We've been happily using the Verizon Gizmo watch for a while now. It's a deliberately crippled smart watch. No games, no apps (it has a step counter and a stopwatch, but that's about it) -- some calling functionality, some messaging functionality, tons of oversight (limited contacts, all contacts must be approved by a guardian), and location tracking.
It's kind of bad at all of these, but our primary thought is to have it be a limited capability device -- similar to a flip phone but a wearable.
This looks like it's trying to enter the same market, but with a bunch of really really really really stupid shit.
"Meet the eejie. The eejie is the center of the Fitbit Ace LTE. The more your kids move, the more goals they hit and the happier they make the eejie."
You'd have to be an "eejie"-it to buy into this cutesy bullshit.
Tried a Gizmo when my daughter hit 5th grade; a big increase in independence comes around then (at least in our town which is still quite old fashioned with many, many kids walking, shopping, socializing, and playing outside unsupervised all over town in the nicer months).
The thing was an absolute turd. I think over 9 months I managed to get one message to go through to her, maybe two or three calls worked. She was never able to reach us when she wanted, and we could never reach her. End result was that we both experienced far more anxiety than if she'd had nothing at all - utterly counterproductive. Whether on wifi or 5 bar cell coverage, the damn thing just wouldn't ever reliably actually communicate. Support never figured it out though we did try.
The final straw came when she walked over to a friend's house across town one afternoon for a playdate, then I tried to call her an hour later to make sure all was ok and it didn't ring, as usual. I tried the location tracker thing and it told me she was in a dodgy neighborhood 20 miles away from where she was supposed to be. (People here will probably guess that it was getting location info from the address formerly associated with the WiFi AP at the house she was at - the parents had recently moved.) After that panic she and I both decided it was a piece of crap and we upgraded her to an Apple Watch as a "graduation present" from elementary school. It's worked perfectly, and it has been easy to manage controls and restrictions.
Agreed on the turd aspect. It's really amazingly poorly done, everything from the bad charger to the incoherent interface to the badly designed and operating app.
But what's nice is that it is a limited capability device. I'd love to hear more about the controls and restrictions associated with an Apple Watch. Apple's documentation is pretty shitty so I don't have a good feel for how it operates; just that the features exist.
"Screen Time" under Settings on iOS controls most of the functionality. You can set downtime, school time, allowed apps, and permitted contacts for your kids' devices from that.
For example my daughter is permitted to contact anyone in her contact list (which I approve, so no strangers - and it auto rejects texts from non-contacts) from 0730-0900, then just me and mum from 9-3, then anyone from 3-7, then just parents again. And no apps of any kind from 7pm onwards. That way no distractions at school but she can reach us in an emergency and she can get hold of us when at sleepovers but no playing games at night.
It's a little confusing, and if the docs are shitty I'll have to take your word because I haven't even managed to find any yet, but it does work well. It does however all work once set up.
"happy" is a bitch of a stretch with the gizmo since it's pretty much garbage but it does deliver on being a restricted communication and crappy tracking device at an affordable cost.
I'm on the fence about switching to a dumb phone or an apple watch next year (middle school).
Quite possibly I am not the target demographic -- I never really got the tomagotchi thing either, so maybe I'm just a soulless monster.
My kids have access to other electronic devices, but don't yet have a smartphone. The Gizmo is a nice intermediate step. They know what real games are like and they want those. As a parent I don't want the phone to be a source of distractions. Having these sort of half-assed games feels like the worst of both worlds; disappointing games that the kids don't like, and stupid distracting games that the parents don't want.
I agree that some kids would like this, but in my family we wouldn't give our kids smartwatches at that age (6-8?). I don't think this will hit with tweens/teens, both because of the UI and because Apple Watches will be perceived as more prestigious/elite (not endorsing the feeling — just saying that will likely be the impression).
It's kind of bad at all of these, but our primary thought is to have it be a limited capability device -- similar to a flip phone but a wearable.
This looks like it's trying to enter the same market, but with a bunch of really really really really stupid shit.
"Meet the eejie. The eejie is the center of the Fitbit Ace LTE. The more your kids move, the more goals they hit and the happier they make the eejie."
You'd have to be an "eejie"-it to buy into this cutesy bullshit.