[asterisk-users] wifi sip phone real-world experiences?

[Bryan Laird]

Right now I can only speak to the WIP300 but

I've been evaluating it for about a week now and really I have to say  
I'm fairly pleased.  It works it works //well// but that's not to say  
it's perfect.

  - Physically the phone feels very light and cheap, that if you were  
to drop it that it might not survive very many of them.  The buttons  
feel more
like a toy than anything else but once you get beyond that it works.

- Address book storage is ok the interface from the phone is fairly  
standard for what you would see in a cell phone and adding entries  
isn't really
all that horrid of a task.  You can also add entries via the web  
interface which does make for an easier way to add several entries  
but the lack of
anything resembling a 'sync' function could be considered bothersome.

- Call quality, so far so good however, I do believe the unit has a  
bit of an over touchy MIC.. the quality is clear but but it seems to  
pick up background
noise and white noise pretty good.  That's not to say that it will  
drown out your voice but you will hear the background if your in a  
server or climate controlled room.

- The CPU on the phone does appear to be a bit underpowered.  Two  
devices right next to each-other one a PC soft-phone and one the WIP  
300 using the 'qualify' feature
in asterisk you can clearly see a different in latency and how long  
it takes for the wip300 to process some sip transactions.  This  
doesn't effect call quality but it is something
worth noting if I'm taking the time to write this out.

- Firmware: when you get the phone if it's running anything < 1.0.9  
upgrade to the latest from linksys, there are a slew of bugs that  
existing the factory shipping version that will
likely make you think you really got cheated if you don't upgrade the  
firmware.  Although make a note of the earlier thread upgrading has  
some bugs too, and don't try it form a mac.

- I haven't tried the email function, as lack of intelligent keying  
(adaptive text for word completion) to me makes this a worthless  
feature.

- Wireless, actually after changing to the latest version I've been  
fairly happy with the range coverage and life of the unit.  You can  
load in multiple profiles for which AP
you are talking to and the phone will register with that profile.   
You can associate different AP's with different SIP accounts which  
could be handy for traveling offices.  The
documentation doesn't mention it but you can create a profile that's  
a wild-card which will cause the phone to register to any open AP it  
finds.  This I've  found works fairly
well as well as I can go from the east side to the west side of the  
building and the unit will switch AP's without much trouble, but do  
expect a dropped call in the process.

If you have a mesh setup then the drop shouldn't happen but that's  
another story all together.

I haven't played with the various encryption options so far as I've  
only been evaluating based on open access points.  My thought is that  
likely the encryption may show
more with the CPU load depending on how the unit manages this with  
it's chip set but even at that I don't think it will cause any red  
alarms.  I could be wrong though.

Last thing, one neat thing about the wip300 if you are adventurous is  
the fact that the firmware is under GPL... so if you really felt like  
it you could probably change the behavior of
the phone.


Anyway sorry for the long message but I felt like chiming in on  
this.  All in all I don't think it's a horrible phone I do however  
think it's over priced for what it is but not enough demand on
this type of device is always going to keep the price up in the air.


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bryan Laird, Sr. Manager CM Operations
                        -+-
Cablemodems are the gateway to the Internet.
The Internet is a gateway to some things that are  better left un-seen.