Zeki Phone Is Walkie-Talkie with SMS and MP3 for Kids

A company called YoungToys is bringing out a phone aimed at kids and toddlers in Korea. The Zeki is a digital walkie-talkie, enabling conversations and short messages exchange between two handsets up to 80 metres apart, as well as MP3 playback and audio/video recording (presumably useful if you’re the snooping parent type.)

For older kids, probably the Zeki’s real targets, there’s also alarm clocks and downloadable games. Supposedly the phones use “near-field communication technology” to connect to each other, but since this is usually applied to RFID devices like proximity swipe-cards, we’re a little sceptical.

The devices also incorporate an anti-electromagnetic device of some kind, to allay fears of cooking kid’s brains, and are made of materials harmless to the human body. Thank goodness for that, we were worried about them being made of cyanide-coated lead.

Actually the most worrying thing about these phones is that clearly kids will be carrying communications devices from a very young age, and that just creeps us out a little. Zekis will be available for around US$105 in Korea. [Aving]