A patient way to learn your phone: big text, one step at a time, and a real person to ask when it goes wrong.
Not a showroom. A kitchen table, a phone propped against a cup, somebody getting there.
Each lesson asks for a single tap, then waits. Nothing moves on until it has been done. You can repeat a lesson as many times as you like and it never says you already did this one.
How to answer a video call. How to send a photo to the family group. How to tell a message that has been read from one that has not. The ordinary things everyone else assumes you know.
Larger text, larger buttons, and the things you use every day kept on the first screen instead of behind a row of dots. No red badges shouting for attention.
Family and close friends sit as named photographs. One tap calls them, one tap messages them. Nobody has to remember which icon is which.
When a message will not send or the ringer has gone silent, you can speak to a person about it instead of searching the internet for an answer written for someone else.
Almost everybody who struggles with a smartphone was never shown how one works. They were handed a rectangle of glass by a well-meaning son or daughter, given ten minutes of instructions at a kitchen table with the kettle on, and left to it. Everything since has been guesswork.
That is not a failure of memory, and it is not about age. The phone simply assumes you already know things. It assumes you know that a small grey arrow means back. That holding your finger down does something entirely different from tapping. That the thing you are looking for has been tucked behind three dots in a corner. None of that is written anywhere. It was learned by a generation who had time to poke at it all day at work, and then quietly treated as common sense.
So what happens instead is a particular kind of quiet. A phone that rings and is not answered, because the green circle has to be dragged rather than pressed. Photographs of grandchildren arriving in a group chat that is never opened. A person who stops taking the phone out of the drawer at all, because the last three times they touched it something changed and they could not change it back.
Three things, and they are not complicated.
Smaller steps than anyone thinks are necessary. Not "set up video calling" but "press here, now wait, now press the green circle". One instruction on the screen at a time, in text you can read without reaching for glasses. The lesson waits. It does not sigh.
Repetition without embarrassment. The most common reason someone gives up is not the phone — it is having to ask the same question a fourth time and hearing the patience thin out in a familiar voice. A lesson can be repeated at eleven at night, alone, as often as you like, and it will start from the beginning every time in exactly the same tone.
A person at the end of it. Some things are not lessons. The ringer has gone silent. A message will not send. Something appeared on the screen and now nothing looks right. Those are the moments people need to describe out loud to somebody who will not make them feel foolish, and that is what our phone support is for.
You are probably here because you have had the same conversation more than once, and because you live too far away to sit beside them. You do not need to be in the room. We can set the phone up together on a call — yours and theirs — and once it is set up, your name and photograph are one tap away on their first screen. After that, most of the asking comes to us instead of to you at half past nine on a Tuesday.
Nothing we change is hidden, and nothing is permanent. Every setting we adjust is shown as it is adjusted, and it can be put back exactly as it was.
Tell us which one sounds like your situation and we will say plainly what it involves.
The app itself, set to large text from the first screen, with the lessons you can work through at your own pace.
We set the phone up together on a call — you, and the person you are helping — so nobody is left holding an unfinished job.
For the questions that are not lessons: the message that will not send, the ringer that went quiet, the screen that changed on its own.
Tell us the phone and who it is for in the form below, and we will confirm what suits before anything is set up.
Send a note with the phone they own and what has been going wrong. Two lines is enough. If you are not sure which phone it is, describe it and we will work it out.
No form to fill in twice. We ask what we need to know — who they speak to most, what they want to be able to do — and we say honestly whether we can help.
Text size, ringer, home screen, family contacts. Everything is shown as it is changed. A first video call is made before we hang up, so it has been done once with somebody there.
Lessons are there to repeat whenever they like. When something goes wrong, they ask us rather than waiting for the weekend.
It is built for the ordinary Android phones and iPhones most people already own. Tell us which one it is in the form below and we will tell you plainly whether it suits before anything is set up or paid for.
Yes. The setup is done on a call with both of you, so you do not have to be in the room. Once it is done, your name and photograph sit on her first screen and are one tap away.
No. Every setting we adjust is shown on screen as it is adjusted, and each one can be put back exactly as it was. We do not move anything quietly.
Usually what he means is that he does not want to be made to feel slow. The lessons wait, never hurry, and can be repeated at midnight with nobody watching. Most people start with one thing they actually want — answering a video call from a grandchild — and go from there.
No. Text is large from the first screen, buttons are big, and most of what we teach first is pressing rather than typing. Typing comes later, if it comes at all.
Two lines is plenty. Whose phone it is, and what has been going wrong with it.
Someone will get in touch shortly. If you thought of something you forgot to mention, just send another note.
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