Mobile handset for pensioners boycotted by UK mobile shops
Communic8, a distributor of the Emporia Life handset, can’t find a carrier to support it or a store to sell it in. The £170 handset is now only available online. It features easy-to-use buttons, simple display screen and a large, red panic switch on the back. Charities for the elderly have accused the mobile industry of ageism for not stocking the phones.
This is a bit annoying to read, isn’t it? I know that pensioners aren’t exactly a huge growth industry, however I’m sure there’s a reasonable market for a lot of elder people who might like to use a big, simple, easy-to-read handset like the Emporia Life one.
I particularly like it’s emergency button function that’ll send a ‘help me’ text or place a call whenever it’s pressed. Genius.
Hardly a Nokia N95, however I like the look of the nice big buttons and the partially-sighted-friendly orange display.
I wish Communic8 and the Emporia team success. I’d like to see more hardware like this brought on to the market. The pensioner demographic is very poorly served — only Vodafone have their ‘Simple’ range. Every other operator forces it’s elderly customers to use new fangled whizzy devices that I love but which are entirely useless for this market.
More about the handset at
Ageism? More like PR spin from a distributor that’s bought way too many phones from a company no-one’s heard of. Besides, Vodafone launched Vodafone Simply (http://www.vodafone.com/start/about_vodafone/what_we_do/products_and_services/vodafone_simply.html) over two years ago.
Posted by Where's Mike? on July 23rd, 2007 at 4:15 pm.Nah, I don’t think it’s too much spin Mike — I think it’s unfortunate that this company weren’t able to get into the market — or, at least, are having difficulty doing so.
Posted by Ewan on July 23rd, 2007 at 5:02 pm.I think that this phone is great and am disappointed that its not available in the shops. For pensioners to buy something so expensive, they want to be able to examine it first before they part with the money. The government or social services could help pensioners more by helping them get their hands on such a thing, but with gordon brown only interested in raising taxes and trying to copy his predesscor that is unlikely to happen.
Posted by pensioner on August 7th, 2007 at 8:39 pm.Didn’t vodafone launch a PAYG phone last year targetted at oaps?
Posted by psionandy on August 8th, 2007 at 8:49 am.Big buttons, large display, simple features… in fact looking at the two options the voda was the one I would have bought for my Nan
Aye, it’s Vodafone Simply, I think you mean, psionandy?
Posted by Ewan on August 8th, 2007 at 8:51 am.Yes it was the Vodafone Sagem VS1 I was thinking about..
It was reasonably well promoted.. reasonably priced.. and I can’t seem to find it on their website now.. which means that it can’t have been that much of a success.
There are a lot of ’simple’ handsets at the moment.. but something with nice big friendly buttons and a large screen would seem to be bigger requirements for the older generation than say mp3 ringtones and a wafer thin form factor.
All it would take is for nokia to repackage one of those budget handsets in a nice big case…
Posted by psionandy on August 8th, 2007 at 9:25 am.