It's not every day your mother is the one who puts you on to a new and exciting piece of technology. So it was with some trepidation I decided to research her query about a phone she'd heard about from one of her friends.

"A smart phone for oldies," - her words, not mine.

I found it. I used it. I instantly hated it. But then, I'm not an oldie. (Not yet, anyway) So I gave it to Mum to review instead...

 

The Doro Liberto 820 Mini is a very weird piece of kit.

Let's start with Doro itself; I mean, who's even heard of this company? Turns out, it's a Swedish-based outfit specialising in providing user-friendly phones for seniors. What's more, they appear to be going from strength to strength all over the world.

The strategy is quite brilliant in its simplicity - how many times has your mum, dad or grandparent sent you a blank text? Or pocket dialed another country? Or taken 17 photos of the footpath? And how many times have you tried to explain to them how to not do those things?

The Doro Liberto 820 Mini has been specifically designed to prevent issues like those ever arising, thereby saving everybody a lot of stress all round.

It has a friendly appearance straight out of the box. Rounded corners and a chunky feel that's very easy to hold, unlike some of the new-fangled phones that are so skinny they're likely to slip between the couch cushions and never be seen again. The Options, Home and Back keys are actual, physical buttons, so you're not just pushing at the handset randomly, blindly hoping something will happen. There's also a separate, physical Camera button and there's even an Emergency Assistance button you can program to contact your preferred first responder with a single touch.

The Liberto 820 Mini is also packaged with a convenient charging cradle that's a lot less fiddly than dealing with a micro-USB cable and a tiny socket. What's more, the handset sits in that dock sideways, conveniently transforming into a bedside clock.

So you can see what they're trying to do. The reason I struggled with it is what happens when you actually turn the thing on. Perfomance-wise this ain't no rocket ship. I've become spoiled by the miniaturised super-computers available at the top end of today's smart-phone market and if I can't stream the latest episode of Billions directly to my Chromecast while wirelessly charging, what's the point?

Then I realised, I'd missed the point...

Me: "How's the new phone going?"

Mum: "It's good. I find the actual phone part, you know, like now, what we're doing, much easier than my other one."

Me: "Why's that?"

Mum: "Because it's more clear. And I haven't actually tried to ring up. But I think, when I go to where I ring up, it brings the numbers up, and the other one I used to have difficulty finding the numbers."

Me: "Riiiight..."

Mum: "And it doesn't seem to take so long to charge up as the other one."

Me: "So it charges quicker?"

Mum: "Yeah. I think so. And it's good because I can make the letters bigger which I couldn't with my other one. I found out where I can do that."

Me: "Oh. Wow."

Mum: "The only thing is, I've got emails on it, you know?..."

Me: "Yeeees?..."

Mum: "But there were photos, and I couldn't get the photos. It had a little thing, like an attachment, so I pressed that but I couldn't get the photos."

Me: "Oh okay. We'll have to have a look at that."

Mum: "And I'm not sure yet, when I get a text or an email, whether there's a little light that flashes. But I haven't had a lot of traffic. Nobody's sent me anything."

Translation; very clear audio quality. Easy to use directory and keypad. Easy to change font size. Attachments not automatically set to download in emails and no notification LED light.

I was impressed with how impressed she was. Mum seemed amazingly self sufficient. She'd even found out how to change the "tunes and tones and things like that."

Mum: "And I set the alarm just for fun yesterday."

These kids and their phones. They just can't leave them alone.

Turns out the reason she couldn't see a notification light blinking anywhere is there isn't one. Ironically, that's one of the first things I deactivate on a new phone. Who knew there were people out there who actually like annoying little lights?

As for the email attachments, it seems the Liberto 820 Mini is really just a normal (fairly entry level) Android phone with a very simplified operating system laid over the top. It's easy enough to access more complicated settings like downloading email attachments automatically in much the same way as you would on any phone.

The Doro tries to help out as much as it can - every time you open an app, whether it's email, camera, messaging etc, a window appears offering to walk you through a step-by-step guide to teach you what to do. This can be turned off by ticking a box of course... something I still had to point out to Mum after she'd been using the phone a few weeks.

Me: "How's the phone going?"

Mum: "Well, it's okay. I was very pleased with it because I found I could read it outside, even in the bright sunshine with my sunglasses on."

Me: "Gosh."

Mum: "But it's got a bit stroppy and it thinks it knows better than I do what I want to write and it changes words on me without me noticing."

Me: "Right. Well, you should pay attention and select the word that you want to write."

Mum: "Yeah, but you think you've put the right word, but sometimes you go back and read what you've got and you see it's put something different to what you originally put."

Me: "And then you go back and correct it..."

I then gave Mum a long lesson in managing predictive text. I think she got it. Eventually. Good to hear the screen brightness ramped up automatically in the sun. Things seemed to be going really well... Then I got a text claiming the emails had stopped working altogether.

Me: "I don't understand how it could have changed between now and the other day."

Mum: "No. Except I went to Email, just to see if there was anything there and it showed up. There were emails and then it disappeared just like that. Then I put the computer on and there were 3 emails there just like that and they were no longer on the phone."

Me: "You understand once they're on the computer, they won't be on your phone?"

Mum: "I know that. But these were new ones I hadn't seen before."

Do you really think she did know that? I gave her the benefit of the doubt, fiddled with the phone settings and somehow the automatic email sync had been switched to manual. Mum claimed she wouldn't have done that. Obviously I have to believe her. She's my mother.

This business with the emails not appearing seemed to happen one more time. Again, difficult to explain without accusing my own mother of being technically challenged... and I would never do that.

The upshot is, after using the Doro Liberto 820 Mini for a month, Mum absolutely loves it and doesn't want to give it back. She thinks it's a million billion times better than the $49 phone she was using before and I have to admit, as frustrating as some of those "tech support" phone calls may have appeared, they weren't a fraction of what I was expecting.

This all leads me to believe Doro has achieved what it set out to; it's not a phone for me. It's a phone for Mum. I wonder if she'll ever stop calling it her Dora phone?

Click here for more information on the Doro Liberto 820 Mini

Or here for a good deal on one...