Jitterbug: The Uncool Phone

Last Gadget Standing Finalist

Can a phone with a limited feature set be a revolutionary product? That's the question we're asking you as we move forward with our Last Gadget Standing competition. The Jitterbug Dial phone was designed from the ground up to serve the needs of an older population more concerned with making a reliable phone call easily than with browsing the web, snapping photos, or playing music on their phones.

Sounds simple, right? But the Jitterbug is about much more than a stripped-down phone. The obvious areas where it's been engineered for older adults are its large, well-lit, color-coded keypad; its large, contoured shape that makes it easy to grip; its integration of voice dialing; a padded earpiece to maximize audio; and the large well-lit display.

But it also combines some remarkable features on the back end, service side. For example, GreatCall, the manufacturers of the Jitterbug Dial, populate the phone with your frequent contacts for you. Anyone who's ever had to program all of the addresses into their phones knows this takes a dexterity and acuity that makes it difficult for some people, whether it's a function of age, visual impairment, or something else. Having Jitterbug send you a ready-to-make-calls phone that's populated with addresses eliminates a big hurdle. Second, because it's an MVO (mobile virtual network) that buys its minutes from existing carriers, you pay a single flat fee for a bunch of minutes and it doesn't matter where you are or who you're calling. The rate is constant, which is a breath of fresh air for anyone on a fixed budget. "Yes" and "no" prompts to simple questions like "Do you want to make a call?" guide you through the phone process. A friendly GreatCall operator can be summoned by hitting 0—yet another simple thing most phones never implemented.

That's not to say it's perfect. Some of the controls, like the phone's volume, were not as intuitive as I'd hoped. Most importantly, losing the features does not mean losing the expense. The phone sells for $147, and while there are different plans available, $489 buys you 1,440 minutes of time. That's only four minutes a day, and it's a bit pricey.

I gave my parents a Jitterbug phone as a test to see if they saw the benefit. They had some initial trouble modulating their voices to make voice-activated dialing work. Little things, like using the speakerphone and the fact that the keypad lights would fade to black and not just dim, gave them a bit of user trouble. But they loved some of Jitterbug's touches, like the fact that when you open the phone you immediately hear a dial tone and when you close the phone you've hung up. It should remind us all of how unduly complicated most cell phones are. My parents also found the phone's reception, even in NYC, which is the land of dead cell zones, quite good.

GreatCall has created an important new product for important, often disenfranchised groups: the elderly, those with some forms of impairment, and the growing number of people who just want to make a phone call without all the stuff getting in the way. Still a work in progress, Jitterbug plans to allow users to access their contact names via the web. Jitterbug users can authorize relatives and friends to edit their phone lists on a web site.

So can a product win an innovation award by stripping away features? I sure think so.