This type of solution provides a simple system that requires very little administration and supervision. The problem with modern communications tech as it relates to children is that by default these systems provide access to every adult on planet earth to your child's inbox. That is not a feature that I need, but rather is a crippling design flaw much more likely to harm my kids than it is to help them.
1. The admin work of parental controls in Apple is non-trivial and obscure. I would guess there are something like 300 different knobs and settings you can control for each kid individually. The UX is terrible and there are features missing that seem extremely basic and fundamental. For example, I can't see how much time left my kids currently have, nor can I block any app "now".
2. "the phone is so locked down they don't really have any interest in it." This has not been my experience at all. My kids know that less-locked-down devices exist and frequently complain about the restrictions.
Configuring them from scratch is a minimum 20 minute job, and then you need to double and triple check to avoid mistakes. More like a half hour.
Also Screen Time is a little better in a few ways than what Android offers, but it’s still a joke, is incredibly Byzantine, and limits your options as a parent.
I'm glad we ditched iPads, it sucked.
Drug dealer getting the kids hooked early is priority #1.
Give just enough "parental control" to lure parents in.
Make it just annoying enough that the parents eventually give up and the kid is the one pushing the drug the entire time.
I don't know the extent to which such devices are still manufactured today.
(and it's not the only one, also check KaiOS phones)
What's going to happen immediately is that kids with equivalent phones will compare, realize that one has a lot of restrictions and the other doesn't, and it becomes a nightmare. They know that all you need to do is unlock it for them.
It's the same mental distinction between "For $200 we'll install rear seat warmers in your Tesla" and "For $200 we'll 'unlock' the already-present rear seat warmers" (that's the only hardware unlock I've ever paid for and I'm still bitter 7 years later).
Don't you think they will as easily realize their newly purchased TinCan is far more restricted than the 10 year old phone theirs friends received from their parents/siblings?
Chosing a Tin Can is obviously to restrict your kid usage of communication, it's the nature of the purchase of the device.
Secondly as far as I understand, you need the same type of phone at both ends to communicate with each other. Looks like the tin-can and other similar devices are designed to talk only to each other. While that is a restriction, it eliminates the avenue for a comparison. The friends are all on equal ground.
Thirdly, you're talking as if parental controls, especially unequal parental controls are a bad thing. Parental controls aren't like government or corporate restrictions. There is a necessary assumption that parents act in the best interests of the kids, unlike the other two.
Some parents are irresponsible and may allow their kids to consume alcohol or drugs. Will you allow your kids to do it too, because it may end up in comparisons? You have to talk to your kids about why that is a bad idea. It's wrong to assume that kids won't listen at all. Don't most kids refrain from drinking, smoking and driving till they come of age?
If this sort of control seems unfair or unethical to you, you're basically exposing your kids to serious dangers. And brain rot is a very serious problem that HN doesn't talk enough about. It ruins even the seniors. But for kids, it wreaks havoc with their IQ and personality.
*I don't know what to call it. It's like those people that buy a car with heated seats locked down by subscription and calling it "a feature" because some cars don't have them at all.
Which it is. I don't understand the need to wink-wink-nudge-nudge pretend it's anything else by the others in this thread. Just own it, restrictions aren't bad by default.
https://www.unihertz.com/fr-fr/products/jelly-star
- Because it's small, it doesn't look like a regular smartphone
- The small size would make it impractical for social media/scrolling/videos even if I were to unlock it
...but compared to a dumbphone, I can still allow Spotify and their school management software so they can access their schedule and homework
Instead of being bitter for 7 years perhaps you should not have purchased such an absurd thing.
I have a device setup like this but I hate it, it’s possibly the worst UX I’ve used from Apple.
With a device that's not a smartphone, you don't have this problem.
About a dozen times in those years, the system silently failed open either completely or partially (eg. some restrictions still applied, but whitelists in Safari were no longer enforced, the app store was suddenly accessible again or time limits were no longer in place). Not once was there any indication on the parent device.
Several times, the only way to reenable broken restrictions was to wipe the device, because changes to parental controls simply stopped syncing.
Here's long-time Mac developer and blogger Michael Tsai describing the same thing: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/09/24/screen-time-brokenness/