Jethro SC490 4G LTE Cell Phone for Seniors with 30 Day Prepaid Plan: 150 Talk & 150 Texts, No Internet (Black)

Too complicated for a tech-savvy 40 yo, let alone seniors. Plus tons of issues!!!
This phone is a joke. And let me be clear, I LOVE “dumb” phones. All I want is something simple and easy to use for texting and calling. But the OS seems like it was designed by some middle-school kid for computer class. It’s unwieldy, missing tons of basic functions, and is so difficult to navigate that I literally cannot imagine an older, less tech-savvy person using it. I can barely get it to work myself. On top of its almost total lack of functionality or user-friendliness, in the week or so that I’ve had it, it has shut off and reset during almost all of the calls I’ve made, won’t download MMS texts (apparently a firmware update is coming, but COME ON, this technology has been around for at least a decade!) and is bizarrely quiet – again, this is a phone designed for seniors?! I don’t think I’ve ever been more disappointed by a piece of technology. Returning it first thing tomorrow and buying literally anything else instead.

Pretty good, but some weaknesses …
I got this for my 90 year-old mom. She used to have a flip phone, and has spent the last year or so getting used to a smart phone. I customized the screen on the smart phone to make it very easy to use, with big picture icons and only the needed functions. Even so, she doesn’t like it much, so I purchased this flip phone for her, thinking she might prefer something with an actual, physical dial pad. Especially since it has a nice, red emergency call button on the back. It turns out – not so much.While it is easier to understand what is going on with this flip phone, and harder to accidentally activate some app that happens to be present on the main screen, it is also somewhat difficult to manipulate the up-down, left-right control at the top of the keyboard. My mom has small fingers, and even she has a little trouble with it. A guy with big fingers would have a real problem. It needs to be at least 50% bigger.Since the phone runs on Android, it would be nice if the maker at least allowed side-loading some apps. Let people hack into them, and just let them know the warranty is void if they do that. If the maker was bold enough to do that, the hacking community might even embrace the phone, and modify it to make it more useful for elderly people. To add a good call-blocker app, for example. If I could have done that, I think it might have been enough to keep the phone on the counter, and use it as the land-line. But no – you can’t load apps. So I put it away in a box, and keep it “just in case” mom loses her smart phone. It has all her contacts loaded, and she can use it, but it wasn’t quite as friendly as we were hoping.It still seems to be better than the other flip phones out there, but not quite good enough to trump the customized smart phone. Maybe we’ll try a Jitterbug one of these days. Sigh.

My elderly mother was having difficulty using her iPhone, so we decided to try out a “dumb” phone. She’s been using this for over a year and is happy with it.The green (answer) and red (hang up / decline) buttons are simple and easy for her to find.The menus feel like an old flip phone – you have to find the contacts and scroll through them to dial. Not ideal but it works. You can add some contacts to favorites.Sound quality is good enough on both ends. I hear her well, and she often puts it on speaker for convenience.It has a lanyard attachment, so you could wear it around your neck, add a carabiner, or many other options.The charging dock is great because it eliminates the need to find a cable and plug it in properly. A couple times she’s actually put the phone in upside down, but she eventually learned.

This phone is excellent for older people that experience challenges with operating a normal call phone. It is practical it is easy to use and it functions extremely well. I purchased it for a 91 year old man and he can use it like a regular cordless phone. I do recommend this product. Quality is good and it is very well made for the price point.