More about the Big Purple Phone

00:21S1

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from August 13th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolley, great to have you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia radio associated stations of the Radio Reading Network, formerly RPH Australia, the Community Radio Network. And there is also the podcast. Don't forget that all you need to do is search for the two words talking tech and Dan. It can all come usually on a Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask your Siri device or smart speaker to play Vision Australia Radio Talking Tech podcast. Vision Australia Radio Talking Tech podcast.

With me, someone who can explain all this tech stuff really well: Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology David Woodbridge. David, this week more for our low vision cohort with some further discussion on the Big Purple Phone. And you spoke recently with someone from the family company that has developed and sells this phone.

01:25S2

I certainly did, and I caught up with her over the weekend, so I hope folks really enjoy that, the interview that I had.

01:32S1

So this is with Libby Henderson, who's the commercial sales director with Big Purple Phones, speaking recently with David Woodbridge.

01:40S2

Hi, Libby, and welcome to the program.

01:41S3

Thank you David, it's great to be here.

01:44S2

So let's just get the the name out of the way first. So, and describe briefly what it is. So what is the Big Purple Phone.

01:52S3

Yeah, the Big Purple Phone. It's a phone that we designed for... a scenario we had in my family. So my mother, during Covid had a stroke and couldn't remember how to use her phone... and she was isolated from us. We had such a terrible journey with her trying to get hold of her, and we went looking for a phone for her that would suit her and couldn't find anything, really. That was simple enough for her that she could learn quickly and use without us there to help her, and so that sent us on this journey - when I say us, myself and my husband James on this journey - to create a phone... and as it turns out, my background is digital design with a little bit of accessibility from my time with the Commonwealth Bank. And my husband James was with Telstra for 25 years. So between us, we had this amazing complementary skill set that we pulled together and... designed the big purple phone. 

So it's a larger phone. It's it's a taller phone. So it's about as wide as it, as kind of a regular phone... mobile phone. But it's but the screen real estate we get from the extra height is where we sort of get that bigger, bigger screen real estate from. It's sort of a 20 by nine proportion. So it's quite tall as a phone... but you can still sort of hold it comfortably in your hand because the width is kind of good. So it's bigger, it's purple. It has high contrast, bigger, brighter and better and... easier to use.

03:13S2

How many icons would be on the main... what we tend to in techie land call the Home screen? How many icons would you be talking about on the screen?

03:20S3

So as standard there's about ten. You can add more in, you can add more buttons in, but generally they're just the standard buttons. They're sort of phone text message, camera, photo gallery. There's a brightness button, torch, weather, video calling, radio. So yeah, that's kind of the the standard buttons.

03:38S2

Okay. Now how big would the icons be? Because I know sometimes when people say, Oh it's big mate, people go, Yeah, it's really not that big. The icons are not really that big. Are these sort of big, big icons?

03:48S3

Yeah, yeah. So there's two settings, so you can set it to be... I'm actually just pulling a ruler out and measuring it for you because I know in pixels, but that's no good to you... no, it's... about four centimetres. You can set it to even larger, so you can take it six centimetres.

04:03S2

Oh goodness. But you could you still fit all the icons on the screen?

04:06S3

Yeah. So when it's at the smaller size, you get sort of 2 to 3 icons on the screen as you're scrolling down. And it's a little bit like a poker machine, the way you sort of navigate it. You sort of, it sort of scrolls around, if you like... when you've got it set to that six centimetre size, then you get one big one and half, half of the next one.

04:24S2

Okay. But you can easily scroll around. So when you say scrolling around and you're dragging your finger, are you doing other weird gestures or what are you doing?

04:31S3

So you're starting with your finger at the bottom of the screen and you're swiping up and that kind of, you know, makes it roll around, if you know what I mean. Swiping like that. The buttons. There are also buttons at the top and at the bottom of the phone was initially designed for people who are older. So it has sort of... ability to tap up and down. You don't have to scroll. You can type, swiping is hard for some people. 

04:53S2

Mm. And I believe it also comes with stylus.

04:56S3

It does. That makes it a lot easier I think, as you get older your skin gets drier. And that touch sensitivity goes, in many cases. So yes, you can use the stylus in that case.

05:04S2

Okay. And what does the phone feel like in your hand? I mean, I know it's based on Nokia, but does it feel like a sort of a good solid phone when you're holding in your hand, it's not too slippery or it's not too big to hold in your hand and that sort of stuff?

05:16S3

Yeah, that's a good question. It comes with a bumper case. So it, it has like... a clear jelly bumper case that comes, we put it on. You can take that off and then it's got more of a grip. So that kind of it's sort of, it's a matte kind of feeling... to the case. It's 190g, so that's not too heavy considering it's a bigger phone. It's not all that heavy. It's sort of on the heavier side, but it's certainly not as heavy as an iPhone plus.

05:42S2

And for people that use... Bluetooth hearing aids, will it connect with Bluetooth hearing aids?

05:48S3

Yeah it will. The only thing is that if your hearing aid needs an app to set the settings up, then you, then it doesn't have the app so you can connect it, but it's going to be literally just a Bluetooth connection.

05:59S2

Let's say you wanted to add more icons. So you mentioned you could actually remove or add the different icons on the screen depending on how many you really want or use. Can a support person or a family member do that, and is there any other ways of actually doing it remotely? So rather than the poor person going, What are you doing to my phone? Give it back to me... you can also do it remotely. So I'm assuming there's a couple of ways you can set up the phone without disturbing the user too much.

06:24S3

That's right. Yeah. So when you first get the phone, there's... sort of a registration sequence. So you tell the phone, Are you going to have a carer or are you going to do this yourself? So that's the first thing. If you set it up so that you have a carer, that carer gets sent a text message with... a link and then they can sign in and they can access via a web browser the settings for the phone. So you might decide that you want to be the person that manages the phone for yourself, in which case we send you a text message and you can log on. You can log on via the phone, or you might choose what you want to log on via a... web browser. So whichever you prefer. It's great because it's... separate from the phone. 

So you don't have lots of, we talk about the phone being no-fandangle... meaning there are not lots, not a lot of little settings that you can get lost in and rabbit holes to go down. And so you can go into a web browser and you can make those buttons larger, you can move them from the four centimetre to the six centimetre, as we discussed before, you can set it so that it answers to speakerphone. You can disable buttons, you can add more apps. So yeah, there's a lot that you can do to sort of customise the phone. There's also an SOS button on the phone, which is great for some people, but for others it's they just don't need it. So you can disable it.

07:35S2

If you got the phone and you couldn't use the remote system, can you... can a family or support person still get to the settings of the phone by some, you know, weird and wonderful gesture?

07:46S3

Yeah, yeah, it's actually a button. It's a big button. Yeah, it's super easy. So if you decide that you want to just have the phone manage, you manage the phone on the phone itself and you give it to give it to someone to fix or set up for you, or you want to do it yourself. Then when you go through that registration at the beginning it says, Do you have a carer or are you going to use this yourself? And you say, I'm going to use this myself. And then when you get to the home screen, there's a there's a purple Manage button down the bottom of that... menu that I talked about before. And you tap on that and then that will take you through to the settings.

08:19S2

Okay. And is that where you say to your grandmother or your granddad, For goodness sake, do not need to worry about that button on the screen? That's my button.

08:26S3

So we can disable that button. So if you've got a carer, that button, you can... enable it or disable it. So you can basically make it super, super, super simple. We have some people that just have the phone and the Messages button, and that's all they have on it.

08:40S2

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because that's all you want. And it's... back to... the weird, the weird days of, Hey, people might just want to talk on the phone and text each other. Yeah, right. And... exactly. So with talking about texting each other, do you put contacts in sort of just in text or is it sort of picture-based? So you... tap on Uncle Tom and you can dial Uncle Tom by just the picture?

09:01S3

Yeah, it's the picture. So in every circumstance. So the usability is this: you, you've got the home screen and you've got your Phone button. And then you scroll down and there's your Messages button. You tap on the Messages button, and that takes you through to all the faces of the people who are contacts on the phone. You tap on the face of the phone, and then you have the choice to speak a message or type a message, and then you do either.

09:22S2

All right. Now, if people are interested in getting more on the phone... because I know we really haven't talked about the SOS button. I mean, you mentioned it briefly, the Volume button, but... the Power button... but they're pretty standard buttons. So but if people wanted more information about, you know, hearing aids and other stuff that they can use if the phone itself, what's the best contact details that people can use?

09:42S3

So the phones are available through Vision Australia stores, and we have staff from the Vision Australia stores. There's also FAQs on the Big Purple Phone website, and you've got a phone number as well that we can support. The phone actually has a Help button which goes through to our call centre as well, so we can help that way. 

09:59S2

OK. And is that a video call one or is it a...

10:01S3

It's a phone call. We can actually initiate a call a video call. But nobody wants to do that.

10:05S2

If, well, I don't know.

10:07S3

No, no, we just want to talk on the phone. No..

10:10S2

All right. Excellent. All right, well, look, thank you for coming on Talking Tech. And it'll be interesting to see how the phone's taken up by the low vision community.

10:18S3

Yeah. Thank you. It's my pleasure, David. And thank you for... your time today.

10:22S2

That's okay. My pleasure.

10:23S1

David Woodbridge speaking there with Libby Henderson from Big Purple Phones. David, speaking of smart phones, you've got some news about the Smart Vision 3 from Kapsis.

10:38S2

I do. And unfortunately, it's a bit of bad news. So as we all know, technology changes extremely rapidly. And I just got an email yesterday. So, be Monday as we go to air on today Tuesday. And Vision Australia has confirmed with Telstra when they switch off the 3G network, at the end of August. And the same with Optus, but we have not got confirmation from Optus officially and that is the fact that the Smart Vision 3 from Kapsis will not be compatible with the 4G network. The phone itself physically does not support the frequency, and if you want to know what it is, it's 700MHz, but it simply won't work. It won't work for 000 calls. It won't work for roaming and everything else. 

Now, Telstra said people should have already got a message about the 3G network closing down. So if you do use those phones and you're looking for another phone, then I would suggest you contact Telstra, Optus or indeed if you want an accessible phone, contact Vision Australia Vision Store and we can certainly have a talk to you. But at the end of August, the Smart Vision 3 will not work.

11:47S1

All other smart phones seem to be going okay though, and we've talked about this in recent times.

11:52S2

Things like the [?Blown Shield] classic 2, and there's a few other bits and bobs going on. But yes, yes, it's unfortunately, it's the way that technology sometimes improves and it leaves the old tech behind.

12:03S1

We're about two thirds of the way through the Beta cycle for the new iOS, iOS 18. How's it going? Because I know you'd be close to it.

12:12S2

Yeah, it's a bit rough. So the last Beta that I had, which was last week, iOS 18, unless I was running some type of media. So things like radio, music, audiobook and so on, voiceover would not work at all. So I had to sort of put up with the media in the background and listen to voiceover. So that's now been fixed in the current Beta cycle. However, with the current Beta cycle, AirPods and AirPods Pro and AirPods Max work perfectly well. However, if I then try and use my general Bluetooth headsets, the driver doesn't seem to kick in very well with the Bluetooth driver, so it can take sometimes up to about 30 seconds for the Bluetooth to kick in. So I'm sort of a bit worried because this is getting really, really close to the launch date of the iPhone 16 itself. 

So I have a funny feeling there's probably going to be a few little rust updates either now or after the actual official launch of the iPhone 16, with iOS 18.

13:13S1

Features that you're starting to play with. We should be looking forward to...

13:17S2

Look, the main one that I'm really, really looking forward to is the new Braille screen input, and I think we mentioned it quite a while ago when we talked about WWDC, WorldWide Developers Conference. And that's where you can actually, rather than just Brailling on the touch screen, it turns your touch screen into a full Braille input keyboard. So all the commands you can imagine you can do on your Brilliant and other devices that have got an input Braille keyboard, then you can do them on the iPhone. And that's the most outstanding feature for me is just having that increased functionality. And there's a few other things going on. But as we also know about iOS 18, I mean, we're really not going to get all the Apple Intelligence features until iOS 18.1. And that sort of talked about maybe early next year.

14:11S1

More in the coming weeks. Before we go, a reminder of where there are details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.

14:19S2

Indeed. So as the way you can check out my blog site, which is David Woodbridge dot Podbean dot com.

14:26S1

David Woodbridge dot Podbean dot com to write to the program.

14:32S2

You can write to me at Vision Australia which is David dot Woodbridge - how it sounds - at Vision Australia dot org.

14:39S1

david.woodbridge@visionaustralia.org ... This has been Talking Tech, with me has been Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology David Woodbridge. Our guest was Libby Henderson from Big Purple Phones. I'm Stephen Jolley. Stay safe. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.