Comment by gertrunde
13 hours ago
We bought two portals for elderly relatives, predominantly for video calling, and I don't think there has been another product, then or since, that fitted that use case as well, especially with people who maybe aren't as familiar with smartphones.
So somewhat frustrating when it all started to wind down various bits of functionality disappeared a bit at a time, until finally you had something that would receive calls, but not be able to make them - and perhaps not even that any more.
(About the only downside I saw on it was the messenger vs whatsapp tussle caused a bit too much confusion).
But it was a solid bit of household tech for several years, so +1 for that!
As for similar products i think Komp from NoIsolation is pretty identical for the use case you’re talking about.
Disclaimer: I’m friends with the founders
I'd not seen that one, and it does look like it has some nice points - although needing its own special app is rather frustrating (vs leveraging apps that people are already using).
Seems not too disimilar from the echo show's video calling capabilities in that respect (i.e. only calls within the Amazon ecosystem).
We still use our portals quite a bit, is support for these devices winding down?
They stopped getting new features a few years ago, and existing features have been gradually removed...
I think support is for ten years after the initial announcement
It's insane that you can still buy the things.