Wi-Fi Phones Reviewed 77
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."
BUY A MOBILE PHONE (Score:3, Interesting)
When I go anywhere, the Skype phone stays at home, while my proper, Nokia GSM phone goes with me.
T-Mobile UMA Works! (Score:4, Interesting)
Skype with my sony mylo works great! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:mucho problems (Score:3, Interesting)
I seek anonimity from time to time, and I'm not a criminal.
Why you don't need WiFi on your phone. (Score:4, Interesting)
I own a Sharp Zaurus and a Palm Treo 650 along with a WiFi card for both. I never use WiFi. Here's why.
There are several scenarios where you think it'll be useful to have WiFi on your phone, either for e-mail, browsing or VoIP.
At Home or Work
Once the novelty wears off, you will realize that the computer in the corner is much better suited for internet and e-mail usage. If you want to curl up on the couch or wander the house doing chores while talking to your Mom via VoIP, add a $20 bluetooth dongle onto your computer, router or NSLU2 and use that instead; you'll double your battery life.
At a Friend's House
Most friends have computers they'll let you borrow. Extensive surfing or VoIP'ing is antisocial, you won't be taking advantage of that as much as you think you will.
Out on the street
By the time you find a free, open WiFi hotspot, your battery will be dead. GPRS is so much more reliable that once you hook it up, you'll just end up using that instead.
On vacation
I spent two months in Europe and blogged every day for the entire trip using my Treo 650 and a bluetooth keyboard. I brought along the WiFi adaptor and never used it because it was such a pain to find and connect to a hot spot. Instead, I transferred articles from the Treo to computers in Internet Cafe's via the SD card and a USB adaptor. At a coffeeshop to work outside the office
A laptop is so much more usable that you'll end up lugging the heavy thing to the coffeeshop rather than taking along just your phone.
Summary
WiFi is nice to have, but it shouldn't significantly affect purchase decisions. Don't ignore beautiful phones like the Neo1973 or Treos just because they don't have WiFi.
IMAGINE (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, just enable these to connect and route traffic automatically
Now,
1. Everybody can now have a wifi phone with free
2. Nobody will need an ISP
3. Nobody will need a phone company
4. Nobody can shut you off
5. Everyone can have a fast connection
6. You do not have to sign a service agreement
7. what else?
Re:Joke (Score:3, Interesting)
Much better then any of the crappy Taiwanese "VoIP" phones, or anything that does Skype only.
The SIP client is fully integrated with the contacts, just overall very well done by Nokia. Plus they release firmware updates on a regular basis, which can be done from a Windows PC.
The phone detects WiFi coverage, e.g. home or work, and automatically registers the SIP client.
Since it's SIP, you can use any one of the hundreds of ITSPs (Internet Telephony Service Provider) out there to make cheap international calls, if that is what you want.
wifi is important for some (Score:2, Interesting)
What I want (Score:2, Interesting)
HP predicted that in 12 or so years, we'll have watches that act as a communications gateway. The watch is the cellular/wifi router, and your various personal devices (handset, ear piece, PDA, laptop, camera, etc.) will connect to your watch via Wifi or Bluetooth. (so, you'll have an external (watch->hotspot) Wifi network, and an internal (device->watch) Wifi network).
So, your handset becomes just a bluetooth device that can tell the watch what # to dial, whether to use the cellular network to make the call, or a SIP/VOIP interface via IP (the cellular IP capabilities or via the local Wifi hotspot if one is available), and then also acts as your bluetooth speaker and microphone. The watch itself might have a simple UI for making calls, and then a "screen saver" that might make it look like a watch (analog, digital, xearth faces would be cool ... one of the xearth clones that uses actual earth images instead of flat green and blue). Combine that with Seagate's new bluetooth hard drive, Sony's stereo bluetooth headset, and you have a distributed network of specialized devices that implement all of these functions instead of a monolithic device (ie. lets embrace the unix philosophy here!).
The thing is: I don't think we need to wait 12 years. I don't think it would take too much to add to a Trolltech Qtopia Green Phone to make it usable as such a device. The complication is: making it smaller (take off the keypad, clearly), and where do you put the antenna?
I think a basic antenna could go in the watchband, but you could also have various external antenna ideas that depend on how "geek chique" you want to be. Perhaps an extended "watchband" that goes up over the back of your hand, adding a keypad and antenna extension inside of the extra area. Or a "gauntlet" type watchband that has antennas in it, a keypad, and maybe pouches for extra batteries and other accessories like the bluetooth hard drives. That gives you basic connectivity with the "normal" watchband, and then better connectivity depending on how "out of the ordinary" you want to look. Or you could have slightly more stealthy extensions like the ipod jacket that puts wires into the fabric of the jacket, so your antenna is somewhere in your jacket, and your accessory pouches are in the jacket pockets ... you'd just need a wire to go from your sleeve to the expansion port on the watch. Then you could have jackets in multiple styles (windbreaker, blazer, etc.)
But, if you remove the area on the green phone where the keypad is, are you left with enough physical space for the rest of the device? I don't know. I think it would be worth looking into. I know that you can already eliminate the area of the phone's board that makes up the camera, and probably some of what implements the storage space and external storage card. All of that gets moved to other devices.
(Note: a company in australia already does make a cell phone watch, but it's a flip-phone kinda thing.. and I don't think it acts as much of a gateway for other devices. And, another company makes a watch that can act as a bluetooth device will tell you who is calling, and I think allow you to make/accept calls by telling your phone what to do, so the "bluetooth handset" isn't much of an extrapolation, for those who really want to have a handset.)
That's the communication device I want. The watch cellular/wifi gateway. Sony's MyLO could already make use of it, along with other Wifi/SIP phones.
If the mylo is in there... (Score:3, Interesting)