Gabb, Bark, Troomi and Pinwheel in the UK.

What these phones are

Gabb, Bark, Troomi and Pinwheel are the four names a UK parent meets first when they search for a "safe phone for kids", because the category was built in the United States and most of the coverage is American. They are managed smartphones: an Android handset with a parent-controlled launcher, a vetted app list rather than an open app store, location sharing, and a parent dashboard, usually on a monthly subscription. The idea is a phone that looks like a smartphone to the child but cannot become one.

Which are available in the UK?

Pinwheel. Available. Pinwheel sells in the UK through its own UK store, and the Pinwheel Plus is around £279 plus £13.99 a month for the Caregiver Portal, which whitelists apps and contacts from a curated list. It is the one of these four a UK family can actually buy and use today. The honest UK take is in the Pinwheel Plus review.

Gabb. Not available. Gabb is a US product tied to US mobile networks, so a Gabb phone will not work as a phone on a UK network. There is no UK Gabb store at the time of writing.

Bark. Not available as a handset. The Bark Phone runs on a US network and is not sold for use in the UK. Bark's monitoring software is a separate product with wider reach, but the Bark Phone itself is a US-only device.

Troomi. Not available. Troomi is a US carrier-based product and does not currently operate in the UK.

Availability changes, and these are vendor-network arrangements rather than fixed facts, so if a precise answer matters check the vendor's own site at the point you are deciding. There is enough UK demand that a public petition has called for these phones to be made available here, which tells you the gap is real.

Why a UK parent keeps hitting a wall

The search results for "safe phone for kids" are dominated by US comparisons of Gabb against Bark against Troomi, none of which a UK family can buy. The phones are genuinely good for what they do; they are simply tied to US networks. So the useful UK question is not "which of these four" but "what does the same job here".

The UK answer

For most children a simple phone does the job a managed smartphone is trying to do, by removing the apps rather than policing them: the Nokia 3210 at around £79, or the Nokia 235 4G at around £40, with no app store, no browser and no social media to manage in the first place. The full ranked list is at /best-simple-phones, and the ninety-second picker is at /which-phone.

Where a smartphone is genuinely required, for a school app or a medical reason, the Pinwheel Plus is the UK-available managed option, and a refurbished iPhone SE at around £169 with Apple Screen Time set up properly before first use is the mainstream managed route. The reasoning for both is in the by-age guides.