App Review: BabyFirst’s Play Phone

Little Man is obsessed with phones, so I downloaded the Play Phone app from BabyFirst thinking that he would love it. This app displays a keypad which babies can interact with. When baby presses one of the buttons on the keypad, a little cartoon character appears onscreen and speaks. Now this is a free iPhone app, so I can’t really complain about it. But it doesn’t appeal to me as much as some of the others I’ve downloaded for Little Man. The sound is just a little bit tinny and the animations are not quite as smooth as on other apps.

Little Man likes it, but it can only hold his interest for a few minutes. He presses a few buttons on the keypad, and then presses the Home button on the iPhone – a surefire sign that he’s bored and wants to do something else.

That being said, this app does have one feature that I really like – it allows you to record your own message and insert your own image. So I’ve uploaded an image of me and Little Man and recorded a message saying “Hello” to him. Now when he presses the Play button on the keypad, our photo appears and my voice plays. This sometimes makes him giggle.

I haven’t deleted this app from my iPhone because it’s one more game that I have to amuse Little Man if we’re stuck somewhere like the waiting room in the doctor’s office for a long time, but to be honest, it’s not one that gets played with very often.