Doro Liberto 820 Mini SIM-Free Smartphone – Black/Steel

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  1. 35 of 38 people found the following review helpful
    2.0 out of 5 stars
    Frustratingly Underwhelming, 14 April 2015
    By 
    M.J. –

    Verified Purchase(What is this?)
    This review is from: Doro Liberto 820 Mini SIM-Free Smartphone – Black/Steel (Electronics)
    The reason I’ve rated this phone so lowly is because it quite simply doesn’t do what it says on the tin.

    I bought this phone as a way for my elderly mother to keep in contact with her family using a more modern platform and have been left completely underwhelmed. I fail to see how your developers/coders who have modified the default Android OS to make it more ‘OAP friendly’ could overlook some key features. Doro seriously need to evaluate who they are employing to do this basic remodelling work as they are absolutely stealing a living. Did you not test the phone on focus groups, etc?

    What do I mean by this? Well, for starters, it’s nigh on impossible to get a person who has never used a touch-screen phone before to ANSWER this phone. Trust me, I’ve tried. Doro have adjusted every aspect of the phone to make it ‘user-friendly’ except for one crucially overlooked aspect: the ability to answer it. They have left the default Android answer mechanism on the phone, which is to swipe a 5p-size flashing green phone symbol up the screen to answer. This sounds fine to me and you, but to an elderly woman with shaky, frail hands the concept of having to drag a strange flashing green icon up a screen using her finger just to pick up the phone is completely alien – not to mention incredibly frustrating after realising you haven’t dragged it quite far up enough and have just missed the call.

    Why isn’t there a big green ‘answer’ and a big red ‘decline call’ button instead of this flashy, modern (and frankly, stupid) way of answering a phone? Have phones really gotten to the point now where they are so overly-complicated that people can’t even answer them? What’s the point in having a phone?

    The phone is slow, glitchy and is very unresponsive to user actions. I don’t know if this is because of the lower-end processor in the phone, or all of the bloated customised skins and software Doro have installed on the phone, but it takes longer than it should to do the most basic things. The whole phone feels very sluggish and unresponsive – it takes >2-3 seconds to respond to user inputs, longer if you’re trying to scroll through images. Perhaps this seems pedantic, however I’d recommend counting to ‘2’ every time you press a button or touch the screen on your current phone to understand just how frustrating and sticky this makes your phone feel – that is what this phone feels like. Resource intensive, pre-installed apps like Google Maps either crash regularly or flat out don’t work, whilst menus are prone to “freezing” and “glitching out” to other menus or the home screen when you don’t want them to.

    Considering the investment I made, I expected better. This phone isn’t cheap – it’s more expensive than a fully refurbished iPhone 4 – and I would’ve bought one of those were it not for the fact that I needed a relatively simple interface on the phone.

    ——————————–>>

    *** Please do take the time to read the comments attached to this review. A Doro representative has taken the time to reply to my comments and assured me that this issue has been passed on to their development team; whether or not this suggestion is taken on board remains to be seen. In light of the comments made, I stand by my original assertion that this Doro phone isn’t fit for purpose in any shape or form for older users.

    To express this as politely as possible, there is “older” and there is “old”. If you are a later adopter of smartphone/internet technology (i.e. but you still know how to use the internet, email, social media etc), and a bit “older” by UK societal standards, then you might be OK with this phone if you can excuse its shortcomings. You might even feel underwhelmed by its limited capabilities. If you are “old”, then this phone (in my opinion) just isn’t for you. Until Doro sorts out the inherent problem elderly users have answering this phone, I’d strongly advise staying away from this particular smartphone.

    “Older”? It’s OK. “Old”? Stay away.

    I hope my words have helped you make a sound purchasing decision with your money.

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  2. 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
    3.0 out of 5 stars
    Decent enough quality, little overpriced for what it is and some glaring omissions prevent this from getting a 4 or 5 stars, 16 Sept. 2015
    By 
    Beagle (UK) –

    Verified Purchase(What is this?)
    This review is from: Doro Liberto 820 Mini SIM-Free Smartphone – Ruby/Black (Electronics)
    Pleasantly surprised but it falls short in some really silly areas. This isn’t for me but I am responsible for helping the person who it’s for, get through life with a far more limited ‘toolkit’ than most of us. This therefore is just what they need. It’s smarter than the old Nokia they have and will enable them to participate in the smart phone and app society without it being overwhelming.
    The shortcomings are in the Synchronisation abilities. There is NO way to synchronise the stock Calendar or Contacts. Therefore if you are responsible for keeping someone up to date with life, you can’t do this remotely. Despite all the claims that this phone can be remotely administered it is a VERY limited function set that can be altered this way. It still relies on the person going into an app and accepting the things pushed to it, rather than them just going in to their respective apps. For someone with some learning difficulties this is a massive omission.

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