Tween phones…does the ideal phone exist?

[JimJimJam]

i’m looking for a first phone for DC. What I ideally want is:

-touchscreen
-basic phone and messaging
-location tracking
-ability for parent to add other selected apps, but no other apps apart from these
-NO internet browsing

Does such a thing exist? Is it possible to lock down an iPhone or Android phone to this extent?

I’ve seen phones specifically aimed at the tween market like pinwheel but they’re expensive and still don’t seem to offer exactly what I want, but there seem to be more coming on the market all the time so I might have missed something that fits the bill.

Suggestions welcome!

Lock down an iPhone properly.

Dd 10 has my 4 year old Samsung android with parent link on. I've set it to shut down at a certain time and she can only be on it for 2 hrs a day or it locks. Ive also blocked Facebook, tiktok etc but allow WhatsApp so she can communicate with her friends. I check her phone regularly.

Parent link has a tracker too. It works for me at the moment but I may change it to life 360 as she gets older.

I’ve not yet figured out how to fully block internet browsing. If that can be done, that’s probably the solution.

Just don’t have a browser app on the phone (ie block safari). Works a treat.

I had the exact same requirement. They seem to have better devices in the US for this. In the end I got Android and locked it down with family link which I find adequate. They only had 30 mins a day, and only from 7.30am to 8.00pm. Everything was blocked apart from phone and messages. You can block google chrome, the native browser. They had to get my digital approval to install anything too. The location tracking is adequate.

My DD (now 14) has had an iphone since she was 8. It was - and still is - pretty locked down.
so as well as screen time limits, which are now largely lifted for her, she has to get a parents permission to install an app or to add a contact. Only people who are in her contacts can message her. So so far we’ve not had any issues…

You can set safari to "allowed websites only" then she can only browse on websites you've previously added.

You can also limit safari (or any app) to 1 min per day.

You can set contacts so only you can add them.
You can set it so she can only call and receive calls from named contacts (I have this on my DC's phone, it blocks their phone at 8pm and from then until 7am they can only call DH, me, and IL's.

Google family link is fab. As others have said you can block the browser and any apps individually and set it so they can't download apps without permission. You can also set an overall time limit on the phone and times limit individual apps within that. So for example allow 3 hrs a day but within that they can only play crossy road for 20 min. You can set what time their phone wakes up and locks (emergency calls permitted when it is locked) so no issues going on phone overnight or at school and you can set different limits for different days so you can give them a bit longer on a Friday night for example. Plus it is all dead easy to manage from your own phone and you can form a family group and have other members also able to manage the controls so both parents even if living separately or grandparent etc.

My oldest hacked some paid for controls but didn't manage to get the better of family link.
The down side is that Google thinks that at 13 they don't need limits so they can switch them off at 13 themselves but you get notified and my dear, darling oldest did eventually learn that when I said removing the controls would results in the removal of his phone I did indeed mean it. I took them off after GCSEs finished. Because I'm apparently very mean and strict. I did ease than over time, they were not quite as locked down at 15 as they were 12!

We turned an old iPhone into a dumb phone. Then relaxed it with the Balance phone (and removed the browser).