Reviews by category
Child Protection
Buy Now...
click image to enlarge
Available in a choice of Black, Orange, Blue and Pink colours, the Moochies Phone Watch combines mobile phone, watch and GPS tracking elements within a single unit. Bright, some might go as far as saying gaudily, coloured with a child friendly image alongside the watch face, compressed non-toxic silicone rubberised casing, and capable of encircling a wrist with a circumference of between 12.5 and 16cm, this device could not be mistaken for anything else other than a child centric product. It looks like, and could be mistaken for a toy, so distracting attention from its main function.
The product’s major selling point is that parents can provide their child with a communication device that is customisable in its functionality so as to keep the child safe from some of the dangers that exist in today’s modern electronic environment. It order to fulfil the functionality, the Moochies Phone Watch needs to be paired with a smartphone designated by the parent. The linking and customisation of the Moochies Phone Watch is carried out via a downloadable app from either the App Store or Play Store depending upon whether the smartphone is of the iOS or Android family.
Unfortunately I am unable to comment on the pairing and initial setting up of the link between the Moochies Watch Phone and smartphone although I can cover other features of this kit. My review sample of the Moochies Watch Phone arrived pre-paired with a smartphone. This was necessary because the app was still in a late-beta stage which I understood to be full featured. As I write this review, the official released app has yet to appear on the Play Store so I have been unable to download it for testing.
As mentioned the Moochies Phone Watch does resemble a toy watch in its appearance. The watch face, with suitable decorative images, consists of a small LCD window displaying the digital time. On the right side of the watch is a small circular power button flanked top and bottom by two elongated buttons. These two buttons are programmed to activate, following a long press, the two numbers approved and assigned by the parent. These numbers could belong to the parent’s own phone or that of a close relative.
On the left side of the watch are two concealed compartments. The lower and smaller compartment was easy to open and revealed the micro USB port for charging the watch using the supplied micro-to-standard USB lead. The upper compartment proved to be difficult to open. Eventually I was forced to dig out and use one of those pin-hole devices supplied with smartphones for extracting a SIM card container. This was rather appropriate as this compartment held the PAYG SIM card supplied with the Moochies Phone Watch. As no tool was supplied for this task, I am unsure whether my difficulty was down to a design fault or was a security feature. Let me be kind and go for the latter.
There is an additional button on the watch. This is an elongated button on the base of the watch face. It acts as a SOS facility. Once set up, this emergency button will, when pressed, record what is happening and send a 15 second message to the child’s parents. It was noticeable that the window on the clock face would occasionally display some Chinese characters which I found rather off-putting.
When the parent fires up the app on their smartphone, the initial view will be of the Home screen displaying a map showing the location of the Moochies device. There is an option to switch between a Goggle streetmap and a satellite map. Buttons are provides to call the child’s Moochies or send a tracking message to get their real-time location. You can check on the battery level of the Moochies plus switch between other Moochies that form part of the family.
Icons at the bottom of the screen allow for switching between Message and Settings screens. Message provides a time line of events while settings allows for adjustments to be made to the Moochies device and system settings. You can create safe locations such as Home, School and Activity based plus add a guardian and enter the contact numbers for acceptable numbers for receiving incoming calls and the two outgoing numbers with their activation button.
I feel the app could benefit from a Help feature. I also observed that whereas the supplied screen shots had four icons across the bottom of the screen, the app I was using had just three icons. The missing icon was labelled Discover. Moochies Phone Watches can be currently purchased priced at £79.99 from http://www.moochiesforkids.co.uk/#!shop/c1hgc.
| add to del.icio.us | Digg this review |
| StumbleUpon | |
!!
