Emporia Life Plus

While phones in general tend to get more and more complicated, there's a dedicated section of the industry that tries hard to send the technology in the opposite direction, producing uncomplicated phones that are easy to use.

The John's Phone is a good example of this trend, as is the Emporia Life Plus.

It's made by the same company as the Emporia Talk Premium and has been around for a while, but it's still on sale. Like the John's Phone it lacks most of the features of a ‘modern' mobile phone.

There's no camera, no music playback, no web browsing or email and no GPS. It can be used for making and receiving calls and sending and reading text messages, and that's about it.

Unlike the Talk Premium, it does have an ‘address book' to list your frequently called numbers, along with a small torch light on the front and an alarm function.
One more feature is a big recessed red button on the back.

When it's pressed, the phone makes an extremely loud squawking sound and dials the emergency services. It's good to have an easy-access emergency call button, but this one might just be too easy to access: it's not hard to press the button by mistake, especially if the phone's in a bag, and we found it impossible to switch the alarm sound off without yanking off the phone's back cover and removing the battery.

It does have a large screen with good, clear numbers and letters, though screen technology has advanced since the phone was made so that it looks very old fashioned, and newer screens could have done the same thing better and more readably. Although the letters and numbers here are large, they are too large, meaning that names, numbers and messages tumble off the sides and bottom of the screen too easily.

It was easy enough to use, with a good speaker and vibrate function, and call quality was fine.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the Emporia Life Plus – it works well for calls and messages – but the Doro 409gsm does the same job better.