Existing phones on the market

Done a quick search for existing mobile phones that are aimed at elderly people, to give us some idea of what has been done, and a bit of inspiration for the design of ours.



This is the Silverphone.

A very neat and simple design, but lacks basic functionality, like any simple method to change the preset numbers stored. Also holding the green button for 5 seconds calls 999, and there appears to be no keypad lock feature. More info here.

Believe it or not this is a mobile phone from a Czech company that has received orders of over 100,000 of them. It's basically looks and functions like a house phone with mobile capabilities inside it. More info here, here.

This is a Japanese mobile aimed at the elderly, with no screen, and no pre-entered numbers, you just press the green button then dial your number, just like you would on a house phone. More info here.

Also worth a read is here, where a phone for blind people has been made that uses a speech synthesiser to read everything that would normally appear on the screen. Obviously great for the blind, but might be a bit tiresome for elderly who can still see.

I think the Japanese one is the best, it combines the best of both worlds, simplicity and familiarity of a house phone, with portability and convenience of a mobile phone. The other two fail to do this. The first is portable but has lost functionality, the second has plenty of functionality but is hardly portable.

This is all I could find really, so there is clearly a need for a decent mobile phone for the elderly.