Parents of Teenagers: Cell phone advise

[Pimento]

Ruggedised phones are available, designed for tradies and other people who have to work in strange and dangerous-to-phones conditions. They're a bit more expensive than 'ordinary' phones, but the additional cost seems to me to be reasonable for the extra work and materials put into the phone. I found out about them because I was doing an article about good phones for disabled people. These were good for people who have trouble keeping hold of things, and tend to drop them.

Are they those military grade flip type phones? We used to special order them when I was welding. I'd liken them to an iPhone with an otter box or one of those screw together armour cases

[cindybubbles]

What about this? You can put him on a cheap talk/text/data plan and depending on the phone, set a mobile data limit on it. Then teach him how to hook up to wifi hotspots.

[Seshat]

That sounds like an interesting article,Seshat. Do you by any chance have a link?

'Which phone is right for you?' is the article.

When reading the article, please be aware that it's significantly out of date: use it to give you an idea what to look for, but please, PLEASE ignore the specific phones!

Unfortunately, my editor was all gung-ho about me recommending specific phones, even though I tried to tell him how useless that would be, even a bare few months on. Ah well.

[Jester]

Whatever phone you get him, if you want it to put up with the abuse of a teenage boy, get a protective case for it. What you spend now on the case will be a fraction of what you spend on the next phone after he screws up the unprotected phone.

I recommend Otter Box, as it's top notch, and to date has proven itself impervious to my natural klutziness. But if not an OB, get him something. After all, it's for HIS protection.

[mathnerd]

The temptation to give him the old phone with the hot pink OtterBox is strong...

[Jester]

The temptation to give him the old phone with the hot pink OtterBox is strong...

Your son isn't typical, so that might not bother him, but remember, it's not that tough to get a case off of a phone, so if he's the type to not want to walk around with a hot pink phone, he'll have that case stripped off and "lost" faster than you can say "Where'd it go?" In other words, it would be about the same as giving him a phone with no case at all.

[mathnerd]

Honestly if I go that route then I'll switch the cases on that phone and mine. Mine is just plain black. Nothing objectionable.

[EricKei]

As others have said, pre-paid is definitely the way to go. If he wants extra minutes, well...he does have SOME money from chores/odd jobs, so maybe you pay for the base time and he can purchase any additional time he wants to have...? If he runs out of minutes or damages/loses the phone -- well, time for him to start saving up that side-job cash, maybe?

Also, check the fine print carefully -- some prepaids allow you to roll over unused minutes from month-to-month, some do not.

...until the next bling period.

I was gonna FTFY, but I think I like it better that way

[mathnerd]

I've decided that at least for now, I'll use the old phone on a prepaid plan. Since the phone hasn't been jailbroken, I'm limited to the three letter carrier. They do have a prepaid plan that doesn't have any data that I can afford. If he wants data, he'll have to figure out a way to pay for it. Also, since I'm not completely evil, I will switch out the hot pink case for the plain black case that's currently on my phone. I can't really afford another OtterBox, since I've just had to buy a new vehicle and pay the title transfer fee (which was ridiculous) and all that. I can deal with a hot pink case much better than he can.

[dalesys]

It's too bad they don't have active color control for the cases...

So that whatever part he can see at the moment is black, while the rest is pink...

Ebil pink camo supremo!

[It's me]

It's too bad they don't have active color control for the cases...

So that whatever part he can see at the moment is black, while the rest is pink...

Ebil pink camo supremo!

Love it! With bling that can be activated by remote control.... "if you aren't home by 11 o'clock your phone turns all sparkly"

[dalesys]

Love it! With bling that can be activated by remote control.... "if you aren't home by 11 o'clock your phone turns all sparkly"

And all your ring tones are by Lawrence Welk...

[mathnerd]

So, I'm sitting here reading this almost in tears from laughter. My son is also laughing. As Jester said, he's not typical. I almost think that he'd think it was hysterical.

[Seshat]

Get some of those colour-change stickers, give him the black case, let him apply stickers to his heart's content....