I had bought my son a smartwatch phone off of Amazon in the hopes of tracking him while he was commuting to school. But it only had a voice texting option and the GPS didn’t work well.
For a little more money I bought the A10. For 1/6 the price of S9, this phone had everything I needed from a phone without all the extras. I popped in a 64GB microSD card and the$5/month Speedtalk SIM card from my son’s old smartwatch and I was good to go. I stripped it down to the bare essentials(no games, social media, etc.) and the battery life is amazing.
Sitting almost idle on a weekend the battery would only go down 10%. At the end of a school day it would still be at 75%. The charging time is also comparable to my S9.
A few things that I noticed that were missing that my kid could live without are:
1. NFC - no pay by phone option
2. Fingerprint sensor
3. Flashing light to signal new email or text
4. Edge feature
5. Internal magnet for compass apps
6. Bixby app and button
Some of my kid’s classmates are getting the iPhone 11 Pro.
What I don’t understand is why their parents would get them something like that when they want them off of electronics.
A kid will also almost never utilize most of its high-end features. My kid would have to lose six A10’s for me to be as upset as their kid losing one iPhone 11.