> if you don‘t want your kids to read your emails, you need to buy them their own iPad.

You're right. But I still think I would buy my kid their own iPad even if my iPhone/iPad had a kid mode. My kid has their own iPad and I still find times when it would be ideal to give them access to the basic features on my phone/ipad. Frankly, if iOS just added the ability to password protect any app then that would be good enough, and it would be useful for more than kids... hand you phone to a coworker or relative to look at photos they can't accidentally/intentionally hop over to your email.

Your last use-case is sort of covered by Android's screen pinning feature[0]. You have to enable it in settings, but it's useful, and seems to work well.

[0] https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/6118421?hl=en This link is for Nexus, but I think it's included in all version of Android since 5.0 Lollipop.

iOS has this too, it's called Guided Access.

iOS lets you block access to a single app, so that even if they click the home button they can't go anywhere else.

I hadn't heard of that. How do you use this feature?

Awesome. Thank you!

Buying kids their own phone is what this leads to. The kid only knows the kid-mode PIN for their own phone.

This would be a phone for the kid that was locked into basic mode during school hours and then maybe unlocked on weekends or for a game session.

Once upon a time, kids went to school without phones, so it is possible...

There's some of that in iOS: "Settings -> Restrictions", which will be locked by a passcode.

It has a lot of options, but probably not enough (like restricting specific apps.) You can however set to allow only apps rated "4+ years, 6+, etc.

Time limitation is possible too, via "Settings -> Accessibility -> Guided Access".

> I‘m pretty sure Apple won‘t do that, because they want you to buy your kids their own iPhone.

The funny thing is, Apple didn't want to call their computer a "PC", but their smartphone is more a personal computer than any other brand.

Android has had multi-user accounts for months or years now (I can't remember exactly when it was introduced).