Xiaomi duoqin F22 Pro phone: Chinese piece of mind for the Western parent

While companies are making their phones bigger and optimizing their software to ensure you stay on their devices as long as possible, parents who want the opposite have given up hope of finding a phone suitable for their child that will not try to immediately make them an addict.

But parents also do not want to get a dumb phone from 10 years ago that cannot do anything but call because they want their child to be able to socialize using their phone without becoming engulfed by it.

And all along, the incredibly popular brand Xiaomi has seen this so they decided to launch a sub-brand called Duoqin which roughly translates to closer ties, which perfectly summarizes its mission which is for its products to give your child a better way to socialize instead of eliminating social interactions because of their phone. 

Today, we will be focusing on their latest model and the one that is the most “child-friendly,” the F22 Pro which comes at an affordable $150.

the Xiaomi duoqin F22 Pro phone

and the way it achieves this title is by simply being a dumb phone in 2023

yes, it’s thatsimple; by having a small screen, it is harder to get sucked into your apps, and I will know I have had every single generation of this phone, including this one, and I can say for a fact that my screen time has never gone over three and a half hours a day. For comparison, I average about 10 hours a day on my iPhone, most of it being social media. 

So now you’re probably asking, “how is this better than any other dumb phone on the market”? It’s because of its Hardware.

the duoqin f22 pro Hardware

The F22 pro, released in 2022, supports Android 12, meaning all your desired Parental Control software could work on it. Also, its battery life is excellent. It has a 2150 milliamp-hour (mah) battery, while old phones from the 2010s will only have around 800 mah.

the duoqin f22 pro camera 

Considering its price, the camera is decent. It boasts an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel selfie camera that can capture clear and usable photos, making it suitable for your child to take and share nice pictures of their loved ones and friends.

The Duoqin F22 Pro touch screen

Sized at 3.54 in with a 640×960 resolution, it is the perfect size to allow the phone to be usable without being distracting, and the image quality is what you would expect for the price: not great, but usable.

The keyboard keys are easy to type on, and you could even install gboard to be able to type on the screen effortlessly. 

Bonus

And you could even get a version of the phone with no WiFi and LTE data connectivity, which means you get all the excellent Hardware like the speaker, the battery, the camera, and even the MP3 player ( it supports AAC, AAC+, AMR, MID, WAV, eAAC+), etc., without having any internet connectivity whatsoever. 

And you can still connect the phone to a computer, download music onto it, and upload the photos taken by it to whatever platform wanted; a downside to this, however, is that you cannot use SMS.

the duoqin f22 pro software

Until now, we talked about the Hardware,

but equally and even more important, especially in parentally controlled devices, is the software.

And we are happy to say that because it’s operating system is Android, it is compatible with any software you want for parental controls, so it is entirely customizable.

And what software I would recommend depends on your situation because there are three kinds of parental controls, and depending on your situation, you might only want one of them or all of them

1) app locks

(making an app inaccessible)

2) screen time

(limiting the amount of time your child spends on their device and on certain apps)

3) filtration

(filtering any explicit violent or inappropriate content from the device) 

app locks

For an app lock, I recommend a launcher, specifically the Smart Launcher Pro 6. This launcher allows you to put the App Store and any app you choose behind a password-protected app vault to selectively control the apps to which your child has access.

screen time

To manage your child’s screen time, download the Kidslock app. This app would allow you complete control over your child’s screen time, ensuring they have time to socialize and do their homework. 

filtration

filtration is tricky. You can get many different apps for your device that promises filtration. But they are never reliable. And from my experience of having many different apps over the years that promised filtration, they are extraordinarily easy to get around. 

And although they would filter a good portion of the inappropriate content when it comes to your child, you want to avoid 95% filtration. You want 100% filtration. 

So bottom line, it is a case of black and white: you either have no access whatsoever to online content, and they will never get exposed

or you open up access to online content, and it is guaranteed, even if you do not find out about it immediately, that they will be exposed to inappropriate content (no matter the filtration).

Summary

the F22 Pro minimizes screen time because of its smaller screen, making it harder to spend a lot of time on it. With Incredible specs, especially for the price, it is the best dumbphone on the market, made even better by having the choice to have internet access or no internet access, plus a few suggestions on what software would make the phone even safer and more child friendly.