I just got a Yoto Gen 3 for my four year old. We primarily use it to listen to bedtime stories.
The reason we have it is to listen to stories with as little phone or screen interaction as possible.
We are loving it, but I've noticed a few control limitations that seem very obvious, so much so that I'd assume people have requested these changes already, but I couldn't find similar posts with a quick search. All of these could be fixed, in theory, with a firmware update.
Most of these features stem from the desire to have the phone away as much as possible. And generally these could be solved by allowing users to more fully customize controls.
1) Allow a user to start sleep mode using player controls. This could be done by, say, a double click on the left or right controller to trigger sleep mode options, and then spinning the dial to select how long, followed by a single press to confirm selection. My daughter almost always listens before bed and falls asleep listening. She would be capable enough to start sleep mode herself, but of course doesn't have a phone. For my part, if I'm with her, I want to avoid pulling out my phone and should be able to trigger sleep mode on the device itself.
2) Allow me to customize the left (and right) button. People use their Yoto players for different things. My daughter usually listens to audiobooks, as opposed to music. With audiobooks, you rarely skip chapters, so the single press features are almost useless. What is nice while listening to audiobooks is a 15 second rewind. What if we allowed a single press on left to be that? Or a 30 second rewind? Or maybe an easier access to a pause? Why not just give the user the power to control the player how they want, but customizing controls in the app?
3) Allow me to pause and skip in Bluetooth mode using player controls. This seems very obvious, and I can't remember the last time I used a Bluetooth speaker without this functionality, if ever. Part of Yoto's ethos is less screen time, so please don't make me pull out my phone to pause a story if I happen to be casting it via Bluetooth.