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  • GOS for a senior with light dementia - recommendations?

A senior relative with light dementia just bricked her iPhone because she did not understand the unlock prompt, eg one more incorrect pin attempt and your phone will be irreversibly bricked. This person needs no stored credentials or accounts, does not use her phone as a wallet, has no email, no online accounts with MFA auth, or anything of the sort. She makes/receives phone calls and uses SMS only. Even before bricking her iPhone had become very problematic due to constant apple solicitations, sticky OS upgrade dialogs, and account re-verification prompts. I configured GOS for another relative who is seriously tech challenged and the GOS experience has been excellent for her. I'm hoping I can help the elder relative likewise.

My primary concern is with lock/unlock, though it appears GOS allows screen lock to be disabled. Is that indefinitely and does that mean the pin only needs to be re-entered upon reboot? If so that would work as we can have written instructions on entering the PIN. Fingerprint and face unlock will not be effective for her.

Those of you with experience with GOS and elderly, please let me know your suggestions.

Thanks!

    rambleon the lock screen cant be disabled, but a pin/password is not required

      Why do you need an android device if she only makes/receives phone calls and uses SMS? Sounds to me like a feature phone or something specialized for seniors would be more appropriate. If you insist on a smartphone, maybe something like the light phone 2 or 3?

        AdamE
        I use my 6a as a phone, nothing else, its my choice to use a smart phone, ease of use over texting on a dumb phone, is one reason.
        Don't try and pigeonhole people using GrapheneOS, they can use their phone to hammer nails, if they wish its their choice, their device, etc

          rambleon
          I have a red, green protanomly and find the black/white interface of GrapheneOS excellent.
          I am sure you are aware, the colour and motion toggles in the accessibility settings, just in case you were not.

            AdamE Thanks for the tip on Light phone, it looks promising and should be available in the US in a couple of months. It runs close to 1/2 the price of a Pixel. Light phone II does not display pictures (not sure about v3).

            GrapheneOS is quite light out of the box and can be further "lightened". Also I can provide user support, and I trust that Android will continue to have decent accessibility features. Also I forgot to mention that she uses WhatsApp (receive-only) so GOS might be a great fit.

                I tried to replace a dumb phone with an android phone mainly because the screen size was larger and its possible to make the text much much larger than default.. But I failed .. with grand grandma.

                One of the troubles was the top system bar with all the controls, airplane mode and such, she accidentaly put her phone into airplane mode, turned on do not disturb etc. I tried some custom launchers hiding it, but it was not 100%.. Then she did not see the battery status or missed calls status.. I tried several widgets to display the battery status.. worked..

                Another trouble was, that the phone app did not look the same each time she started it. It was showing the last state. Recent calls, etc. But we needed to always show just the favourites. I found different phone app that was quite ok.. but not 100%. She also did not understand that picking up phone is different if it rings while the phone is locked or if it rings with unlocked phone. Sometimes a full screen ringing appeared, sometimes only the small widget below the title bar. This was very confusing to her.

                Swiping gestures.. no way. So I turned on the navigation buttons. She did not understand what is the difference between the back button and the home button. I tried to get rid of the "recents" button, but i was not successfull. The last thing is that she was forgetting to charge every other day.. I failed.

                rambleon Yeah, if she uses whatsapp the light phone is NOT going to fit your usecase.

                  rambleon the only a way an iOS phone is bricked is if you forget the apple login credentials for the apple account and have find my, turned on it can be restored from an encrypted backup but maybe a fingerprint is more suitable way to login but I’m not sure the apple echo system is suited for someone with dementia because they force a password or pin login after a set time. I’m not sure but graphene has a similar feature that requires password after it’s put in lockdown mode but I think 🤔 that can be turned off in settings but I might be wrong I’m new to graphene.

                    9 days later

                    Update: my senior relative has used a Pixel 8a with GOS for about 10 days now and it is somewhat of an improvement over the iPhone experience. GOS has been a benefit simply because it can be made more of a limited, consistent UI experience than the stock Pixel or other Android phones, and especially iPhones. Thanks GrapheneOS team!

                    There are a few areas where the experience could be improved (none of these are GOS specific AFAIK):

                    • She often cannot hit the tap "window" - she either presses too fast, too long, or is moving her finger slightly. My Pixel 8 seems to have better tap recognition than her 8a and I wonder if she'd have been better off paying for the 8 (or 9). Android has an "Increase touch sensitivity" setting but it does not help to open the tap window. I was surprised that there are no OS settings relating to tap length, etc. that I could find.

                    • There is no way I can find to make the phone app full screen on incoming calls or remain on the screen during a call. Incoming calls only show in a notification bubble. And during calls the phone app UI can easily disappear. So she often cannot find the phone app to turn on the speaker, hang up, etc.

                    • Cannot use hardware button to answer phone - Allowing the lock button to be configured to answer and hang up phone calls would help tremendously. This missing accessibility feature is a huge Android failure IMO.

                    • She has a hard time finding the "sweet spot" when holding her phone to her ear and often cannot hear. It'd be great if the phone could be configured to use the speaker when answering by default. Yeah, she has bluetooth-pairable accessible hearing aids, but they have their own limitations.

                      rambleon cannot hit the tap "window" - she either presses too fast, too long

                      Regarding the "too long" - there's something worth checking, go to Settings -> Accessibility -> Timing controls -> Touch & hold delay and set it to something other than Short. I've never used this setting, but it sounds like it may help with the situation when they hold their finger for a longer period of time then the OS expects them to.

                      rambleon lock button to be configured to answer and hang up phone calls

                      In Settings -> Accessibility -> System controls -> Power button ends calls may help to at least to hang up when needed.