Joi Ito talks up a couple of interesting new devices on his blog: the WiSIP WiFi SIP Phone and the P900i. As the name implies, the WiSIP is a 802.11b phone which can play or receive calls anywhere there is a wireless connection using the SIP call control protocol. Effectively that means you can only use this phone to call other SIP devices, not ‘real’ phones, but the talk is that a deal with Vonage is in the works, allowing the WiSIP to use Vonage’s interface to the rest of the phone system. Still, when you can actually find someone else to talk to, the call is as free as your wireless bandwidth is. Slick, but I still suspect that WiFi phone use won’t hit the big time until it is seamlessly integrated into regular cell handsets (and that’s almost here.)
The other device is a fairly typical DoCoMo 3G phone by Panasonic, with a nice screen and a 1.28 megapixel camera, as well as fast (384k) data rates. What is especially nice is its OCR function, which lets you take a picture of a business card or a bar code and automatically add the data to your contacts. And while it isn’t exactly a ‘feature’ of the phone, it does come with a copy of the original Famicom (NES) Final Fantasy. (Wark!)
