I’m a little late to the pleasures of Skype-ing, but Belkin was kind enough to loan CrunchGear one of its Wi-Fi phones to use with the service. Setup was easy, just connect to a network (it tells you if there’s an open one to connect to or you can type in an SSID and password for a secured one) and then punch in your Skype account info and you’re done. It loads up your contacts and that’s that. It’s so very nice when things just work right out of the box, and this phone does.
We’ll have a full review soon, but for now, here’s some video.
I’ve had one for a couple months and i love it.
Went out and got my self the $14.95 Skype Unlimited calling to go with it.
On maybe 1 out of 5 Skype to landline/cell calls I get a slight delay.
it syncs up with my Skype account on my computer, so i don’t spend the time entering numbers into the phone. I enter them into my Skype account and then they show up on the phone.
It does take a little bit to turn on, find the wi-fi and get going, which can be a bit annoying when you just want to make a call and not stare at your phone for a few seconds.
I use it at home with my wifi network and have used it at coffee shops and at the mall when i found a open wifi network.I’ve had one for a couple months and I love it.
Went out and got my self the $14.95 Skype Unlimited calling to go with it.
On maybe 1 out of 5 Skype to landline/cell calls I get a slight delay.
It syncs up with my Skype account on my computer, so I don’t spend the time entering numbers into the phone. I enter them into my Skype account and then they show up on the phone.
It does take a little bit to turn on, find the wi-fi and get going, which can be a bit annoying when you just want to make a call and not stare at your phone for a few seconds.
I use it at home with my wi-fi network and have used it at coffee shops and at the mall when I found an open wi-fi network.
Seems to hold a charge well, I’ve never ran it dry.
Nothing fancy in the phone, just makes call. No blue tooth, no text msg.
It does have a cool little knob in the middle for navagation.
I recently purchased the Belkin Wi-Fi phone through Dell for $199 CDN. I placed the order by telephone and they were kind enough to ship it at no cost.
I also purchased a one-year outbound calling package for the United States and Canada for $14.95 USD which lets me avoid long distance charges for the next year. This alone will more than pay for the cost of the phone.
I’ve used it to call family in Australia (just over 2 cents per minute) going on to their land lines and it worked like a charm.
There is a bit of glitch with the clock time shown on the phone. Once it has been on for awhile, the time can run ahead by ten minutes or more. Turning the phone off and then on again solves that problem. I’m hoping a future software update will fix that. A speakerphone option would be nice too, and perhaps that might be possible through a software update as well. Some Belkin Wi-Fi phone users have complained about the battery discharging too quickly. I’ve not found that to be a problem. I just let it recharge every night and I can get hours of talk time during the day.
I have only had the phone for a week but so far I’m impressed. I’ve made local and distant calls to others on their cells, land lines and computers and most times the quality is acceptable.
Based on our current long distance calling pattern, we should recoup the $199 CDN cost of the phone within six months. We’ve kept our local line for the time being. Once our telecom provider (TELUS) offers broadband Internet without requiring us having a local phone line, we’ll probably drop our local phone line altogether and purchase a Skype-In account.
In Canada, I found that Dell offered the best price, return policy, and no-charge shipping. Three other online discount retailers only offered a two-week return period, and the item had to be broken or inoperative in order to qualify for return. With them, if you were dissatisfied with the quality or performance of the phone you were out of luck. Not so with Dell, they offered a three-week satisfaction based money-back guarantee.
i’d like to have free mobile skype