Little Flashlight Makes a Big Impression in Phone for Seniors

Sometimes, it's the little things that please customers. Such as the little flashlight that the folks at Clarity added to their upcoming cellphone, one of the new handsets aimed at the elderly.

The idea came from watching how the elderly use their phones, says Clarity President Carsten Trads. A cellphone's glowing screen sometimes became a makeshift flashlight when, say, one was fumbling for dropped keys at the front door.

Clarity added the LED flashlight and ran the phone through focus groups. Guess what came back the second favorite feature among seniors? "Our engineers didn't like that it was the simple flashlight that was so popular," Trads says. "They'd put a lot of effort into some of the other features."

The favorite feature among testers, by the way, is the phone's amplified sound. The engineers can take pride in that one.

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