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by psnj 5933 days ago
A startup in the co-working space I'm in is addressing this very problem: http://www.zeebu.com/

They create smartphone games for little kids. Twenty-first century pacifiers? Apparently the kids love them!

1 comments

That's pretty cool. What they do is, it looks like, create an app that first and foremost makes it so kids can't mess with your phone (calls, opening other apps, whatever), and also adds some fun stuff.

What I'm thinking of, though, is a dedicated device. You don't need a smart phone for kids games; all you need is some audio/graphics and whatever it is that runs Java ME in these things. Given the price of cheap Nokias, it should be doable for less than $100, especially since you don't even need the actual phone machinery.

A large part of the reason for a dedicated device is that most kids are not going to accidentally make calls, they're going to accidentally drop your expensive phone or something else that will physically damage it. A 'toy phone' could be made a bit more resilient...