[avanai]

I got one for my grade schooler and it's mostly great. She can text or call me or her mom or her grandparents (but no one else), we can know where she is, and there not too much she can play on it. It gives her a bit more freedom because she can get in touch with us to make plans or wander off out of sight but still be in touch.

I'm kind of annoyed with "schooltime" on the phone, it has a fixed (boring) watch face, it doesn't actually stop a kid from exiting schooltime, they just have to press a button and we can see if she did it in the app. It's also either on on a weekly schedule or totally off, so she has to whine at me to turn off schooltime on holidays and then it's easy to forget to turn it back on. There's also no provision for multiple family members to manage kid watches. I set up her watch so my wife can't also manage it. Also, there's no way for me to install apps. I'd really like to install Home Assistant on her watch so she can unlock doors, but...I can't. Can't be done.

Overall I'd say they built out a nice system for a while and then...stopped. I bet there's a PM at Apple that had the rest of the features all ready to go and then got moved off onto the Vision Pro or something. Every now and then they're talking to their old teammate and they sigh about what it could have been. I'll buy them a beer sometime.