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Emporia TALKactive 

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This offering is a partnership between Emporia and RNIB. So while it can be used by a sighted person, most of those using it will either have severely limited sight or be registered as blind. While most of us take our phones with us to stay in contact and indeed I know of people who run their lives from their phones, for a blind or partially sighted person being in contact can be much more important than that.

Emporia ACTIVEglam 4G
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Once the SIM and battery are installed this becomes an easy phone to use.

The right corner of the back allows a fingernail to slip under to insert the SIM and then the battery the three contacts on the end of the battery line up with three contacts in the battery bay so it will only fit one way.

Fitting the SIM is a little more tricky not least because being Nano it’s very small.

This is a Flip Phone small enough to fit easily in the palm of your hand when closed. It is 9.5x5x1.5cm and weighs 87 grams. When flipped open it is 18cm from base to tip with a slight curve so that it fits naturally to your ear.

The lower 8cm of the opened phone has the controls. They are large clearly marked buttons a total of twenty in seven lines. The top line has a large green answer button with a slightly smaller menu and contact book beside it and then a large red end call button to their right. The next line of three are black on white with memory one, camera and memory two. The next four lines are the numeric keys white on black. Finally in the central position in a line on its own the on/off button. The top half of the open unit is the 4.4x3.5cm screen.

I found you needed around a five second hold on the on/off button to start the boot process and then around four second hold to turn it off.

Around twenty seconds after boot up starts you are able to make or receive calls.

The screen itself is very bright and made up of colours that are easiest to read for someone with limited sight. The top line shows the number of bars (signal strength) and your service provider. The centre of the screen is a digital clock in centimetre tall numerals below this in half centimetre numerals is the day and date. At the base of the screen above the green button is your call history.

If you press the menu button every action is then spoken by a clear female voice. The six immediately accessible options from here are Messages, Photo Album, Tools, Contacts, Call History and Settings. Dependant on where you are and in what menu you always have one of two choices from either the green or red buttons.

Finally there is an Emergency button on the back of the closed phone that once setup can loop through numbers listed till an answer is received.

This is a nice easy to use phone that can also work with texts and take photos.

This phone is available exclusively from RNIB for £125 excluding VAT.

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OverallEmporia TALKactive rated 76 out of 100

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