Best budget phone for 9 year old

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esawers

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#255670 23-Aug-2019 09:04

Looking for a recommendation for a mobile phone with a long life battery (at least 3-4 days) that a 9 year old can put in his bag when he’s at activities like football or hanging out at school after school.

Ability to track would be an advantage but that would probably use the battery up anyway.

Don’t want to encourage phone use or social media just yet so doesn’t need to be flash.

networkn

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#2304381 23-Aug-2019 09:13

Following with interest

Item

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#2304393 23-Aug-2019 09:19

Does it need to do internet/email - i.e. "Smart" or just send & receive calls and texts?

At work we get our engineers and warehouse workers the MobiWire Dakota.

Cheap as chips and IP68 rated

https://www.vodafone.co.nz/shop/mobileDetails.jsp?skuId=sku1264055&voucherCode=&hardwareSkuId=&menuKey=&selectedPlanSkuId=&selectedView=&selectedTab=technicalSpecifications&selectedPriceTab=&ignoreCartContent=

timmmay

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#2304397 23-Aug-2019 09:22

Life360 is a really effective tracking app, we use it, so does a good friend who has kids. It updates when people are on the move, or you can request an update manually.

3-4 days is a lot, even if it's not really being used for anything much. That size battery would make it larger and heavier.

Moto G7 Power is a contender. My wife has Moto G and likes it, think she had G1 and has G5. $418 at PB, about NZ$300 from Amazon.com but you may not get a warranty. My wife's G5 is from the USA, no problems. Came from Spain originally I think, based on the language in the OS update prompts - not sure why those aren't in English like everything else.

jonathan18

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#2304421 23-Aug-2019 09:52

How many phones - irrespective of price - can last three or four days these days? I imagine to get that anywhere near that you'd need to optimise the hell out of any non-critical app or process.

That said, it's screen usage that's typically the biggest power-sucker, and if it's being used very rarely that'll sure help. (Evidence of this is my phone I broke last week - screen no longer works at all, but everything else seems to be functioning; it took so many days to die, helped by automatically turning on/off each day - confirmed by it still connecting to my headphones days later!)

Also, sometimes it can actually be easier to work a daily habit rather than one that's less frequent and/or irregular; so charging a phone daily as part of a routine may be easier than remembering to do it every three days (or when it needs it, which requires more active monitoring - more difficult if not being used much).

I'm also interested in recommendations for phones suitable for kids, though not worried about the battery life so much; one that caught my eye was the Samsung A20 as an ok price for a decently-spec'd phone; the cheaper Samsung phones appear to now be fairly good devices compared to their previous efforts.

jonathan18

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#2304425 23-Aug-2019 09:55

esawers: Ability to track would be an advantage but that would probably use the battery up anyway.

In terms of tracking - have you looked into Google's Family Link? It's useful for more than just this, given it provides a really wide range of controls - device lock-down, daily screen time, time limits (eg, disabled at night), app restrictions, password reset, content filter... Also includes control over Chromebooks.

esawers

551 posts

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#2304546 23-Aug-2019 12:14

It doesn’t need to be smart at all
No emails etc

Phones in the old days could last a week with minimal use?

esawers

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#2304549 23-Aug-2019 12:18

That Mobiwire says up to 15 days on standby which is ideal

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esawers

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#2304553 23-Aug-2019 12:22

The rest of the family are Apple users, not that it makes much difference.
It would only be for emergencies as I don’t want to encourage phone use outside of the house. (They have iPods at home).

ShinyChrome

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#2304568 23-Aug-2019 12:46

esawers: It doesn’t need to be smart at all
No emails etc

Phones in the old days could last a week with minimal use?

Modern phones are doing a whole lot when they are doing nothing, compared to older phones that are literally doing nothing but polling for a cell signal.They are closer to a laptop than they are the phones of old.

Think all the stuff that happens in the background, all the apps that are checking in (including all the system apps that are checking in with Google/Apple servers), bluetooth, wifi etc. Which would also include any tracking apps installed, because that's literally what they are doing to you anyway. Try using a modern phone in Airplane mode and you will see a massive boost to battery life!

Either you can have a dumb/non-smart, but cheap phone with high battery life and no extra features like the one Item suggested, or you can have a smart phone and clamp down on the 'smart' features with managed apps etc, but it won't have great battery life and cost a bit more, like timmmay and jonathan18 suggested.

Edit: If you want to go the second way, you have phones like the Xiaomi Redmi Go for $159 or the Nokia 2.2 for $169 currently. Slight distinction since you are an iPhone user: Android Go is optimized for lower-cost phones, so could help with things like battery life, and Android One is the full fledged thing straight from Google with guaranteed updates for 2 years.