'Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four'? The plaintive refrain of that sixties Beatles classic needs a bit of tweaking for the 21st century: like adding ten years to the onset of physical challenge. Sixty Four is sprightly these days. But come 74 and you start wishing technology on things like phones, was a bit less demanding.
Philips which sold off its handset business a few years ago, to Sangfei, stills oversees some design and quality aspects and lends its name to a range of handsets made by its Chinese partner. It has introduced a budget model the Philips Xenium X2566 (Rs 5537) which seems tailored for the elderly: the keys are large and chunky; the display of numbers and text and bright and big; the speaker lets you hear music or FM Radio rather louder than most phones.
An SOS button conveniently located on the top, sets off a loud alarm and keeps calling your choice of three numbers till one of them picks up. An LED torch, which one can easily switch on with the right thumb, sends out a bright beam. A text-to-speech option reads out the number you are dialling or the number of an incoming call.
There is one innovative use of the VGA camera, that the elderly will appreciate: Slide the key next the rear camera and point the phone at any text you want to read, a newspaper item say or the fine print in a document. The screen becomes a magnifying glass. You can enlarge or reduce the image size with two nicely located buttons and if you want to grab a copy of what you are reading, just press the 'OK' button.
Other phone specs -Tri band GSM, GPRS, 2.4 inch screen, headset socket, Bluetooth, 1630 mAh battery, mini USB data port, dual SIM, audio recorder, FM radio are fairly standard for a 2G phone, but older users will find comfort in the half a dozen special features we tried out and described. One missed the famed Philips attention to detail here. We trust they'll improve this in the next rollout: it should an easy snap-fit operation.
And keeping its target users in mind, we may be excused for dredging up another Beatles catchline and using this friendly phone to them: "I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello!"
