I've been doing tech support for a couple decades and I have had the pleasure of training many people from all walks of life on how to use these things. Some of them never used a smartphone or even wanted it.

In the early days blackberry had an edge with the keyboard and minimal apps. It was very corporate and standardized.

As we moved onto early android phones it did have very helpful features to make it more like a dumb feature phone. Using these was a huge boon with those that didn't care to learn how to use them or really just didn't get it.

As time went on, these features were dropped or made irrelevant by other invasive features (like the busier and busier notification drawer)

What I found curious was many of these helpful features didn't go away entirely but were locked behind a secret corporate mode. This more extreme level of control is typically exposed through MDM software.

I've found over the years that apple devices (these also have a corpo mode) are easier for the elderly to use as the UI has largely stayed the same and the OS treats you like you're dumb. It has better accessibility options and my elderly customers love talking to siri.

I feel like as the knobs and levers generations dies out; the attention manufacturers and designers put towards this demographic dwindle drastically.

I remember the old GameBoy with the contrast knob on the side was super useful, and something like that may be useful. But there is also the argument if you've reached this point in life today, you're probably not going to use it unless forced to. And teaching people who feel forced into something is unproductive and often makes them more afraid of technology. Some would say leave them to the wolves by this point. (not how I feel)