Tin Can

TinCan

About this app

Tin Can: The Kid Phone That’s All Talk.

Remember when phones just made calls? When your best friend’s number lived in your head and your social network was whoever answered the landline? Tin Can brings that freedom back — but for your kid.

It’s a screen-free phone that runs on Wi-Fi and only calls approved contacts. No apps. No strangers. No doom scrolling. Just grandparent chats, playdate plans, and “Can I stay five more minutes?” calls.

The Tin Can companion app gives parents (and only parents) the behind-the-scenes magic that controls their Tin Can phone:
• Approve who they can call (and who can call them)
• Set call hours (like bedtime is not party line time)
• See call history
• Share your Tin Can with friends to grow the crew
• Control multiple cans from one place (power move)

Tin Can: Built for kids. Approved by the same generation that made prank calls on rotary phones.

Ratings and reviews

like others, I have had trouble pairing the app with the phone. After some experimentation I found that my wifi router radio was operating on a crowded channel. I changed to a different channel and everything worked perfectly. I've had the same problem with other devices like a Google Home Display and a roomba as well. If you're having trouble pairing, try changing your router's channel. Tin Can is otherwise a delightful device.

Two huge flaws. The concept of this phone and app are nice, but (1) the cord to the headset is very loose, and constantly drops out of the phone ending the call. (2) if there is any pause between the numbers being dialed it immediately goes to an error message, and dialing must start over. This is massively frustrating for my kid who after just a couple weeks of trying already doesn't want to use the phone anymore because of this.

So frustrating. Attempted to connect the tin can to Bluetooth using my Android phone tin can phone app. Despite following all instructions (and multiple emails back and forth with support), the app could never find the phone. Finally tried with an Apple phone, and got it connected. But even the Apple version of the app is very glitchy. We'll see how using the phone goes! Based on these reviews, I'm not holding my breath.

What’s new

- Communities are on the line! Beta support for our first Tin Can communities rollouts.
- Squashed a few small bugs to keep things running smoothly.