Great idea, but unusable
Written: Jun 13 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great idea, rugged enough package, limited buttons
Cons: COMPLETELY UNUSABLE for what we wanted- emergency cell phone, or even for routine use
The Bottom Line: NOT RECOMMENDED. UNUSABLE for our intended usage. Voice quality for children is abysmal.
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| brownj00's Full Review: FireFly Blue Firefly? Phone |
The phone looks nice for kids. It has the security features you want on a phone you might consider giving to kids (locks down who can call it, and who it can call). It's durable enough, comes in different colors, etc. I think we got it on sale $50 or something... seemed like a good idea even though there were some marginal comments online about voice quality. MISTAKE!
Setting it up wasn't a problem, we had less than 10 phone numbers to add and it only took a few minutes to setup the phonebook list.
The problem I think is two-fold. First, kids don't always speak clearly on the phone. When you combine that with a REALLY LOUSY microphone and speaker in the Firefly- well, you just killed the product usefulness as far as I am concerned. That's a STUPID design flaw when your intended user is a child.
My daughter is 10. Not 4. I should be able to understand her on the Firefly. I can understand her on our other cell phones. The Firefly microphone renders her speach to barely intelligible. We simply cannot carry on a conversation. We are talking about using it in areas with good coverage and call quality otherwise- not on the edges where call quality normally drops some. Our carrier is Cingular in Atlanta, maybe not stellar performance but not that many problems for us.
It does work marginally better when the Firefly user is calling a land-line and not another cell phone. Not enough of a difference to matter much though.
You know the cell phone commercial where they guy is saying "can you hear me now?" over and over? When your child uses the Firefly you will be repeating "say that again" and "speak slowly and clearly" OVER AND OVER AND OVER. I have to say it multiple times because she can't understand me either.
God forbid your child needs to use this when they are upset or during an emergency- when they are going to talk fast. That IS the intended usage from this customer. It just won't work at all- on a scale of 1 to 100 I'd give it a 5...
If you are thinking about maybe getting it "just because" it could come in handy... and other kids have them... Well, ask one of the other parents what they think, and ask them to use it (have your kid use it to call the parents cell phone and you answer) then you will see. I think our initial tests (in the same house) were better than we got in the long run, so be aware that (in my experience) land-lines and same-cell-tower seems to be better than otherwise in practice. Even then however, I am sure you will see the quality problem, but I remember thinking from our first test that "it would be good enough". It isn't.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
brownj00
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
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