But recently there have been a couple of encouraging announcements.

This offering from Vitanet, in Germany, looks like the best solution so far. Unfortunately the website's all in German, but you get the picture - the phone has just three large coloured buttons, two of which are programmed by the user (or buyer) and the last is hardcoded to call the emergency services.

Secondly, the Tu-Ka company in Japan is doing great business with their "S-Phone". The buttons are large, have only one function each, the volume is very loud, there's no text messaging, and the battery is designed so that if the owner forgets to charge it for days on end and fails to use the phone during the intervening time, it will still happily receive a call a month later.

It's done so well that Tu-Ka has taken over Vodafone as Japan's leading mobile company.