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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2021
I ordered this basic flip phone for my 74 year old father. I liked that the phone is affordable and it has bigger buttons. I also like the SOS button on the exterior of the flip phone. I was able to fully customize it to accommodate my father's needs and set it up to be easier to use for him and more user-friendly. It wasn't exactly user-friendly at first until I changed half of the settings on it. The instructions that came with the phone are not that well-written to understand if you aren't good with setting up cellphones, but fortunately I set up my entire family's smartphones and flip phones so I would say that I am an expert at it. This is the third flip phone from tracfone that I have had to set up for my father so I knew what I needed to do regardless of the poor instructions. His 1st flip phone from Tracfone was discontinued, his 2nd flip was a little complicated for him to use well, and this 3rd flip phone is way better than his LG class flip phone. Typing the alphabet on this Alcatel phone is a little complicated (took me 5 minutes to realize it's new typing style) until I went into Settings and changed it to the old typing style of older flip phones. Once you change it to the older typing style, it is easier to setup his contacts and to use text messaging. If you only want to make calls, it is perfect...just type in the number and hit the green button to call or hit to the red button to hang up. I set it up to automatically answer calls when he flips his phone open and hang up when he closes the flip. I like how it tells you on the exterior display of the phone who is calling you. You can change the text to larger text in settings to make it easier to read for the visually impaired. I had to set up his entire contact list which is easier to type his contacts if you mess with the typing/keyboard in Settings first like I already mentioned. It was easy to change the display, volume, brightness, ring tones, and notification tones. You can set it to "read aloud" but I disabled it because I found it to be annoying but it may be useful if you are hard of hearing. I like the SOS button on the outside which I programmed it to my phone number. You have to press the SOS button 3 times in order to make the SOS call. You have to press it 4 times if the phone is currently sleeping. The 1st press is to wake the phone up, then hit it 3 times until you see the green dot which means it is calling your emergency contact. I suggest getting your phone set up by someone technologically savvy with phones who can make it as simple as possible for you to use. Overall, I like this flip phone after changing its settings. It is better than the previous 2 flip phones that he owned.
