Jitterbug J Cell Phone Review

Using the Jitterbug J

The Jitterbug was created and is distributed by a company called GreatCall. Jitterbug provides both the phone hardware and the service. They have agreements in place with several major carriers, so their coverage is good. They provide a coverage map on their website and have a 30-day, money back guarantee. Rate plans range from USD 14.99 to USD 79.99 a month. You can only use the Jitterbug service with the Jitterbug phone. Rate plans are either comparable or just slightly more than those with larger carriers like Verizon. A big difference is that Jitterbug doesn’t require a 2-year contract. The cost of the Jitterbug J was recently reduced from USD 99 to USD 147, ma
king it pretty attractive.

They have created the Jitterbug to be similar to a regular telephone. Talking on the Jitterbug is about as close as you can get to talking on a regular telephone. When you open the Jitterbug, you even hear a dial tone, which is extremely unusual for a cell phone. There is no bar-type indication of signal strength. If you hear a dial tone, you can make a call, if you don’t hear the dial tone, you cannot.

When you order your Jitterbug, you are charged a USD 35 activation fee. This seemed a little steep to us and we didn’t like the fact that you didn’t find out about it until you were into the ordering process. However, because there is no contract, we can see that this may be necessary to keep folks from constantly turning their service on and off.

As you can see in Figure 8, the keypad on the Jitterbug J has large, clearly marked buttons. The yellow circle that surrounds each button illuminates when the keypad is used. The “5” button has raised sides so if you are vision impaired, you can find the proper keys by touch.

Figure 8: The Jitterbug J keypad

An on/off button and a button for using the speaker phone are clearly marked at the top of the keypad. Under that are simple “yes” and “no” buttons. Between the yes and no buttons are arrow keys that you can use to make your selection.

An opening for the microphone can be seen in Figure 8 at the bottom of the keypad.

The Jitterbug always frames the choices in a question so it makes sense to simply answer yes or no. An example of this is shown in Figure 9, where you can see the choices and the question “Select?” below the choices. You can also clearly see that the up and down arrows will take you to the previous or next selection.

Figure 9: One of the Jitterbug’s choices

Figure 9 also shows the speaker just above the screen. As you can see, the speaker is quite large, resulting in excellent sound quality. Calls were clear and crisp.

You can use voice dialing with the Jitterbug J. This service is free, but you must call Jitterbug customer service to turn on this feature. Once it has been activated you can have the Jitterbug dial contacts or numbers simply by saying the name or number aloud.

The Jitterbug J supports full SMS messaging, but not MMS. It also supports Bluetooth, so you can use wireless headsets and other external wireless devices. This is a welcome addition as more and more states pass laws requiring hands-free cell phone use in cars.