Father's mobile phone use; has anyone found a mobile that works well for the elderly?

Welp...My godfather uses a company named Greatcall.com its $29 a month, phone is red flip phone called a Jitterbug, large buttons, easy access to clearly marked speakerphone, no frills, no internet access or apps, even came with a small docking station that the phone stands up in while charging on nightstand. He lost his somehow between the drs and facilities and hospital and they shipped a new one for $25 dollars. No overage fees, just for calling. It’s made specifically for elderly.

My mom uses a flip phone from Great Call which has larger buttons and is menu driven. When you open it, it sounds a dial tone and displays the "phone book" of programmed in numbers (I'm first on the list). Up/Down arrow walks thru all the numbers listed and pressing Yes to call the person displayed. Mom has learned she can press the YES button twice and it calls me so we're fine. Great Call provides a service for around $20 a month where when you open the phone an "operator" answers and offers to connect you to someone on your contacts list, lookup a number for you and add it to your contacts if requested or call EMTs if you need help. I think the service also includes a daily check in call too. We haven't used this option, but from the description it sounds like it might work well for someone who's primary problem is seeing the phone.

With his eye problem, he may never be able to use a cell. I had one that u pushed the button to call/answer u pushed the same button to hang up. My Mom never got it.

Will the facility allow landlines? If so, find a phone as close to the old ones you can. You pick up, u put down. I got one for Mom when she was here.

Well, if you have time (???) to train both your father and the phone, what about using the voice application so that all he has to do is say "hey Siri/Alexa/whatever, call [whoever]."

The phone will start by asking him stupid questions and making smart-arsed remarks back at him - "I didn't understand that" - "Are you ready to send your message?" [What! What message?? NO!!!] - "I can't find that number" - and so on - but with only an hour or two's use it should begin to understand his voice and recognise names better.

My mother got the phone AARP says is the BEST for seniors. My gosh, it was HUGE, so in that category, yes she could find it, but she could not dial it nor answer.

It was really the simplest thing in the world. You program a name and number and then they are assigned a letter she just had to touch. My name starts with a B and she did not once successfully call me in the 3-4 years she had this thing.

She WANTED her landline back, brother would not allow it. It cost $9 a month to add it to the internet provider, but brother is a bit of a control freak and he wouldn't change back to landlines.

I tried to help, but just got a tongue lashing from YB and it honestly isn't worth it.

I don't know many over 90's who can successfully navigate a cell phone. And now she's back to her tiny original flip phone which she loses on a regular basis.

Not my problem, if it were, she's have a landline phone in every room of her apartment, Just one more way for YB to control her. Sad.

Oh, and she gets plenty of scammers on her cell phone, which just upset her to death. She doesn't 'get it' that these are cold calls and she needs to simply hang up. She gets wound up and worried. Luckily she so rarely answers her phone it hasn't become too much of a problem, yet.

I found it impossible to deal with phones as my parents aged. Mom didn’t have dementia at that point but she just couldn’t learn new things. I had replaced their first generation cordless phone (the Flintstones had this one) with a new one with BIG numbers. Might as well been teaching her to fly a 747. Tried cell phone for seniors and that was even more of a disaster.

This issue comes up a lot and folks may have some good ideas for various devices but in my case and possibly yours, we get to the point where nothing much works.

When I finally got my folks in assisted living I did not have a phone hooked up in their room. They had a fit but that would have been my whole life, trying to straighten out daily phone nightmares, scammers etc.