Wi-Fi Phones Reviewed

prostoalex writes "With municipal Wi-Fi taking off and startups distributing free wireless routers for those willing to share their Internet connections, Wi-Fi phones or hybrid phones with both cellular and Wi-Fi access, are attracting interest. Dr. Dobb's Journal runs a review of 6 wireless phone devices available on the market today. The cheapest ones start around $80, but lock you into T-Mobile branded hotspots. The more expensive ones, Sony Mylo in particular, offer support for 3rd party clients, such as Skype, GTalk and Yahoo! Messenger."

Linux

[bendodge]

How about some much cheaper Linux smartphones! http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9423084269. html [linuxdevices.com]

Joke

[jmorris42]

First off the title of the article is "Wi-Fi phones reviewed" not Skype phones reviewed, not dual mode phones reviewed, not Vonage phones reviewed. None of the models discussed actually support any sort of generic Voip, although I think Google Talk is sorta SIP based so the Sony might qualify if it can be delinked from Google. They ignored the actual standards based WiFi VoIP phones which do exist.

Add in the fact the idiot confused 802.11a and 802.11n(draft) and you really wonder what happened to the editorial standards Dr. Dobbs used to have.

So does anyone have experience with a WiFi SIP phone that isn't a horror story? I have tried a Zyxel and a D-link and hate em both.

nokia n770/800

[ihatethetv]

It's a shame they left out nokia's internet tablet. The 800 is supposed to ship with google talk, and its wide-open linux so it's possible to add other clients as well.

Nokia E70

[Greyfox]

I bought a Nokia E70 [nokia.com] a while back. It's not particularly easy to get ahold of one of these things in the USA but it's the first phone I found that does everything I want it to. It's a regular cellphone (Takes my T-Mobile SIM card just fine) but it also has wifi and a SIP client on it. When I wander in-range of my wireless network at home it detects it and registers as a SIP client on my asterisk server. Incoming landline calls hit the asterisk server and then can ring through to my handset.

Overall it's a great little phone and I don't have to keep track of which handset I need to be using. Now if only I could get my company to adopt asterisk and wireless...

Nokia E60 - WiFi + SIP

[Renesis]

I've been using VOIP (SIP) at home for a few years now. From the UK I call my girlfriend on her landline in the USA for almost nothing.

I've used lots of different phones and adapters. I don't generally use any "softphones" (VOIP applications that require a PC), nor any of the phones that require your PC to be on.

The absolute best voice quality, and ease-of-use is the Nokia E60 I recently bought. It was about US$300 from eBay (SIM free - i.e. generic, not locked to any network). It's standards-compliant (802.11 + SIP) and connects to both of my current VOIP providers (Sipgate [sipgate.co.uk] and VoipBuster [voipbuster.com]) without trouble.

Whenever I get home (within range of my access point) it instantly registers with my VOIP provider of choice as well as staying connected to the cell network via 3G/GSM. Whenever I click a contact to make a call it simply asks whether I want to call by "Cell" or "Internet" - and that decides how the call is routed. Incoming calls on SIP and cell work great - so you can have more than one number on your phone at the same time.

The voice quality is superb and it is so totally easy-to-use once configured (configuration is slow when you have to type all the server names on a numeric pad). The only downsides are that I only get about 2 hours of talk time over WiFi (after that I have to plug in the charger to keep talking), and that there is no built-in camera.

There is a review here: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/Nokia _E60_Preview_The_Candybar_With_Almost_Everything.p hp [allaboutsymbian.com]

It's very stable and reliable, unlike it's N-Series brothers which are a POS. I can highly recommend the phone.

Samsung SCH i730

[ArmedLemming]

Although it's abit pricier [vzw.com] than the models listed in TFA ($199 with 2-year contract), it does everything those phones do and more. Since it runs Windows Mobile 2003 (or later), it can run Skype to make the calls, it has WiFi built-in, and of course does EV-DO. Add in its bluetooth support and basically this thing does it everything you need (except run Linux I guess)

The downside to this model is its relatively short battery life, but it's even got a slide out qwerty keypad so texting isn't half bad...

Here's a link [samsung.com] to it...

Joke Correction

[khanyisa]

Google Talk is not SIP based, it uses Jabber with the (being standardised) Jingle extension for transferring the streaming audio for talking...