Remember the first time you held a cellphone? If you’re of a certain age set — where you’re starting admitting naps are pretty awesome and mom jeans are kind of hot — then your fingers still ache from pressing the seven key 48 times to write a three-word text message.
Way back then, phone minutes were a finite resource, cameras were laughably bad (if they existed at all), and the only interest your flip brick might be to today’s kid would be as a projectile.
Oh, how times have changed. Even the average toddler knows how to operate their parents’ iPhones. Some of those little bastards even have their OWN iPhones. Back in our day, had to Instagram uphill both ways, dagnabbit!
While not everyone agrees with giving iPhones to kids, most parents still — at least most of the time, let’s be honest — want to know where their kids are. Republic Wireless CEO Chris Chuang sure did.
He recalls how one day he couldn’t find his kids. So he did what normal dads do and conducted the usual search around the yard. Then he moved onto yelling. Finally, panic started to settle in. All of us who are parents have been there.
Eventually, the kids showed up at the house. They had been playing hide and seek and couldn’t hear his yells. All ended well.
Except that Chuang did not want to experience that terror ever again.
What parent would? He knew he needed to prevent this scenario from playing out again.
That’s why in 2014 he put together a group at Republic Wireless to invent a safe, simple smartphone for children. One that allowed parents to know where their kids were (but didn’t put kids in further danger from social media overload and predators).
Four years later, a screenless smartphone launched in 2018. The team called it Relay.
That’s right….screenless.
The team started with their own combined 24 children in mind (twenty-five if you count that one kid nobody likes to talk about). They thought about all the challenges children face today: bullying, screen addiction, overstimulation, and the list goes on and on.
It wasn’t just about creating a safer phone for anyone’s kids. It was about constructing a communications device that was extremely safe for their own kids.
That lead to some surprising conclusions: removing the core features of most phones.
It didn’t need to have a keyboard. It didn’t need apps, bells and whistles. The device wouldn’t even store personal or private data.
Taking it one step further, the team EVEN removed the need for a phone number.
So how does what sounds like a box with no features meet Chuang’s need?
Well, while it is in the shape of a small square… And it doesn’t have a screen…
It is, in fact, a smartphone; one built to interact with other Relays or Relay apps on smartphones. It’s like a new age walkie talkie. But better.
Better how? It’s got features like the device’s GPS capabilities and its ability to communicate without needing data or a phone number. Chuang says future iterations will even include options for music, games, and parent-approved Internet searching.
Not ready for your kids to grow up and start ignoring you? Giving them a typical smartphone basically hands them permission to pretend like you don’t exist. We haven’t talked to our own children in years.
Luckily, Relay’s innovative design and technology offer an alternative for parents, especially those with kids who like to run and hide.