No one can deny that we live in the age of the smartphone, but there's still a healthy demand for no-frills cell phones. I've seen plenty of simple phones hit the market over the past year or so, from bare bones feature phones on the major carriers, to the minimal, calculator-like Snapfon ez ONE-c. There's even a simple smartphone, the Jitterbug Touch. We're expecting Consumer Cellular to release an easy-to-use smartphone at some point next year, but right now, we're seeing an update to its line of phones specifically for seniors, in the form of the $60 Doro PhoneEasy 618. It's one of the simplest phones you can buy, with a nice display and impressive call quality. It lacks the additional features you can get with the Samsung Jitterbug Plus on GreatCall, but it's a solid, more affordable choice if you don't need them.

Design, Call Quality, and Pricing

The PhoneEasy 618 is your standard flip phone, though it feels solid and very well-made, which is especially impressive given its reasonable price. It's available with a black, gray, or red exterior, with white interior accents across the board. The front of the 4.0-by-2.1-by-0.9-inch, 4.05-ounce phone has a striped pattern covered in a translucent, shiny plastic, while the back is made from plastic of the rubberized, grippy variety. It's very comfortable to hold, whether open or closed.

There are two distinct Volume buttons on the right side of the PhoneEasy, along with a charging port and nonstandard 2.5mm headphone jack on the left. Thankfully, you get a decent pair of earphones with a built-in mic for hands-free phone calls. I was also able to connect my Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset and make calls without a problem, but there is no voice dialing. There's a programmable Emergency button on the back of the phone, which lets you quickly and easily call for help in the event of an emergency. It's located in the upper right corner, which makes it hard to trigger accidentally.

When closed, there's a small external display that shows only the time. Flip the phone open, and you're greeted by a 2.4-inch, 320-by-240-pixel display. While that resolution is nothing to write home about, the display is a little bigger than you'll find on other simple phones, like the Samsung Jitterbug Plus, which means that text is even larger. Most people won't have trouble reading the default text size, but you can also set it to large, which makes it positively huge.

The keypad is quite nice as well. Buttons are big and clicky, with a very faint backlight. There are just a few function keys above the number buttons, which are all clearly labeled and easy to understand. My only complaint is that the keys themselves are a little flat.  

A tri-band (850/1800/1900 MHz) handset that runs on AT&T's network, reception on the PhoneEasy 618 is excellent, as is call quality. In my tests, voices sounded clear, full, and natural in the phone's earpiece, which is M3 and T4 hearing-aid compatible. Calls made with the phone have a somewhat muted quality, but noise cancellation is excellent. The speakerphone sounds a little grainy, and unfortunately, it doesn't get loud enough to hear outdoors. Battery life is a little short, at 5 hours and 16 minutes of talk time.

Plans on Consumer Cellular start at $10 per month, but that doesn't actually get you any talk time or text messages; on that plan, you pay individually for those. Otherwise, $15 per month gets you 150 minutes of talk time, with a number of additional plans that go up to $60 per month for 4,000 minutes. Text messages are available in add-on plans that start at $2.50 per month for 100 messages. Generally speaking, pricing is a little less expensive here than you'll find on GreatCall, (which offers the Samsung Jitterbug Plus), though Consumer Cellular lacks a monthly unlimited option.

(Next page: Performance and Conclusions)