Doro 780X Black/White 2.8" 4GB 4G Dual SIM Unlocked & SIM Free Mobile Phone

It’s easy to set up, great little phone, the only thing I would say was wrong with it, is you can only ever contact the three people you have input as A,B & C. My mother is 80 and in a nursing home, she has only had one other phone and I thought you would just press A,B or C and the phone would automatically dial that person, what you have to do to make it easy is press A,B or C and then press the green button and the call goes through, or if you are mobile savvy you can place the call following the on screen instructions. I did think it was expensive for what it is but gives me piece of mind. Sound quality is good. I didn’t bother setting up SoS.

Thoroughly over the moon with this phone. It is easy very easy to use. The set up took a bit of time but once done it’s all good to go. So glad I found this phone.

I liked the speed dial function and this was my main reason for purchase as dad has Alzheimer’s. It was a real faff to set up. Took the best part of 2 days. Instructions not clear. What I really dislike about the phone is that notifications tell you that there are missed voice messages. Naturally the user will tap to view as this is an option so they can see who has left a voice message. Then naturally they tap to listen to the voice message. BUT the phone then asks for a pin to be set. Naturally I go to do this. BUT, there’s no option of the virtual keyboard to do this!!! The virtual keyboard was offered throughout all other settings but not for this. I thought it strange that a phone that accepts voice messages wouldn’t allow the user to listen so I emailed Doro. Their suggestion was that each time you wanted to listen to voicemail, the user should remove the sim and put into ANOTHER phone!!! Can you imagine having to do that let alone someone elderly or with dementia! If the phone doesn’t allow the user to listen to voicemail then don’t put instructions on a phone that suggests they can!!!!! Extremely confusing!! And very frustrating!!!! My other gripe is that whilst the phone does allow you to read texts (which requires an awful lot of pressing on tiny navigation keys to scroll through the text and even more backward deletion of each individual letter within the text in order to delete it) the user CAN’t SEND texts. So they can’t reply. Now on one hand I’m quite happy about this as dad can text all day long on a ‘good’ day and they all go to me so I’m actually relieved to be getting a break from his ongoing text messages but it would be a lot less confusing if there was something in the phone to let the user know it was READ ONLY and a lot easier if they could just delete the whole text without having to do it letter by letter. Again, unnecessarily confusing and frustrating. So, my suggestion would be, don’t bother leaving a voice message if you call and get no answer as the user won’t be able to listen to it and it will just confuse them. And, if sending a text, keep it short for easy scrolling and deletion. Just send a text perhaps to let the person know when you will call them or to give them a bit of information they may need when you aren’t able to call. Also, and I dont know why, but again there is the option to turn on wifi calling but for some reason it doesn’t turn on and doesn’t indicate why not. We are with o2 on a 12 month sim only contract so should be available. Despite all my groans (and you will groan and screech when setting this thing up), once it’s done and you’ve spent ages figuring out what it can’t do, and you’ve explained this to the user to hopefully avoid their frustration and attempts to do what it can’t, it’s otherwise a nice little speed dial phone. You can only have 3 contacts but that’s all that’s needed for a mobile. This phone is for dad to take when he needs to leave the house only. He has a full sized dementia friendly phone at home with speed dial labels too. I will say that any speed dial phone set up with easy labels is great for dementia and a real comfort. All in all, I think the Doro is hugely expensive considering the only thing it does is allow a person to call 3 contacts with no texting or voice mail service. The voicemail issue could be resolved by offering the virtual keyboard to input the pin to allow access. Without the option to text or listen to voice messages I’d say this phone is hugely over priced.

To sum up this phone is fairly simple to use for the user but it’s not idiot proof for example the user could make errors that may result in them accidentally calling the emergency services. However I would say that this phone is a fantastic concept and is a great idea for someone with mild dementia symptoms or similar and gives the family peace of mind when the user is out and about with the ability to see where they are. The biggest problem is that the set-up of this phone is extremely complicated and is best done by a young technology savvy person who has a lot of patience it took me a whole evening to set up the phone… It’s also worth noting that the phone can only call 3 people there is no phonebook of contacts and whilst It can receive text messages it cannot send them the idea being to keep the phone as simple as possible. At present this is the only cellular phone that has been designed for a user with dementia, it’s great concept but it definitely needs some work and more development. For the time being the phone will do the job if you can get past the setup process. I would argue that the build quality of the phone feels cheap when compared to the build quality of other phones of its price range, it looks and feels similar to some of the budget priced phones from the same manufacturer; however this must be weighed up with the manufacturers claim that it is built to be shockproof and apparently has the claimed advantage of being able to resist both being dropped and bring deliberately thrown, I have not put this to the test but it is easy to imagine that a smartphone type build and screen could more easily break.

I bought this for my dad, who is 81 with some cognitive impairment. In particular I was attracted by the emergency button with GPS (ability to see where he is, transmitting his location with an emergency call), the app (for relatives/friends/carers to adjust phone settings) and the simple buttons. Sadly it is far from simple - almost every aspect of setting up this phone and attempting to use it was frustrating and difficult. I had to call Doro three times just to work out how to set it up myself (and I've been using mobile phones since before they officially existed). Menus, buttons and interface (e.g. for me to enter contacts) were very difficult, the instructions are tiny and obscure, and the app was hugely disappointing (you can't add contacts - that has to be done slowly and painfully in the phone itself). And although I was willing to go through the pain in order to set up the phone for my dad, as I feared when he had the phone in his hands, with the best will in the world, he was unable to use it even for basic things. I could see that even with some time he would struggle every time - the user interface is just not intuitive at all. Even the most basic menu selection is difficult. Doro you could do so much better, PLEASE test your phones properly and make something better than this. There is not room to list all the ways this phone fails to satisfy, from the first impression (invisible tape seals the box) to opening it up (the small-print instructions warn you not to break your nails removing the cover, but don't suggest how not to), adding SIM cards (two slots and a memory card slot - really needed?), to the features for seniors (the emergency button is black-on-black). I'm afraid I cannot recommend this to anyone except those who are really confident they can learn a new user interface and don't mind that - for example - when you open a text message it opens at the end of the message and you'll have to use the tiny navigation buttons to scroll up to the top and start reading. For now, my dad is going back to his android smartphone with 'simple launcher' installed, until I can find him something with an easier user experience.