I just wanted to write something up to refer people to when they are thinking about a phone for their kid. I kept an eye on the market for a couple years while kid phones and phone-watches were being developed. When the Tinitell watch was made available in Canada, I bought one for my daughter. http://tinitell.com/
It is a great device. It is a bit bulkier than ideal, but it keeps things really simple to be as easy, small, and light as possible. The face of the watch consists of a single big button. Pressing this cycles through 10 LED lights around the circle (with custom audio prompts) to choose the number to call. So the first press would light up the first LED and play a sound clip of me saying "Awesome Dad!", the second would play mom's LED and play her recording, etc. These are recorded on a parent's smartphone and synced with the watch. There are volume control buttons on the side of the watch.
There is a GPS in the watch. The app on the parent's phone can request the location of the watch on demand. Inbound calls to the watch can be restricted to the same numbers (up to 10) that are programmed for outbound calls. There is no display, no keyboard, and no texting. Inbound texts go to the app on the parents phone instead which is handy to receive notifications about account balances, etc. The watch can speak the time (rounded to the nearest 5 minutes) when you hold one of the volume buttons.
In Canada, your best bet for service is a pay-as-you-go plan with Petro Canada Mobile. They use the Rogers network (the only one compatible with the 2G GSM supported by the watch) and offer pay-as-you-go data that is as cheap as it gets which is good for the small amount of data used when you request the watch location. With my daughter's minimal usage pattern of a call now and then to let me know she's going to someone's house after school, etc., $50 will last 6 months.
I pay attention to privacy and data policies (especially for my daughter) and was pleased to see that the Tinitell recently came out tops on a test of the data security of kids phones. http://tinitell.com/blog/safe-phone-for-kids/
Best of all: No apps to distract or harm and arguments for a smartphone have been defanged now that safety/calling levers don't apply.
If you have any questions, let me know!
