Mobile for 11yo

DigForVictory

I'm mother of three at secondary school, one of whom has a dumbphone & the other two borrow a dumbphone as needed.
Equip them with expensive distractions after school has pleaded with us not to?
Plus, brothers. One stays late for food tech, tells other brother (who forgets until we demand what have you done with olderbrother?!)

The phones are about as crude as you can get with change from £20 at Tesco & PAYG. When they want to play games, send picture messages etc they have gadgets at home that lack phone capability (that I have back door passwords into.)

If more payphones worked, I'd send them with phone money. If all their mates were packing phones all the time, I'd send them with bribe-to-phone money. Life is not convenient, they do do out of school things (not at *short* notice but at I-forgot-to-tell-you-mum notice), so the phone is alas almost part of the uniform.

dipsomaniac

(come again)

consumers_revenge

Would get a dumb phone but want the gps tracker so we know where he is. Schools about a mile walk each way.


Presume the GPS uses some data up?


Only prob with smartphone is the plonker sitting on it.

Daz2009

AndyPix wrote: »

get him a PAYG sim card from 3 ..


3000 texts , 300 mins and All you can eat data for £25 a month.

Quite possibly the worst money saving post I've read .
This is MSE you know not the Apple owners club

esuhl

consumers_revenge wrote: »

Would get a dumb phone but want the gps tracker so we know where he is. Schools about a mile walk each way.


Presume the GPS uses some data up?

Leaving GPS on, whilst running a tracking application is going to use up the battery really quickly.

GPS itself doesn't use any network data, but obviously the phone would need to be running an app that can can communicate its GPS position to you, and that would require a data connection.

If you just want to track his position, there might be other devices that would be more reliable. You could then attach it to the inside of a bag, which is probably less likely to get lost than a phone.

http://www.trackershop-uk.com/product-category/personal-gps-trackers/kids-trackers/
http://www.back2you.com/personal-gps-tracking

AndyPix

Daz2009 wrote: »

Quite possibly the worst money saving post I've read .
This is MSE you know not the Apple owners club

OP was concerned about costs for extra data,
I don't know any cheaper deals than the one I posted that provide all you can eat data.


Please elaborate

[Deleted User]

AndyPix wrote: »

OP was concerned about costs for extra data,
I don't know any cheaper deals than the one I posted that provide all you can eat data.


Please elaborate

A more cunning MSEer might just tell their darling child they can't have unlimited mobile data and educate them on using technology appropriately. They'd then get a reasonably cheap handset and appropriately cheap tariff.

Zola.

o2 simplicity - £20 a months gets 20 GB of data, unlimited calls etx

Sharon87

I would not say more than £10 to spend for an 11 year old.

I was one of the first generation of 11 year olds to first take mobiles to school. I learnt to budget on a tenner a month. Mobile tariffs were way more expensive then. So I'm sure an 11 year old can survive on a couple hundred minutes, a small amount of data (they can use the wifi at home) and a few hundred texts - whatsapp and other messaging services are popular amongst the younger generation now and don't use your text messages up and it only uses a small amount of data.

That GiffGaff deal someone mentioned seemed like a good deal. It piggy backs on o2, so you need an o2 or unlocked phone for it.

AndyPix

ringo_24601 wrote: »

A more cunning MSEer might just tell their darling child they can't have unlimited mobile data and educate them on using technology appropriately. They'd then get a reasonably cheap handset and appropriately cheap tariff.

Understood