Suggestions for Mom's first smartphone

[s44]

Now to get your photos on to your computer, just

log on to Google Photos.

Since you've never recommended anything besides Apple, your attempt to justify your blanket preference in this case is less than convincting.

 

[Kenmitch]

Where are you seeing this? All the reviews I have seen have been very good for the Icon.

I was going by a couple of reviews. The OP was looking for more of really good battery life. Icon was stated as having average battery life. The AMOLED screen is said to be not too friendly outdoors when viewing in sunlight. Sexy looking WP that's for sure.

 

[dawheat]

I'd do iPhone as well. For someone who has never used a smartphone before, iPhones have a much easier learning curve than Android.

Depends how technically challenged the person is. My MIL doesn't know how to use email still (crazy) and didn't know how to check voice mail on her dumbphone.

So customizing the G2 was actually easier for her once I was done using Nova launcher:
- One big weather widget at the top showing current + 3 day weather
- 1 homepage only, locked
- Extra large icons with app name manually changed to Korean equivalent
- Dock set to Phone, Text, Voicemail and Kakao talk (big in Korea)
- One row of icons for Maps, Browser, and Games (with some super simple games)
- Set all the settings for her before giving her the phone
- Set language to Korean so app info is in Korean

Everything else removed or hidden including Settings and Play Store (which would just confuse her).

This has saved me tons of issues - basically there's nothing she can change to muck things up and it's so simple that even she can visually figure it out. There's no clutter to confuse her and everything is very large for her eyesight.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Moto X?

I just find it hard to make recommendation as we're coming up on a new iPhone soon and a new Moto X.

 

[Radeon962]

What do all of her friends use? iPhone is the easy choice for most older people and if most or all of her friends use an iPhone the choice is even easier. She can walk into nearly any mall and find an Apple store, talk with other iPhone user friends, etc.

The iPhone is the same from phone to phone.

G2/G3, S4/S5, M7/M8 are all great phones but the skin that LG uses is just different enough from TouchWiz to Sense that it can be frustrating for a non-technical user or one that just wants to do something but others around them only know how to do it on their phone.

I use Note 3, wife has an S4, oldest son has an S3, 3 daughter's have iPhones and when my mom wanted a phone it was an easy choice get her an iPhone. All of her friends have iPhones so they all help each other and it's amazing what she picked up. That would not be the case if she were the only Android user in her circle of friends.

 

[Commodus]

log on to Google Photos.

Since you've never recommended anything besides Apple, your attempt to justify your blanket preference in this case is less than convincting.

Well, this is making an assumption that she's not big on the cloud. Google Photos clearly takes some of the headaches out of it; I'm just thinking of direct photo sync. That doesn't cover other documents, mind you, but it doesn't sound like she'll be shuffling a lot of PDFs and Word files around.

 

[SithSolo1]

We went to the store and she played around with all the phones.

Her top 3 were the Galaxy S5, the Lumia Icon, and the LG G2. She said she will wait until she's back from this trip to get a phone but she'd like to get something before her next trip to Texas in mid-july for navigation.