Kids' phone good call for Christmas

Technofile: Many parents will be toying with the idea of buying a mobile phone for their children this Christmas. And one can understand why, especially with safety at the forefront of most parents' minds. But there is a new breed of phones coming out aimed at very young children. Should you consider these?

With plans to expand across Europe, the new Teddyfone (see Teddyfone.com) is pitched at children aged under 10.

While this might come across as looking like the usual rapacious commercial forces at their worst, recent research in 2005 by the Wireless World Forum suggests that a quarter of children under 10 have already been given a mobile phone by their parents.

It found that parents believe the benefits of giving children mobile phones often outweigh concerns about radiation levels or whether the child will get mugged for the phone.

The Teddyfone handset (claim the makers) is designed to have a radiation level 10 times less than a conventional mobile phone, at 0.2 watts per kilogram (w/kg) "SAR value". SAR stands for Specific Absorption Rate, which is the rate at which the brain absorbs radiation. Most have a SAR value of between 0.5 and 1 w/kg. A study conducted by 12 research groups in Europe tested radiation of between 0.3 and 2 w/kg. Now, it did not definitively prove that using mobile phones in day-to-day life poses a health risk. But it did find that the radio waves from mobiles harm body cells and damage DNA in laboratory conditions.

Secondly, the Teddyfone is designed to look like a Teddy bear, which is both appealing to the child and - theoretically - less likely to attract attention from thieves than a normal mobile.

Any thief getting hold of one would find a very limited phone - it can only make calls to four pre-programmed numbers and has an automated SOS alert feature which sends a message to three preprogrammed numbers.