Handing a child a phone takes five minutes. Handing them one that still carries your Google account, your saved card and four years of photos is how families end up with surprise app-store bills, or a device that refuses every password they own after a reset. A retired handset needs about an hour of work, and the order of the steps matters more than any single setting.
Remove the account before you wipe it
Factory Reset Protection is the trap. On any Android phone with a Google account signed in, a reset makes the handset demand the last synced account password during setup, and if that password is gone the phone is a brick with a glass screen. So work backwards: Settings – Passwords & accounts – Google, remove every account listed, delete the screen lock under Security, and only then run Settings – System – Reset options – Erase all data (factory reset).
Samsung and Xiaomi each add a second lock. A Galaxy handset can still ask for the previous Samsung account, and a Redmi, Poco or Realme tied to a Mi account will request that password after a reset; remove those in Settings – Accounts first. If the reset refuses to run, delete the work profile at Settings – Security – Device admin apps and try again.
Check the battery before you check the software
A three-year-old phone that lived on a charger often has a swollen cell. Lay it face down on a flat table and press one corner: rocking, a gap along the seam, or a screen that has begun to lift means the battery is expanding, and that phone should not go to a child at all. A replacement cell for a Redmi Note 10 or a Galaxy A32 runs 1,500 to 2,500 taka fitted at a repair shop. A swollen one gets replaced or recycled, never passed on.
Set a software floor at the same time. Family Link works properly on Android 8 and newer, and anything below that has stopped receiving security patches, which matters far more on a device that browses the open web.
Give the child their own account, not yours
Letting a child use your Google account hands them your inbox, your Play purchase history and every password Chrome has saved. Create a supervised child account instead: install Google Family Link for parents on your own phone, then Create account – For my child using the setup described in Google’s Family Link help pages. The child’s real date of birth is required, and under-13 accounts are supervised by default, which is exactly the behaviour you want. The parent app can then approve installs, cap daily use and show which apps were opened.
On iPhone the equivalent is a child Apple ID created through Family Sharing with Ask to Buy switched on. Do not sign the child into your Apple ID “just for the App Store” — shared accounts break Screen Time limits and put your iCloud photo library on their screen.
Family Link settings to change on day one
- Daily limit — start at 90 minutes. It is far easier to add time later than to take it away.
- Bedtime — 21:00 to 07:00 locks the device, and it is the setting parents keep longest.
- App approval — Settings – Controls – App approval – All apps, so nothing installs without a tap on your phone.
- Location — on, and confirm it is not shared with contacts.
- Play Store — Settings – Authentication – Require authentication for purchases – All purchases, which stops a game charging your card for gems.
Then cut the risk surface. No banking apps, no WhatsApp logged in on your number, and Install unknown apps off for every browser. A data-only SIM or plain Wi-Fi is safer than a live number, because it removes premium-SMS charges and closes the SIM-swap route into any account that still trusts that number.
Test it for a week before you hand it over
Put your own SIM in for two days and use the phone the way a child will: install a game, stream a video, let the battery run flat, charge it overnight. You are looking for a battery that drops 40 per cent in an hour, a charging port that only works at one angle, and dead pixels in the corner where games put their buttons.
Before handover, add a case and tempered glass (300 to 600 taka), label the inside of the case with the child’s name and your number, and set an emergency contact reachable from the lock screen. Test that yourself: on the PIN pad tap Emergency, then Emergency information, and confirm your number dials.
Two related jobs are worth doing while the phone is on the bench. The 15-minute Android permissions audit shows which apps kept camera or location access nobody meant to grant, and the Android theft protection settings cover the remote lock switches worth turning on before the phone leaves the house.