One of the big challenges for parents these days is that you may want to give your kids access to a phone for emergencies or tracking before you are willing to give them access to the internet, social media apps, and so on. There’s also a growing trend of people buying dumb phones in order to reduce their own phone addiction, like the Nokia shown above.Apple is giving parental controls [a major upgrade in iOS 27](https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/10/apple-is-giving-screen-time-and-parental-controls-a-long-overdue-upgrade-in-ios-27/), but there’s a little-known way to turn an iPhone into a dumb phone without waiting for this …