Helping my mom with dementia choose a safety watch/phone

As my mother gets older, her ability to learn has declined. Even though she used to know how to use a smartphone, it's quite challenging for her to learn how to use a new phone after her old one broke. I initially wanted to find a suitable emergency alarm (watch) on the market as a backup plan for her, but now it has become her smartphone + emergency watch.

The cheapest emergency watches on the market cost over a thousand dollars. Even with a 24-month contract that includes a free emergency watch, the monthly fee is still over a hundred dollars. While they offer features like fall alerts, GPS tracking, temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and blood oxygen measurement, step counting, sedentary reminders, electronic fences, and waterproofing, they lack video calling, contact lists, or a dial pad. In an emergency, you can only press the emergency button to connect to staff at the emergency center and notify family members. This type of emergency watch is suitable for seniors with more severe cognitive impairment, so I chose to look for products with more features.

Finally, I bought this emergency watch. It only has one button on the right, which combines functions for power on/off, calling, and exiting. All settings and functions need to be controlled via software installed on another mobile phone. This not only eliminates the need for a complex interface on the watch but also saves a lot of trouble for seniors in actual operation. It has more functions than the previous model, such as leaving voice messages for the elderly like on WhatsApp, and the elderly can also press the microphone to record voice messages for their caregivers. The only drawback is that due to the smaller watch face, the elderly can only listen to the last message.

For my mother, who has never been able to learn how to leave WhatsApp messages, this is a very powerful feature. Another great feature of this watch is that it provides a contact list and a dial pad, so it can be used as a regular phone. However, since the watch's operating interface has been simplified, adding contacts to the address book requires input from the caregiver's mobile app. It also has a function to reject calls from strangers, which can prevent the elderly from contacting unknown individuals and falling into scam traps. The watch does not provide SMS receiving functionality; if needed, messages can be received via the caregiver's mobile app.

Overall, this is a very comprehensive emergency watch, offering two language options: Simplified Chinese and English. If you select Simplified Chinese, the watch will announce the time in Mandarin every time it is turned on. For seniors who do not understand Mandarin, this can be quite inconvenient.
My mother, on the other hand, finds it more troublesome to press the right button every time she wants to check the time. Nevertheless, since this emergency watch can replace her traditional watch and phone and brings her convenience, she is quite happy to use it.