Which Basic Phone Will Suit the Best for my Teenager?

Introduction

Take advantage of this comparison to assess the most suitable and appealing dumbphones for teenagers.

These basic phones will help them avoid the allure of overly engaging screens, the stress of social media, while still allowing them autonomy to communicate with their friends through SMS, voice calls, and even WhatsApp for some feature phones.

Comparison

1 – Music first

Is your teenager a music enthusiast? Does (s)he want to combine a phone with a music player? Feature phones built around music still exist, merging a phone and a walkman, sometimes with a screen that displays cover art.

The nicest ones tuck wireless earphones into the handset itself, where they also recharge. Note that the model that made this famous, the Nokia 5710 XpressAudio, is a European release and is not sold on Amazon US.

2 – The plain 4G handset

For a while, feature phones running KaiOS offered a minimal set of apps, WhatsApp and Facebook inside an otherwise basic handset. That era is over: KaiOS lost WhatsApp support, and those phones are now plain handsets, which is not a bad thing for a teenager.

What you get instead is calls, texts, a real keypad and several days of battery. Expect a slow interface: these phones are cheap, and it shows the moment you scroll a long list.

If your teenager needs WhatsApp, the only option left is a small Android:

3 – Premium minimalist phones

With their e-reader-like screens, high-quality materials and compact formats, premium minimalist phones offer a very high-end version of the dumbphone.

4G compatible, it also provides highly relevant features such as hotspot capability.

Another advantage: it is compatible with the Signal messaging system.

Its only drawback is, of course, its price, which is too close to that of a smartphone.

4 – The cheapest option

At the bottom of the range sit the plainest handsets of all: no camera worth the name, no apps, a keypad and a battery that lasts. Build quality is usually decent enough for a first phone.

This can be a good choice for those on a tight budget who still want a satisfactory level of quality.

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