Tin Can: the Seattle brand that gives the phone back its one job
Born in Seattle from a parents' need, Tin Can makes a coiled-cord landline phone that runs on Wi-Fi and only calls approved contacts.
Tin Can makes a phone that only makes calls. A receiver with a keypad, a coiled cord to twist around a finger, a base that plugs into a socket: the object has the silhouette of an old-fashioned handset, but it runs over the home Wi-Fi, and its ribbed cylindrical shape recalls a tin can, hence the brand’s name. No screen, no messaging, no apps on the child’s side: only the numbers that parents have approved can ring or be called.
An idea from parents, in Seattle
The brand is based in Seattle, in Washington State. According to the Spokesman-Review, it grew out of the initiative of Chet Kittleson, a father who was looking for a way for his daughter, then seven, to reach her friends without a smartphone. The team developed prototypes for about two years, first handed to ten families: the founder’s own and friends of his children.
The brand gives its own version: it all started as a side project among neighbours, and word of mouth did the rest. Its introduction speaks of families across the country; its press material adds that the venture began in West Seattle, with a handful of families. According to Wikipedia’s entry on the product, the phone launched in April 2025, and the company announced a funding round in December 2025.
One product, four colours
The range is a single device, simply called Tin Can. It comes in four playfully named colours: Answer Me Aquamarine, Static White, Landline Lemon and Later Alligator Lilac. Settings are handled through an app for adults, available on iOS and Android: approved contact list, call log, quiet hours that block incoming and outgoing calls, speed dials. The phone also has an answering machine and a speakerphone.
There are two calling options: calls between Tin Cans are included with no subscription, and a paid monthly plan, Party Line, makes it possible to call ordinary numbers too, mobile or landline. The American emergency number, 911, is always enabled.
What the brand stands for
Tin Can sums up its position in three sentences: technology designed for children does not need to be addictive to be useful; children deserve a way to reach each other that is not a screen; a phone can perfectly well be just a phone. It says it wanted a device that parents can hand over without having to choose between too much technology and too much access.
On call safety, the brand states that people outside the list, strangers or telemarketers, cannot reach the phone. It also recommends keeping another way of calling the emergency services, since the service may be limited during a power or internet outage.
Right now
Tin Can offers group orders, called Communities, for schools, parent associations or clubs: they start at twenty-five phones, and the brand commits to giving ten per cent of net sales to the chosen association when a fundraiser is attached to the order. According to the brand, the first seven batches of phones have sold out.
Why we like it
We like the clarity of the promise: a phone, and nothing else. At Tin Can, the coiled cord, the bold colours and the contact list kept by the parents all tell the same idea, that of a simple object whose role stops at the conversation.
Exactly the kind of brand we’d love to come across on O!deal one day.
Tin Can products we’ve spotted
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Tin Can: the Wi-Fi landline phone that only makes calls
A receiver with a coiled cord, and a base that plugs into a socket and joins the home Wi-Fi: the Tin Can only calls the contacts that parents have approved in the app.