Best Cell Phone for a Senior

easiest cellphone for a senior are those flip cellphones.................


Very limited selection though - if you are a Koodo client, Koodo sells the Alcatel 3 flip for $90:

https://www.koodomobile.com/phones/alcatel-go-flip-3

Or you can buy outright on fleabay - just make sure to buy from a reputable seller.

Depends on what your dad's vision is like... But the Alcatel Go Flip 3 can be purchased from Best Buy for $70: https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/ch ... d/14518022

Thanks. But wouldn't a flip phone be more difficult?

Here's something that might be easier than a cell phone.... a wireless home phone (uses adapter and sim card). Plug your dad's current phone(if it's a landline) into the adapter..near window best ..its a phone he's used to...His land line number can be ported over so its all the same. Portable too as if he moves rooms or different home just take and plug in.If you have a provider that has a home phone option like this you can get it way cheaper than listed in links below. Sometimes there are sales or can find a used adapter(but the adapters are locked to the provider I believe so Fido will work on Rogers but not if you want a telus plan) .
https://www.fido.ca/home-phone
https://www.zoomerwireless.ca/wireless_home_phone
https://www.rogers.com/consumer/wireles ... home-phone
https://www.telus.com/en/mobility/wireless-home-phone

insync44 wrote: ↑ Thanks. But wouldn't a flip phone be more difficult?

Difficult in what sense? It doesn't get much more simplistic than a flip phone.

Got my mother that phone a couple years ago and she doesn’t like it. Takes way to long to start up (she just turns it on when making calls, otherwise she keeps it off). Accessing the directory is not as straightforward as other phones she used before. Yes, it’s a basic and simple phone, but not basic enough for some I guess. She keeps asking for a different one, but I don’t know what else to get her. She makes a few calls a year LOL. Speakout wireless plan ($25 loaded once a year) is perfect.

My dad is 82 and he has Samsung s20 -- he's not very tech savvy, but was able to figure out how to use it over few months. He's now sending me Whatsapp and Viber forwards and doing video calls.

Any moderately cheap Android would be OK IMO.

Just show him the basics (hitting home button, swiping up to show launcher/dock) to get started. As long as there's no language barrier, he should be able to figure out the rest.

peasy9 wrote: ↑ Here's something that might be easier than a cell phone.... a wireless home phone (uses adapter and sim card). Plug your dad's current phone(if it's a landline) into the adapter..near window best ..its a phone he's used to...His land line number can be ported over so its all the same. Portable too as if he moves rooms or different home just take and plug in.If you have a provider that has a home phone option like this you can get it way cheaper than listed in links below. Sometimes there are sales or can find a used adapter(but the adapters are locked to the provider I believe so Fido will work on Rogers but not if you want a telus plan) .
https://www.fido.ca/home-phone
https://www.zoomerwireless.ca/wireless_home_phone
https://www.rogers.com/consumer/wireles ... home-phone
https://www.telus.com/en/mobility/wireless-home-phone

A great suggestion. Even a senior with some dementia can still use an old fashioned phone. You can take the phone the senior was using at home and plug it into one of those adapters, and it will work like a traditional landline. I find that a big issue with seniors and cell phones is that they forget to keep them charged, so that you can never contact them.

Great idea. Thanks. Just what I was looking for.

Virgin and Koodo also have wireless home phone, usually with $5/month for the first year promo.

peasy9 wrote: ↑Here's something that might be easier than a cell phone.... a wireless home phone (uses adapter and sim card). Plug your dad's current phone(if it's a landline) into the adapter..near window best ..its a phone he's used to...His land line number can be ported over so its all the same. Portable too as if he moves rooms or different home just take and plug in.If you have a provider that has a home phone option like this you can get it way cheaper than listed in links below. Sometimes there are sales or can find a used adapter(but the adapters are locked to the provider I believe so Fido will work on Rogers but not if you want a telus plan) .
https://www.fido.ca/home-phone
https://www.zoomerwireless.ca/wireless_home_phone
https://www.rogers.com/consumer/wireles ... home-phone
https://www.telus.com/en/mobility/wireless-home-phone

Dealmaker1945 wrote: ↑ A great suggestion. Even a senior with some dementia can still use an old fashioned phone. You can take the phone the senior was using at home and plug it into one of those adapters, and it will work like a traditional landline. I find that a big issue with seniors and cell phones is that they forget to keep them charged, so that you can never contact them.

stacksonstacks wrote: ↑ Virgin and Koodo also have wireless home phone, usually with $5/month for the first year promo.

Do these still work like a cell phone when they actually leave the house? These just sound like landline alternatives based on cell technology instead of voip, but isn't a best cell phone for a senior.

cba123 wrote:"Do these still work like a cell phone when they actually leave the house? These just sound like landline alternatives based on cell technology instead of voip, but isn't a best cell phone for a senior."


These adapters use simcards but they are not a cell phone . The adapters plus the phone you attach to it stay in the residence but is portable to whichever residence you wish to leave it in or move over to .
If senior requires a phone to carry with them at all times then a cell phone is required:flip phone version or big screen with swiping capability.

cba123 wrote: ↑ Do these still work like a cell phone when they actually leave the house? These just sound like landline alternatives based on cell technology instead of voip, but isn't a best cell phone for a senior.

yep, these are designed to be left in a stationary place cos it needs to be plugged in to power and a home phone

which brings us back to the original question... What is the best cell phone for a senior that needs a cell phone when they leave their house?

My 84 year old FIL had a simple flip phone, but SO stopped working since it was a gsm phone.
I picked up a cheap maxwest bar phone with an sos button, but the extra dedicated multi media buttons complicate the simplicity of it.

While my FIL was an engineer, he has never been able to grasp using smartphones. We had an Android tablet alarm set up for his meds and he was able to swipe to turn off the alarm most of the time, but one time he couldn't figure out how to swipe up to turn it off, he put the tablet in the shed because he couldn't turn it off.

My MIL on the other hand, had no problem with smartphones and used it for candy crush and facebook.

cba123 wrote: ↑ which brings us back to the original question... What is the best cell phone for a senior that needs a cell phone when they leave their house?

My 84 year old FIL had a simple flip phone, but SO stopped working since it was a gsm phone.
I picked up a cheap maxwest bar phone with an sos button, but the extra dedicated multi media buttons complicate the simplicity of it.

While my FIL was an engineer, he has never been able to grasp using smartphones. We had an Android tablet alarm set up for his meds and he was able to swipe to turn off the alarm most of the time, but one time he couldn't figure out how to swipe up to turn it off, he put the tablet in the shed because he couldn't turn it off.

My MIL on the other hand, had no problem with smartphones and used it for candy crush and facebook.

OP is moving into a home, so it's unlikely that they're going out much. A cell-based landline alternative is probably a better option for their needs (although - don't homes *have* land lines in residents' rooms? I'm not sure why a cell is preferable, unless the homes are ripping people off for landlines, which I would totally believe). That aside - if your FIL was ok with his previous flip phone, would the Alcatel GO Flip 3 I linked above not work?

Ok, I guess the Alcatel GO Flip 3 is the only choice that is out there.

What is the battery life like on the Alcatel GO Flip 3?

My FIL always had his cell phone powered off, unless he needed it for an emergency, but he refused to just charge it when necessary, and kept the damn thing plugged in the charger all the time (which destroyed the battery). I may have him keep this new phone powered on all the time, and use an old school outlet timer to cycle the charger on for an hour a day, but then we have to worry about spam callers and spam messages, which he doesn't get when the phone is powered off all the time.

The Go Flip 3 is LTE so that means I won't have to worry about it getting decommissioned, but now I will have to go buy a new multi-sim card at 7-eleven, since it requires a nano-sim. I guess I was looking at a previous gen of the Alcatel flip phone 4-5 years ago, which I don't recall having LTE, and ended up opting for a Polaroid flip phone since it still used a full size sim card, but I as found out was only using GSM bands, which Rogers (SpeakOut) decommissioned this year.

I may try installing Simple Launcher (which is a launcher designed for seniors) on my old Moto G3 and see if I can get the home page to just have 3 contact buttons (one dial button for each of his daughters plus me) on the home screen, which is all he needs, and hide and lock all the rest of the apps, but it takes forever to power up an Android phone compared to his old flip phone.