Kids love mobile phones. Ever since my son could hold things in his hands, he’s been fascinated by mobile phones. I’ve learned early on that mobile phones, however, are not something you should just hand over to those under the age of 4, especially a phone you need to use regularly. My son had the tendency to shove the darn thing into his mouth and completely coat it in a layer of drool. This obviously is not something electronics love. My son shorted out so many of my wife’s phones that all my phones have been off limits to him.

A couple of years ago, my brother gave me his old iPhone 2G that I would use as a test unit for jailbreaking and app reviews. My brother just recently upgraded to an iPhone 4 from an iPhone 3G so he again gave me his old 3G. At this point, I decided hey, why not let my son use the iPhone 2G for gaming. Here’s my reasoning.

The iPhone is a touch only device that also has a motion sensor built in. I’ve let me son try out a few games on the iPhone before and you know what? He seemed to pick up how to play games on it very quickly. Games like Bejeweled, Chuzzle and even Paper Toss he figured out how to play easily. I’m not sure if it’s because the touch gaming just felt more natural to him or if the games are just better suited for small children, but in any case, the iPhone is now his.

As a gaming platform, I’ll have to say that it has 1 major advantage over something like the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP – the amount of stuff you have to carry. With the iPhone, everything is installed on its internal memory. There is are no cartridges or disks to carry around and you never have to worry about losing any of it. It’s all self contained within the iPhone. With my Nintedo DS, I have to carry around a case for it that includes the DS and a bunch of game cartridges. Sometimes, I just don’t want to have to hold all that stuff and with the iPhone, its easily pocketable and doesn’t take up that much more space. I do  suggest wrapping the iPhone in a silicone or rubberized skin case as the iPhone is known to be a tad slippery to hold and the rubberized/silicone skins will help your child have a firmer grip on it.

Now, you could in essence do this with an iPod Touch as well but I don’t really recommend it for really small children. Why? No speakers on it (iPod Touch Gen 1). In order for your child to hear anything on the iPod Touch, they would have to wear headphones which I’m still very iffy about. I’m not too sure how safe it is to let your child use headphones at that age and I really don’t want to damage my son’s hearing.

Update 7.17.10 3.23pm est : Reader @mikeisonthenets informed me that from the 2nd gen and up iPod Touch device does feature an internal speaker so if you own a 2nd gen and up and want to use it as a gaming device for your children as well, I can also recommend this without headset usage.