| NETGEAR Skype WiFi Phone - Wireless VoIP phone - IEEE 802.11g (Wi-Fi) - Skype |
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| Features: |
Now for the first time, a phone that lets you use any WiFi network to
Call anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world for free, no PC required
Make and receive Skype phone calls wherever you have WiFi, wireless
Call any phone worldwide for pennies per minute and with NO MONTHLY FEES.
Manage your contact list and displays who's available to talk. |
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| Description: |
| NETGEAR's Skype WiFi Phone is the world's first wireless Internet phone that can make free calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world, anytime you have WiFi access, without a PC. All of your contacts are shown right on the phone's color display so you will know exactly who is on-line. You will also be more available for your friends to call, because you no longer have to be on your PC to be connected. You can even make calls to ordinary phones using Skype-Out for just pennies a minute and no monthly fees. With the Skype WiFi Phone, NETGEAR makes true mobile wireless Internet telephony a reality. |
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| User Reviews (4 total): |
Page 1 of Total 1 Pages
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Great idea, terrible execution; not ready for prime time., March 26, 2008
By David G. (Phoenix, AZ)
I have been using Skype for a few months to talk to my overseas girlfriend. Being tied to a computer has been kind of annoying, so when I saw this phone I was really excited about it -- the concept is great -- leave your laptop turned off and connect to Skype directly on Wi-Fi without a computer! Brilliant!
Well, not so fast (though the initial impressesions were good).
First, out of the box the phone looks great and feels great...the plastic is so smooth it almost feels silky.
Second, setup was a breeze and didn't even require opening the owner's manual -- just put in the battery, boot the phone (turn it on, which takes about 45-60 seconds), and then it starts looking for local networks to connect to. After selecting my home network and entering the password, the phone was connected in about 5-10 seconds. Great!
Next, you enter your Skype name and then the password, of course, after which the phone asks you if you want to save the password for future use (makes sense). Click OK and in a few seconds you're online with Skype and you can make calls and receive calls easily.....
...until the network connection drops or the phone signs you out of Skype for no reason, both of which happened REPEATEDLY during my first day of use. I could connect to my network and sign in to Skype, but a few minutes later I would look at the phone and the icon would indicate that I had been signed out of Skype.
For a little while I thought maybe my home internet connection was flaking out, but I also kept my laptop on and connected and it never had any issues at all - it was happily surfing without any problems at the same time the Netgear phone was saying it couldn't connect to the network.
Now, I wasn't willing to give up that easily, so I actually went and bought a second one of the exact same units and used it at the same time as the first one. The second phone seemed to work much better for the first 24 hours (the first one I bought stopped connecting to ANY network after the first day and is totally dead now -- it won't connect to anything). I left the second phone on all night to see if it would remain connected to the network and logged into Skype. No dice; the network connection had dropped at some point meaning any incoming calls would not have come through. This basically defeats half of the purpose of the phone (the other half would be to make outgoing calls).
Overall, I got the impression that this phone just isn't ready for final release; it's too buggy and is essentially a beta version. For example, as noted above, when you go to sign in to Skype, the phone asks you if you want to save your password so you can auto-login later. However, even if you say yes, the phone will STILL ask you for your password every single time you sign in. It's like the engineers thought of the "save password" concept during the design phase and wrote part of it into the phone's software, but then in a rush to get the phone done, they forgot to actually make the function work. Lame.
Sadly, as of March 26, 2008, there are no software updates for the phone and I am not even going to attempt to call Netgear to see if they have any info (their website contains no info re: updates). My guess or hope is that in a few months, they may release a patch or update or something to fix these issues, but until then, there's really no point in buying this phone....it is a REALLY great idea, but it just does not work as promised and in the end I am simply going to return both phones and continue looking for other options.
Sorry Netgear -- if you can get the bugs out of this, I will buy multiple units but at the moment, this thing just does not work and isn't ready for normal public use.
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Another buggy product from Netgear, October 20, 2007
By Ethan Turner (New Hampshire, USA)
Unclear whether this is the SPH-101 or the "new" SPH-200W.
I just got a SPH-200W last wednesday and it has a large number of issues.
Here is a transcript of all issues I have reported to Netgear, with still not even an admission by then that these are issues:
A summary of issues found to date and reported to netgear under case# 5879445, on 10/17.
After no response, thursday afternoon I called 1-888-NETGEAR, option 4. Argued with a useless Indian (who spoke very poor English) for over 2 hour. He kept going away for 10 minutes at a time to "check with his senior engineer", leaving me on hold.
He clearly didn't understand anything I said to him and kept saying "don't worry I will take care of you".
He was clearly following a script and wouldn't escalate me to level 2, so I played a long, did a reset, wasted more time. When I finally got to an American engineer at level 2.
Now, saturday 10/20, I am on the phone again, and another moronic Indian has had me on hold for yet another 60 minutes, theoreticaly waiting for level 2 support?
1. SPH 200W does not reliably detect headset (which works fine with several other devices, including my cellphone and the GE DECT Skype phone).
2. On the few ocassions that I have coerced it to detect my headset (without turning off and back on again - which takes about 2 minutes!), no speaker or microphone audio comes out of either the headset or the phone itself.
3. If I boot phone with headset plugged in, it is recognized, and speaker audio is correctly routed to it, but microphone audio is not. Called parties hear NOTHING!
4. Unit did a "System error - please reboot" on me once - 5 minutes out of the box when trying to make my first Skype call.
5. Unit takes around 60 seconds to boot.
6. Skype contacts status is not updated correctly - often showing contacts offline, who are in effect ONLINE!
7. When dialing an incorrect (too short) number - not 1+ area code + phone number, you incorrectly get an error of "You need to buy more Skype Credits". Clearly the wrong error message.
7a. My GE DECT Skype phone has a "default" area code, that gets prepended to 7 digit numbers - where is this on the SPH200W?
To date, Netgear hasn't even admitted that these are issues that they intend to fix!
We have a long log under case# 5879445, running on Netgear's support web site. They keep promising to
contact me to resolve this and noone actually does call me!
Very very unhappy with this, my first Netgear product. Should Netgear actually respond to these issues I will post updates.
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It earned it's 1 star but there is a glaring tech problem, August 11, 2007
By (the real thing) (santa clara, CA USA)
The problem mentioned in 4th place by the previous poster is serious. Almost all hotspots (even free ones) have a signon page that you get by going to any webpage in your browser after hitting their access point (you can't traceroute or ping until you do this - you are limited to their signon page only - you look to be on the net - but not really)
Once you've paid your day's worth of $ to use the net on your laptop, you STILL must have the laptop on (ever see a laptop with a 24 hour battery running skype - please let me know when this technical hurdle is solved)
What I found as a pseudo-solution is to program my laptop and my skype phone with the exact same radio mac address, which violates numerous rules, but hey, I only turn one on at a time - just like in the good ol days of cellular phone clones.
Now having signed in, i power off my laptop with the kill button (impolite) or just drop the battery pack out so it can't say goodbye to the net. And I power on the skype phone. It takes over where the laptop was.
HOPEFULLY the people who setup the network are passing udp both ways otherwise you get into skype relays and really bad sound quality or no connection at all.
The real suggestion, as mentioned before, is give the product a limited browswer capability where they keys can type a la sms messages, and you can use some special keys to tab and enter the page - thus allowing signon without carrying an 11 lb 17.1" display laptop with you just to
turn on hotspots to your skype phone.
Then we'd be in 5 star land - right now it's earned 1 star and that's all because i'm stuck at home with it and the sph200d works better in my house than this ever will.
good luck -keep on skypin!
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Good quality phone but could use a few simple improvements, December 24, 2006
By Penelope Pitstop (Buzzard Puckey, NM USA)
I am very satisfied with this phone. The documentation was good, the screen is nice, and the phone is designed to be easy to use. I have to say that the phone's user interface is easier to use than the original computer based Skype interface. That said, there are a few minor improvements that can be done in a software update for the phone that would make the phone perfect.
1) In the USA, if a person has SkypeOut and they enter in a 7 digit, the phone should prepend their country code and area code automatically. Having to type this in every time you make a phone call does not make sense.
2) When you have received a voice-mail message or missed a call, there needs to be a notification on the main screen.
3) A keylock would be nice so you can put the phone in your pocket.
4) A simple text only web browser for getting past agreement pages at Internet cafe's and hotels would make the phone useable on the road.
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