Baby Games: Piano & Baby Phone

Review by eFreeware

Baby Games: Piano & Baby Phone is a free educational app from RV AppStudios, built for the youngest audience on a phone or tablet. It is a collection of simple touch activities, songs and sound games rather than a single game, and it sits in the Educational category with an Everyone rating. It has been installed more than 50 million times and holds a 4.4 average from over 60,600 ratings, which suggests a lot of parents have at least kept it on their devices.

The main reason to consider it is the way it is pitched to families: the developer says it contains no third-party ads and no in-app purchases, and that it was released free as a project by parents who wanted better early learning material. For anyone hunting for a first app for a baby, that combination of a free download and no third-party advertising is the headline. The rest of the appeal is breadth: several distinct modes inside one app, so a child who loses interest in one activity can be moved to another without installing anything else.

What a child actually does in the app

The activities are all built around tapping, dragging and listening. In First Words, pictures of animals and birds are matched to the sounds they make, and there is a What's this? game for testing how many a child remembers. The Music Room hands over four instruments, drums, piano, trumpet and xylophone, and every tap on the screen produces a real recorded sound. Pop 'n Play is the simplest of the set: balloons of different shapes, including animal and smiley ones, burst when touched, and a fruit smash game runs alongside it.

Fireworks takes a slightly different approach. A child taps or drags to set off lights across the screen, with sound effects to match, and the app supports multiple touches at once, so all five fingers can be used together. The Baby Phone mode turns the device into a pretend handset where a call to an animal is answered with a cartoon face and a sound effect, and the buttons play notes, numbers and nursery rhymes.

The nursery rhyme selection is the thread that runs through several of these modes. The ABC alphabet song appears alongside Five Little Ducks, Humpty Dumpty, Rain Rain Go Away, Wheels on the Bus and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, among others. The developer frames the whole package as a way to develop attention, observation, memory and fine motor control, which is the usual set of claims made for this type of app and is best treated as the intent behind the design rather than a measured outcome.

How the modes fit together

First Words has the closest thing to a task, since matching a sound to a picture implies a right answer, while the Music Room, Pop 'n Play and Fireworks are open-ended and reward any touch at all.

The Baby Phone mode sits somewhere in between. It borrows the shape of a real phone, with buttons to press and calls to place, and it mixes animal sounds with musical notes and rhymes. That variety is what makes the app feel larger than a single toy, though it also means the experience is uneven: some modes will hold a child's attention far longer than others, and which ones depends entirely on the child.

The most recent update adds a Lucas Cloud Running mode, in which the character runs and jumps alongside musical instruments.

Free, with no third-party ads or purchases

The app is free to download and carries no third-party advertising and no in-app purchases. That decision comes from a deliberate policy: children of this age should not be exposed to advertising content, and keeping the app free was intended to make it available to more families. Whatever the commercial logic, the practical result for a parent is a download with nothing to buy and no advertising network inside it.

I would treat that as the strongest argument in the app's favor, because it removes the two things parents most often worry about when handing a phone to a small child. It also means there is no paid tier to weigh against a free one, and nothing suggests a subscription or a locked set of activities.

The age range it is built for

The interface is lively and easy to use, and the age it was designed around is six to twelve months, though one and two year olds, and even kindergarteners, will find things to enjoy. That range is wide, and it is worth thinking about what it means in practice. A six-month-old will mostly bat at the screen and hear a sound come back; a two-year-old can deliberately pick the Music Room and try to make a tune; an older child may enjoy the rhymes and the phone mode without needing help.

It suits parents who want something a baby can poke at safely, with sound and color as the reward, and who value the absence of advertising more than they value structured lessons. It also suits families who want several activities in one place, since the modes cover music, animals, popping and fireworks without needing separate downloads.

What it offers is exposure and play, which is a reasonable fit for the age group named, and the developer's own framing of it as a tool for memory and observation is consistent with that.

Where the experience is likely to wear thin

The variety across the app delays that, but it does not remove it.

The developer designed it for very young children, and the activities depend on a child being willing to touch a screen and listen.

It is a free, ad-free bundle of simple sound and touch activities for babies, and judged against that goal the scope is appropriate.

A first app worth keeping on the device

The mix of animal sounds, instruments, balloons, fireworks and a pretend phone gives a child several things to try, and the nursery rhymes add a familiar thread for anyone who already sings them at home.

The app has been out since April 2019 and was updated as recently as September 2026, so it is not a one-off release that has been left behind. For a first introduction to a touchscreen, with no advertising to worry about, it is easy to justify the download.

What's new

Make music and adventure come together in our newest update! • New Lucas Cloud Running mode • Run, jump, and play with fun musical instruments • Enjoy a playful musical adventure with Lucas!