Comments on: Review: Belkin Wi-Fi Phone

By: Graham

Graham — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 02:03:43 +0000

Re Belkin WiFi phone.

I recently bought one as I am now working out of the country for some months. I did a few tests with it before I left the UK and all seemed ok.
However now I am trying to use it and I find it wont switch on!! Its a brick! Its been on charge all day - still dead. Took the battery out to reboot it - still dead! Any ideas?

By: stephend

stephend — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 21:38:16 +0000

I finally heard back from Belkin technical support and they have offered to exchange the unit for what they claim to be a less broken model. Fingers crossed!

By: stephend

stephend — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 19:45:03 +0000

I’m not familiar with “internet calls,” I’m afraid. If it’s just a calling card — where you call a freephone number and then get connected — it will probably be okay. (I say “probably” as we have had some problems connecting to some freephone numbers.)

If, on the other hand, you would ordinarily install some other software on your PC then you’re out of luck I’m afraid. It is basically just an embedded version of Skype that you install on your PC or Mac.

I bought mine on eBay for roughly the same price.

By: Thomas Armour

Thomas Armour — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 14:55:45 +0000

Thank you-just what I was looking for.
This really is the business.
I use “Internet calls .com” calls to Australia landline are free, can you see any problem connecting to other than Skype

Looking for lowest puchase price-so far ebay £85.99+£6.5 PP.

Anyone know better?

All the best-I wonder just how long the free calls will be available,lets hope A long,long time.

I am an NTL user my total bill(phone,cable tv and Broad Band) was £70+ now around £32.00 per month and a further £7to £10 for calls to mobile in Australia so we are happy VOIP users

By: stephend

stephend — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 11:52:26 +0000

We’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and I have a few more comments.

Firstly I’m not terribly impressed with Belkin technical support. I’ve heard nothing back from them. I did, however, find a way to stop the phone drifting on- and off-line, though: leave it plugged into the mains. Kind of defeats the idea of a wireless phone but does make it more useful.

There have also been a few glitches. On receiving a call last week, I unplugged it from the power and I could no longer hear the caller (although they could hear me). Calling back “fixed” that. We also had an issue calling one particular freephone (0800) number. It’s only fair to note that this is likely a problem with SkypeOut rather than the handset. I mention it merely to say that using Skype as an alternative to a landline is not 100% seamless.

We’ve also noticed is that you always have to enter the country code and international dialing code. It’s odd to have to dial +44 when ringing a local taxi company!

Oh, and the final complaint is that the software to update the firmware is a Windows-only executable! Not a happy situation for this Mac-only house.

That’s quite a lot of glitches and problems. It’s clearly a “Version 1.0″ product but I’m not seeing anything that couldn’t be fixed with a firmware update. Let’s hope that Belkin’s software engineers are more efficient than their helpdesk operators.