, I think, 200 gigs of storage, which is plenty. And so that's another option as well.
Just while we're in the sort of home schooling phase, I just upgraded my iPhone zah to the new iPhone 12. The battery life is awful compared to the old phone. I've turned off five g deleted all power consuming apps, but it's still so bad.
Is there anything I can do?
That's from Catherine. So the thing to note is that the iPhone 12 is has a bigger screen, but it's also much more powerful phone than the 10 or so you will guess you won't get the same battery performance, if you know what I mean. It's not comparing like for like, unfortunately, there's not a whole lot you can do. You've mentioned there that you've done sort of the obvious things, turning off battery consuming apps and so on. It might be worth just going into your battery setting within the settings.
Go to battery and see what's consuming the most amount of data. Is it something like Instagram that's set to refresh in the background? Anything like that? And think that's refreshing in the background that you don't need, such as your text messages or perhaps you want push notifications for your email. If you turn that off, that will improve it. But you're not kind of comparing like for like the battery on the iPhone 12, I had the iPhone 12 Permax.
I was quite impressed by it, to be honest, so I would do it.
You're still not happy to get on to Apple because if it's a new phone, you are still covered under apple care for the first. I think it's 30 or 60 days. So get on to them and ask if they can run a diagnostics on your phone. Can you suggest a tablet for an 82 year old?
Only needs to ring and see friends and family, maybe receive photos and try to smartphone. It was a step too far. Couldn't manage it. She has an old type Nokia mobile phone, which she uses for calls and text.
So the idea of a tablet big screen put a in what would win so you could get something like the Lenovo M10, which is a very good Android tablets. And if you are buying a tablet and we spoke about this at Christmas time, if you are buying a tablet for an older person, what I recommend you do is get it sent to your house first and you set it up for them, set it off with all the apps that they'd want and need on the home screen and remove all the other junk.
They don't need to have 101 different apps on the home screen have it so that the apps are clearly visible. If it's three or four apps, that's plenty. Just have that on the home screen and set it up that way. You mentioned the phone I missed at the start for older people, it's the Emporia Smart Four available from post next one.
What printers are compatible with Acer Chromebook five one four. I need one to print and photocopy for home use. So the majority the way that the printers tend to work is that it's compatible with the operating system that you have on your computer. So if it is a recent model, I'm not sure off the top of my head if that is a recent model, but you'll be able to search and see what operating system your ACER has and then put it into Google or when you see your printer that you want, if it is compatible.
I always go for HP when it comes to printers, HP and brother are the two brands that are incredibly reliable. If you're looking for something quite basic, HP do great model for less than 100. So I would take a look there, but just make sure it will have on the spec sheet of the printer what operating systems is compatible with. So that's the thing to watch out for.
Mary wants to know after thinking and backing up my iPhone 11 to iTunes on my laptop, my contacts and calendar have disappeared. I don't use the cloud. Apple told me to restore the last backup from iTunes, but I'm afraid it'll wipe out other stuff. If I do, do you think it'll work from memory?
Oh, this is a headache that I've had many, many times over the years. And OK, so you're saying that they're gone from your phone.
So when you go into your phone, if you can go into the settings and just check that on the account so your iCloud name should appear at the top within the settings, if you tap into that and just ensure that all the boxes are TEQSA, whether that is context, photographs and all the rest, take all of those and make sure that they are synched. The easiest way, unfortunately, is to embrace the cloud. Now, if you have an iPhone, which you do, your stuff will or should be automatically sent up to the cloud.
So what I'd recommend you do is go to a computer and type in iCloud dotcom and log in with your Apple ID and see if your information is there. I don't want to say yes for sure about the Restor from a backup in case I'm wrong and I don't want that to be my responsibility. So go through those steps first and then maybe email at CNET News.com and I will take a look and see if I can help you.
Canadian Goldway says we're building a house at the moment. Just wondering if you'd recommend building in some technology and if so, what would you recommend?
Oh, there are so many and there are so many companies that specialize in this exact topic, so it's better off you're better off getting a consultation and seeing what you need. The key thing is how you wire it up and, you know, you don't want to have your lovely new home and then suddenly have to drill to get cut five cables running through your house to ensure that you can stretch the signal. So it depends on the space that you have.
First of all, how big it is if something like the and and over mesh, which you can get in different sizes to cover different areas, and that could do the job without any drilling. But the best thing to do is get a consultation from a company that specializes in this and they will give you recommendations so that you can factor in during the build rather than having to do that drilling.
As I mentioned, by the way, another text about the iPhone 12, I find a fully charged battery doesn't last me a day. Does Apple intend to address this? Do you know? That's from Catherine. So another one having a problem with the battery running down very quickly. And my husband, 74, needs a replacement for his old iPhone.
What do you suggest as he's afraid of losing photos and contacts if he changes from iOS to Android? So what do you think?
You won't lose anything. And this is the beauty of the clouds where everything is synched up. What I recommend you do, if you can, is put the Google photos up onto the iPhone, sync everything up to Google Photos. And that way then you have it regardless of whether you go to an Android phone or an iPhone. That being said, there are iPhones that are worth looking at in terms of an upgrade. You could go for the iPhone s e, which still is incredible value.
Or and I've said this to a few people in the last week, look at a site like Mint Plus story. They sell refurbished phones so you could get a refurbished iPhone eight. If you don't need, you know, the new espec and all the rest, you've got a refurbished iPhone for 400 euro. And that way then the transfer process is a bit simpler.
All right. We have to leave it there. Jess, thank you very much for all of your answers. We've got another hundreds you could be answering all day. But thank you very much, Jess, for that.