Gizmodo: home phone

Icono Finger Phone Puts the 'Hand' in 'Handset'

John Herrman — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 06:50:11 EDT

Designer Zinc Chan's Icono Finger phone concept is confusing: it's a phone inspired by a hand gesture, which was originally inspired a phone. By capping your thumb and little finger with a D cell-looking mic and speaker, the Icono converts your hand into a piece of hardware, leaving it stuck in a position that simultaneously means "Sup, bro" and "call me, babe." It's a pretty neat idea, if you've got particularly strong and flexible fingers.

The dialpad is an interesting concept unto itself, featuring a touch interface the encourages dialers think of phone numbers as shapes rather than sequences. It's a sharply observed design, but if you're familiar enough with a number to develop muscle memory for it and you happen to live in the 21st century, you'd kind of expect to just be able to save it to, oh, I don't know, a contact list. [Core77]

Hands On With OpenPeak's Atom-Powered Home Media Phone

John Herrman — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:40:00 EDT

Slotting an Atom into a home phone just sounds plain ridiculous, but the Home Media Phone is more than just a VoIP handset and base station. The base station (which doubles as a speaker phone) has its own software platform, developed in flash and furnished with a full API, and serves many purposes of a PC in a picture frame-sized package. The current set of apps is adequate, but after using it for a few minutes it became very clear that the Home Media Phone could actually be a fantastic net appliance.

Like half the products at IDF, this the Media Phone has a touch interface, which at the moment looks an awful lot like the iPhone's. Using it is easy, and it's at a size and orientation that makes for comfortable casual use. The screen was responsive enough for sustained use without frustration, and navigating the interfaces was—and this is really the only thing that matters on these small devices—painless. The handset was attractive and felt solid, though it's currently not touch-enabled (I was assured that this would be rectified by launch).

In its current state it's difficult to see what exactly the Media Phone is meant to do. It's got no browser, but an RSS reader. It can connect with home automation software and control household electronics, but it's stuck to the wall with a power cord. In response to these concerns, the guys at the booth were keen to tell me about the API, which would allow developers to enable a vastly larger set of apps and features. Those customizations will be the deciding factor in whether or not this phone is at all successful. Well, that and its price. OpenPeak says that their first units could ship to customers as soon as January of next year, and they will all be sold with subsidies as part of VoIP service contracts. Negotiations are under way, but the OpenPeak guys say it's conceivable that the units could be free. [Giz at IDF]

Lightning Review: T-Mobile's @Home VoIP Phone Line

Jason Chen — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

The Gadget: T-Mobile @Home, a phone service for T-Mobile customers hooks your standard home telephone over the internet to make unlimited nationwide calls for just $10 a month on top of your current wireless bill. It's similar to the Hotspot@Home service which uses a cellphone for home calls, but only for home phones.

The Price: $10 a month with 2-year contract provided you have a qualifying T-Mobile plan ($39.99 standard plan or $49.99 FamilyTime plan), plus $49 for the T-Mobile @Home HiPort Linksys Wireless Router. There's also a VTech cordless phone you can purchase from them for $59.99, or you can just use your own.

The Verdict: Fantastic. Over our Comcast cable internet connection, voice quality was super clear and the people we talked to all said it sounded like we were talking on a landline. Delay—what little of it there was—was on par with a regular landline.

Setup was easy, and you can use the Linksys router in place of your current one, or on your network behind your existing router. There are two SIM slots in it for two lines (only one is active by default), and contains E911 information. All in all, it's a very good alternative to getting a separate landline if you already have T-Mobile cellphone service, and at $10 it's next to free. The only downside is that it still doesn't work with fax, but their engineers are working on it. [T-Mobile]