[asterisk-users] wireless VOIP phone recommendations?

[SIP]

Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 14:37 +0000, henry at henrythebig.com wrote:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>> I use Linksys WIP 330 and the sound is good, talk time with full battery go up to 2 hours, I'm happy with.
>>     
>
> Ahhh.  OP wanted to know about wirelessly networked phones.  Interesting
> as they are (and expensive -- the WIP-330 retails for $229 at
> voiplink.com), I was hoping this would be a thread about simply cordless
> IP (SIP or IAX) phones.  I think these tend to be available at a more
> reasonable price.
>
> I have a Panasonic GLOBALRANGE BB-GT1500CB
> (http://www.panasonic.ca/english/telecom/telephones/globarange/index.asp) which technically is supposed to only work with the "Joip" service, but spoofing this phone to work with your Asterisk server is not too difficult.  It's a reasonable phone at a reasonable price (CAN$70 the last time I looked at a retail shop) but I have found that it can "drop out" sometimes.
>
> I tend to think the drop-out is in the audio handling in the handset
> itself rather than anything on the network.  It seems like it might be
> some kind of silence detection and optimization circuitry (i.e. not
> transmitting dead air to the base station) that just doesn't work in
> real-life as well as it did on paper.
>
> Also this Panasonic phone does not do call-waiting.  When there is a
> call in session on it, an attempt to route a second call to it from
> Asterisk results in a "busy here" message back from the phone.  :-(
>
> I wonder what else is out there in a more affordable "consumer" price
> range.  I guess there is always ATAs and regular phones.  I've always
> wondered though if there is any benefit to even a basic phone such as
> the GLOBALRANGE phones being native SIP vs. just using an ATA.  I have
> not discovered anything this phone can do above and beyond what our
> standard cordless Panasonic phone does plugged into an ATA.
>
> b.
>
>   
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For the most part, for day to day dialing, you won't see any really 
significant difference between a WiFi phone and an ATA with a regular 
cordless or DECT phone. You may lose the ability to dial SIP URIs 
(although not all wifi sip handsets have this ability). 

However, in general, none of the true Wi-Fi phones we've tested other 
than the Nokia E series have been worth mucking with. Dropping off APs, 
poor NAT capability, low battery life, troublesome configurations, 
random weirdness -- these seem to abound in the world of wi-fi SIP. This 
is why the usual scenario for any sort of office-wide deployment 
involves DECT.

It's a shame, really. With wi-fi being so prevalent so many places we 
go, and with the possibility for portability being outstanding, it's a 
shame the hardware manufacturers haven't quite made anything worth buying.

N.