The idea of Project Mom is simple: to have my mom switch from an Android phone to an iPhone with as little help from me as possible. The goal: to prove that iPhones are so easy to use..

For this, my mom will be upgrading to the iPhone SE (2nd). It is the most affordable current iPhone available today with a starting price of RM1,999. Despite the price tag, inside is the most powerful mobile processor today, the same one you can find in the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and the 11Pro Max. It also has the best single camera on the iPhone, ever.

That is important because my mom wants to get into videos.

Ever since my dad passed away, I send my mom a video every day that I am away. A minute-long video letting her know how my day went. So, she wants to do videos she could send back to me too.

There are also other reasons why I want my mom to switch to an iPhone. On the top of the list is Find Me. The feature is often used to locate missing Apple products, for example, if you misplaced your tablet. But the app can also be used to locate family and friends. I want to use Find Me so that my mom and I can locate each other at any time and have that peace of mind.

I also want to do FaceTime with my mom. I might as well introduce her to video calling and the best I have used so far is FaceTime. We have tried WhatsApp before, but FaceTime is much easier to use.

My mom also likes to take photos and videos of her animals. And since the iPhone SE shares the same camera as the primary camera on the iPhone 11 series and the same software, and processor. The results should be just as good. Which is amazing.

Anyway. I also hope that with iOS, my mom will not install all those old people apps. You know the ones. And I don’t just mean bloatware. I mean those spammy apps that they got from their WhatsApp group or some know-it-all at the congregation that they passed the phone to install some apps.

If you have Muslim parents, that will include apps for almost every single surah. You know, instead of one single app for the whole Quran, they have one app for the Ayatul Kursi, one for Yaa-Sin, one for Al-Kahf.

That one simple prompt to double-tap the side button to confirm the installation of an app will deter a  lot of junk apps on my mom’s phone.

But, all will not be perfect. The screen on the iPhone SE is admittedly smaller than any phone that my mom is used to. My dad is a guy who likes smaller phones. Also, the battery on the iPhone SE is smaller than the others.

The solution is perhaps to still let my mom use her large-screen Android phone as the stay at home content consumption device. While the more portable iPhone SE will become her take everywhere communication device.

The biggest problem would be to keep the iPhone SE safe. You see, phones do not survive my mom’s daily use. There has not been a single phone that has not suffered a cracked screen or outright broke while in my mom’s possession.

Of course, she said she doesn’t know how the phone broke, repeating the same: “I didn’t do anything”.

Even Nokia phones don’t survive her abuse. The 8.1 didn’t last a week because she plunged it into the dishwater. Thankfully the iPhone SE is water-resistant.

To give the iPhone SE a fighting chance, I bought the toughest case and screen protector I can find. I wished it was an OtterBox, but the shop didn’t have them in stock.

In my next update, I hope to be able to chronicle how my mom set up the iPhone SE all on her own.