Mother and father grapple with the trendy day query of whether or not to provide their youngsters phones for staying involved and preserving tabs on their whereabouts, whereas additionally navigating the realities of an excessive amount of display time and shielding them from the corrosive results of social media.Â
AT&T simply launched its personal reply, the AmiGo Jr. Phone, a Samsung smartphone with an AmiGo app that applies parental controls on the system stage. Mother and father use an AT&T AmiGo app on their iOS or Android cellphone to handle apps, settings and screentime limits on the child’s cellphone; the AmiGo software program works solely with this AmiGo Jr. Telephone.
The AmiGo Jr. is a Samsung Galaxy A16 cellphone with a 6.7-inch show, 128GB of storage and a 5,000 mAh battery. It has a trio of cameras on the again: a 50-megapixel predominant digicam, 5-megapixel ultrawide digicam and 2-megapixel macro digicam. The cellphone is obtainable solely in black.
The cellphone is obtainable now online at AT&T, in AT&T shops and by way of the MyAT&T app, and priced at $3 a month for a 36-month contract. Mother and father additionally have to buy an unlimited data line on their cellphone plan for the cellphone beginning at $61 a month, plus pay a $35 activation price.
Providing a cheap older digicam for a kid’s use is not new — it is how dad and mom usually arrange units for youths. The Galaxy A16 was launched in January 2025. What makes the AmiGo Jr. totally different is the AmiGo app implementing parental controls on the system stage beneath Android 16, in keeping with an AT&T spokesperson. Past the parental management options provided in Android, the AmiGo software provides Protected Zones that generate alerts when the cellphone has entered or exited them and a College Mode for limiting options throughout instances when their consideration ought to be targeted away from the display.
“After intensive, candid conversations with dad and mom, we heard a transparent message: This is not only a system determination — it is a deeply private one about belief, security and staying linked,” mentioned Erin Scarborough, AT&T senior vice chairman of income administration and commercialization, in a press release. “Creating a child’s cellphone was the pure and overdue subsequent step for us.”
The corporate cited the truth that 40% of its present clients are dad and mom as incentive to develop the AmiGo Jr. Telephone. And primarily based by itself analysis, 60% of fogeys of youngsters as much as age 12 contemplate a smartphone to be a security important.
Constructing telephones for youths will not be a novel idea; CNET’s Katie Collins seemed on the HMD Fusion X1 finally 12 months’s Mobile World Congress, for instance. And system-based parental controls have additionally change into more robust in recent times, at the same time as a recent study suggests that oldsters ought to wait till the age of 13 to provide their youngsters a cellphone.
Additionally out there now could be the AT&T AmiGo Jr. Watch 2, a extra sturdy smartwatch that ties into AT&T’s AmiGo system.
