Wingio Kids Phone Review │ Hands-On Expert Insights

Wingio is a kids phone currently available only in the UK. Designed by former Samsung engineers, Wingio parental controls exist at a device level and can't be be uninstalled by your child — not even if they get hold of your phone. 

We tested Wingio hands-on to see if we could crack it. Although we did find some loopholes with web browsing, they're easily dealt with by choosing stricter settings. Overall, we're impressed by Wingio and believe it's an excellent choice for UK parents who want to safely introduce their child to a smartphone. 

Does Wingio have the parental controls you're looking for? Let's find out. (I'll talk about how well the features work below.)

Communication controls:

• Add contacts or approve contact requests.
• View full text conversations.
• View call history, including incoming, outgoing, and missed calls.
• Toggle off Wingio Dialer, which turns off all communication restrictions and restores the phone's dial pad, contact list, SMS, and Google Messages. (This could be useful if your child turns 18 and wants to continue using the phone.) 
• Allow all incoming and outgoing calls and SMS. (Not recommended for children, but may be useful as your child gets older and needs to accept calls from potential employers, colleges, etc.) 

Location-tracking:

• Schedule location updates every X minutes, starting at every 5 minutes.
• Create and color-code geofences (safe zones) with a minimum radius of 50 meters. 
• Program a geofence for entry alerts and/or exit alerts.
• View detailed geofence alert history.
• Easily activate or deactivate a geofence alert.

App restrictions:

• Search for, install, and delete apps from parent phone.
• View the child's app requests.
• Disable app requests altogether. 
• Set time limits for each app.

Web restrictions:

• Block the Google Chrome web browser entirely. 
• Set daily limits for Chrome.
• Change the default Chrome homepage to a different URL.
• Block all websites except for the ones you add to the allow list.
• Allow all websites except for ones you add to the block list.
• Turn on Safe Browsing to protect against malware, phishing, and other cybersecurity risks.
• Turn on the Safe Sites filter to block explicit images and adult content.  
• View each website visited and instantly block them as necessary. 

Usage limits:

• Schedule "sleep mode" to block phone access at night or during school.  
• Instantly toggle sleep mode on or off as needed.
• Wingio plan to launch additional restriction mode schedules (daily limits and app restrictions) soon.
• Limit the total number of minutes the device can be used before all apps are disabled. 

Other controls and features:

• Turn off hotspot capabilities to prevent USB tethering and Bluetooth sharing.
• Choose from three restriction levels (full access, partial blocking, full blocking) for the child's Settings menu. 
• View a timeline of activity and daily, weekly, or monthly usage reports.
• Remotely lock or reboot the phone.
• Take remote screenshot of the phone. 
• Toggle the camera on or off. 
• View battery level and internet connection status.
• Add another parent or guardian to the account. 

Wingio is built into a Samsung Galaxy, not installed on it. That's an important difference because kids can usually find a way to uninstall parental controls, but it's virtually impossible to get rid of hardware like Wingio.

Still, I did my best to find a way around each setting. Wingio worked well overall, but parents need to take some extra steps to block graphic content online. 

Here's an overview of what I learned during testing.

Sleep mode completely shuts down the phone. Kids see an image of a moon, the phone's battery level, WiFi connection, and web monitoring status. Although there's also a settings button and a back button, neither work.

I tried to prevent sleep mode by changing the phone's date or time, but the phone shut down exactly when it was supposed to. 

I like the strict approach, but I think kids should be able to do three things in sleep mode:

• See the date and time
• Edit alarms
• Call at least one emergency contact or 999

This allows the phone to double as an alarm clock and lets kids get help in an emergency. 

Although you'll see the Google Play icon on your child's Wingio, they can't actually access it. To search for apps, they'll need to access the Wingio child app. Once they tap the download button, they'll see a message that says, "Are you sure?" and gives them the option to cancel or to request download. 

Parents, you'll take it from there. If you approve a request, you can set up time limits for the app. And if an approved app ever becomes problematic, you can delete it any time. 

Pay close attention to the apps your child requests. I noticed some apps, like Facebook and Reddit, didn't show up in search, but I was able to find adult apps like Tinder or Grindr. So, your child might request things that aren't age-appropriate. View our list of dangerous apps for kids to know what to look for.

We also recommend rejecting any  extra web browsers because Wingio can only block URLs on Google Chrome. 

With Wingio, you can choose exactly how relaxed or strict you want to be with your child's internet access. Google Chrome is the default web browser, and it's the one you have to use if you want to block websites. 

You have three main options:

1. Disable Chrome completely for kids who are too young to be online.
2. Block all websites (place an * in the block field) and only allow certain ones, like sites your child needs for school. This also blocks Google search results.
3. Allow all websites but block certain ones that you don't want your child to visit, and enable safe search features to filter adult content out of Google image results.

If you choose option three, know that your child can definitely still view adult/mature/explicit content online.

The safe browsing features limit what shows up on Google search, but Google isn't the only search engine on the internet. Your child might try to get around content filters by trying other search engines.

To test this, I went to Yahoo.com on the Wingio phone and searched for mature content. I was shown a warning about safe search filters, but then I had the option to turn those filters off. The images that appeared definitely weren't appropriate for kids. I would add Yahoo.com to the block list.

I searched for the same thing on DuckDuckGo and Bing. Both refused to show any search results. Google limited its search results to educational sites like medical journals and Wikipedia. However, there are still some explicit images on Wikipedia, and explicit drawings tended to show up in Google's image results.

I also noticed that certain websites were available in Google's AI Mode that would otherwise have been blocked by Safe Search. 

Speaking of, I would block YouTube.com. I could search for anything and view any video on that site. 

On the plus side, Wingio did a great job blocking direct access to porn sites and some social media sites, including Facebook and Reddit. I didn't have to add these sites to the block list — they were automatically blocked in a way that seems unrelated to any other safe search settings. Interestingly, they were blocked on multiple web browsers, not just Google Chrome.  

If you're expecting Wingio to tell you when your child searches for mature or dangerous content, you'll be disappointed. You also can't manually sift through their search history.

Wingio does display a list of websites that your child has visited, but this isn't a complete picture of your child's internet history. A lot can be seen and read in Google's search results without ever clicking onto another website. 

Unfortunately, the browsing history list is difficult to read because it's riddled with nonsense links. I believe these are advertisements that run on other pages. So, for example, if your child visited a local news website that displayed an advertisement for HBO, it would look like your child had visited HBO. 

Wingio is a UK phone, and I'm located in the US. As such, I wasn't able to install a SIM card for cellular data, and I couldn't test:

• Unknown call blocking
• Location accuracy
• Geofencing accuracy

I tested all other features over WiFi. 

There are three costs associated with Wingio:

1. The upfront price of the phone
2. The monthly or onetime fee for Wingio
3. The monthly fee for the SIM card (sold separately)

The upfront price ranges from £149 to £699, but sometimes the phones are on sale for less.

The Wingio fee is the same regardless of which Samsung phone you choose: £7.99/mo., £79.99/yr., or £199 upfront.

The price of a SIM card varies by provider but typically cost £4/mo. to £30/mo.

Two- to four-day shipping is free for orders over £200, but you can pay to get the phone sooner:

• £5.99 for 1- to 2-day shipping
• £9.99 for 1-day shipping
• £15.00 for overnight shipping

Although I identified several things I would change about Wingio, I still think it's a great phone for kids. Parents have plenty of controls at their fingertips, and Wingio makes a good investment because it can grow with your child.