Enfora and LeapFrog put out TicTalk cellphone for kids
posted Aug 4th 2005 8:44PM
Ahhhh yes, yet another cellphone for the kiddies — soon enough there'll just be cellular kiosks in every natal ward. Anywho, Enfora and toy company LeapFrog have collaborated on the TicTalk, a cellphone with bare bones features, restricted call list and added safety functions. LeapFrog's influence has differentiated the TicTalk from offerings like the Firefly by incorporating educational mini-games and a PIM function (damn, even kids need PIMs these days? Slow down, world!). All of the data in the phone is actually entered via a web interface and transferred to the handset over the wire — there's no physical entry via the phone UI itself. The GSM-based TicTalk hasn't been snagged by any carriers yet, but LeapFrog wants to offer it at a pricepoint of about $25 for 100 minutes of talk time.
Cool, I don't have kids, but now I have a reason to get some!
There's no way this thing is getting picked up by a carrier without a numeric keypad. Cool phone, but they should have had some marketing folks talking to the carriers while they were developing it. Engineers and design people really don't have a clue what happens on the other side.
# 2, this is for a child. Can you imagine giving a kid--say 6 to 10 years old-- a phone with numbers on it. Imagine how quick [s]he would go through those 100 minutes from all of the calls [s]he made just from pushing the buttons. It's more likely a phone for recieving calls.
But you may be right, it probably won't get picked up. One day, though, something like it will. We're just not ready for this kind of technology yet.
Why would a child that doesn't even know how to use a phone keypad need a phone in the first place?
I'm not saying that kids would need a keypad. As a concept, this is OK, although I would suspsect that even 6-10 year olds these days would be more interested in an iPod cell phone than a crippled phone that looks like Fisher Price. I'm just saying that carriers are not intereted in these types of phones. At least a few companies have poured money into development of keypad-less kiddy cell phones, only to have them rejected from carriers for that reason. Maybe the carriers would rather have the parents pay $35 a month for full service than the discounted service this phone would require. Maybe they have done their research and have seen that there is no market for this kind of phone. I'm not sure.
Do you need a computer for this phone?