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The phone for kids that's really for parents - and what good is that?

Anybody who knows anything about kids, knows that they can manage VCR controls, kid-proof medicine jars, and mobile phones. It's their parents who have trouble with the technology; so why has SunCom Wireless launched a mobile phone for kids - without a text pad?

No, I'm not kidding. It's  official:"Firefly, developed by Chicago-based Firefly Mobile Inc., is a wireless phone without a number pad." Yes, that means it can't be used for texting. No, the kids can't call anybody except the twenty numbers that their parents have entered into the phone book, plus "home".. so frankly, who is going to use it?

At first thought, the idea is barmy. No kid is going to care about a phone which marks them out as a Mummy's Boy. Especially if they can't join in the texting of jokes that is so much the life of the "eight to twelve years old" children it's aimed at.

Not only it is decidedly uncool to have a phone that won't text and won't call your mates (unless approved by Mum) but it has to be asked: would you use one that flashes like this one does? There's a "Flash" demo on the  FireflyMobile home page.

It looks very like the sort of phone that a three-to-five year old child might love. And of course, it looks like the sort of phone that any paranoid parent would be happy with, and would perhaps think of buying to have the "peace of mind" that the blurb promises. But what's the good of that if no kids will use it?

Kewney's law of mobile devices is simple: "A device which you've left at home has no technical features." This phone is absolutely made to be left at home, or on the bus, or in a locker, or at the cinema. There's no risk at all that any kid, given one, will know where it is after the first day.

So is this a stupid product?

Not for Firefly Wireless. Demand for it is bound to be real. This is the age of "drive them to school, or they may get abducted by aliens, or perverts," and paranoid parents will protect their precious poppets at any price.

But what is the operator thinking of? Suncom in Virginia is offering the thing for $200, plus 1,200 free talk minutes - twenty hours.  Because the thing will never generate any money on its own, and unless the parent has a Suncom phone as well, incoming calls will be profit for someone else, not Suncom, isn't this suicidal?

It depends. If the thing really costs under $200 from Firefly, which is quite possible, then generating extra outgoing calls isn't really what they want to do. And if you buy it as part of an overall Suncom package, perhaps it will persuade parents to make more Suncal calls...

But even so, cynics will expect it to all fall down at the crunch. The twenty "acceptable phone numbers" have to be programmed into the phone by parents. My money says that most parents won't be able to do this, and will have to ask their kids to help punch in the password...

(and anyway, it's going to cause Suncom bad PR, cos people are going to accuse it of giving RADIATION to kids...)