Phonotto - A Simple Phone for Seniors

Last Christmas my present for my mother was a HTC Wildfire S. I thought that she'd have no problem adapting to Android and all of the amazingly useful apps that I proceeded to install on her handset. I was mindful to adapt the phone so that it was as intuitive and simple as possible, aware that she was in her senior years. However she was flummoxed!

The Wildfire was a replacement for her ailing Sony Ericsson K750i, which I thought was far more clumsy. She had no problem playing a few games selected for her tastes, once she had mastered the capacitive touchscreen, so long as I located and opened the game for her first. Suffice to say that actually making calls and sending and receiving SMS was going to be somewhat more of a challenge.

Six months later my mother still preferred to stick with her K750i, now missing the back of its casing, the battery held in with tape! She had relegated her Wildfire to occasional camera duties, but she definitely would not use it for the main objective, communication.

My mother, like lots of her generation, had always shied away from emerging new technology, but I was determined that she would overcome her aversion to her new phone. I decided that I had to simplify matters for her and proceeded to search for a simplified way for her to manage calls and SMS.

I discovered Simple Phones Seniors Phonotto lurking in Google Play and decided to give that a go. What a find it was! Once installed, Phonotto transformed the Wildfire user interface, making the phone into the most user friendly touchscreen handset I'd ever seen, perfect for my mother and almost any other senior citizen.

Gone was all of the cluttered, confusing apps and widgets, that she had previously tried to battle through. In its replacement was a clear menu that would allow her to perform all of the tasks she had struggled with.

Phonotto Functions

The time was clearly displayed at the top, underneath which was 3 quick dial options in red boxes. To add preferred numbers to these I simply had to press the phones menu button, tap 'Preferences', tap 'Button 1 Number' and proceed to add the desired phone number, pressing OK afterwards, repeating the process for Button 2 Number and Button 3 Number. In this menu I could also check a box to allow the application to start every time I rebooted and there was also a 'Contact Us' option.

So now my mother could ring me and her friends by just tapping one of the three options, presuming she could remember which option I was. It would have been a smidgen better if she could have seen at a glance the person represented by the three quick dial buttons.

Below these were two green boxes, the first of which was labelled 'Call'. To use this she had to type the phone number via the keyboard. The second green box was labelled 'Miss Calls', tapping this gave a list of all missed calls and the option to call back with just a tap of the green box on this screen.

Underneath these was an orange box labelled 'Addr book'. All of my mothers contacts were listed in a large, clear font. Below each contact was the option to call or send SMS.

Lastly there were two brown boxes labelled 'Send SMS' and 'Read SMS'. Send SMS required the persons phone number to be input, again a little infuriating, but the Read SMS allowed her to reply simply by tapping the green reply button.

Overall she was thrilled, as besides the few flaws that could be improved upon, she was now able to use her phone for the real purpose it was intended. To access the original UI she simply had to press the phones home button, after which she could use any other app. Phonotto would conveniently sit in the task bar until it was needed for an SMS or phone call again.