Why Can't My Cell Phone Just Be a Phone?

Kathryn Courtier October 2005

I am constantly hearing from 60 Plusers and baby boomers not caught in the technology juggernaut: "Why can't my cell phone just be a phone?"

With the market for cell phones is exploding, it is estimated there are now beyond 2 billion users worldwide, nearly 1/3 of the  6.5 billion world population has access to a cell phone.

This rapid expansion has been on the back of the 20-something and teenage users who demand the smallest, lightest, most technically advanced, and trendy phones available. Cellular manufactures and service providers are searching for new opportunities. One group is the mature market, which today has the lowest saturation and most rapid adoption.

While there are hundreds of cell phones on the market, only recently is any recognition that 60 Plusers, and quite a few others, needs are better met with easier to read displays, larger keys and simple operation.  Typically we are offered phones with buttons that are too small, displays we can't read, unintelligible programming, features we don't use, which easily get lost in our purses and bags and cost too much.  Hand me down handsets are often preferred over the latest model.

What we are looking for are devices that increase our security, makes it easier to stay in touch with family and friends and is perhaps able to receive a text message from a granddaughter touring Europe. 

Living Treasures is embarking on a mission to find cell phones to address these needs.  To date availability is limited but new models are starting to appear with regularity.  Here are the best available 60 Pluser Cell Phones, the features important to a basic 60 Pluser phone.  Please complete a cell phone survey or offer suggestions or feedback about what you have found or need.