GadgetReview

Amazon has the ooma Core VoIP Phone System with No Monthly Phone Service Bills for $249.99 – $46.02 instant savings + free shipping = $203.97 shipped! Buy it now and you’ll get a FREE 2GB iPod Shuffle.  This phone offers free calling to anywhere in the US and include voice mail.

Vonage, the VoIP telephone company, released their iPhone and Blackberry applications today.  You might wanna reserve your excitement,though, since this application does not work with preexisting Vonage accounts that cost $25 a month and provide unlimited calls in the US and up to 60 countries.

Nope, the Vonage app will make calls over your cellular (and/or WiFi if on the iPhone) connection to international numbers at a significant discount (up to 50%) when compared to what AT&T or other carriers offer.

In an ideal world you’d be able to use the Vonage Mobile app for the above as well as have the ability to connect to the Vonage home phone service that allows you to make unlimited calls around the world using your home’s Internet connection.  And at this point it seems unlikely that Vonage will ever provide this option since it will cannibalize the sales of their Vonage equipment.  Booooo!

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It was just this past February when Verizon officially put their Hub touchscreen VoIP device up for sale.  At the time it required a 2-year contract and $200 to get aboard, which is and was one of the many barriers to the device’s success.  ‘Was’ I say?  That’s right, the Verizon Hub has already been discontinued purportedly due to floundering sales, poor technical support and probably a whole slew of other reasons.  Engadget received word back from the company, which falls just short of admitting the Hub’s demise.  It’s a bit of a shame considering how cool it could have been, but when a product is flawed it is quickly represented by sales numbers or in this case lack there of.

Verizon Wireless, like many companies, continually changes and updates the products and services it offers to customers. Our sales teams in all channels will continue to focus on providing our customers the latest and most innovative wireless products and services. Verizon Wireless will continue to support existing Verizon Hub customers with post-sale service or support.

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THIS DEAL ENDS 9/12.  Dell offers the Ooma 100-0103-101 VoIP Phone Adapter for a coupon discount.  This adapter offers telephone service without any monthly bills and low international rates.  It’s …Continue reading: Ooma 100-0103-101 VoIP Phone Adapter – $170 Shipped

Snom kicked out an all new VoIP phone today that includes a 4.3-inch touchscreen and a wide array of connectivity options.  Built upon what appears to be a custom OS, users can drag and drop contacts into conference calls, and access external USB cameras or even stock reports via the built-in XML mini browser.

Hardware wise they’ve included a few USB ports that can facilitate your Internet connection over WLAN or you can just plug in an Ethernet cord, which if you’ve got the setup can also provide the phone’s power.  Lastly, if you’re looking for true synergy you can synchronize the Snom 870 with MS Office, that is of course assuming you have a Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.

The Snom 870 is available now at select retailers for $349.

…Continue reading: Snom’s 870 Touchscreen VoIP Phone Is The Stuff iPhone Secretaries Dream Of (video)

It wasn’t too long ago that iPevo launched their latest Skype handset, the SO-10W.   I managed to get my hands on one and give it a once over.  It’s a straight forward Skype only phone that enables you to make and receive both Skype and Skype Out calls.  It features a 2-inch LCD and a set of relatively large buttons to navigate the exact same menus found in the Skype PC application.

The iPevo SO-10W can be connected to your network via Ethernet or WiFi.  WiFi is not built directly to the phone, so iPevo has included a small, but somewhat cumbersome wireless dongle.  The wireless dongle plugs into the handset via USB and draws its power from the phone, which is powered by an AC plug.  Setting up the wireless dongle proved to be the most challenging aspect of the device.  First, you’ll need to plug the dongle into the handset to be able access the appropriate menus. Simple enough, but that’s where the simplicity ends.  Since the iPevo lacks a QWERTY keyboard, punching in any security information can be a timely process.  Fortunately, you’ll only need to do it once since the phone will remember it.  After entering in all the necessary network info I found myself tapping my foot.  In other words, the SO-10W isn’t exactly expeditious when it comes to connecting to a wireless network.  In fact, the SO-10W seem to take minutes, not seconds as one would expect, to join the network. Furthermore, it actually took me a few attempts to join my home’s network before the SO-10W would accept it.  Fortunately, everything following that was as simple as logging into my Skype account and dialing as normal. …Continue reading: iPevo SO-10W Skype Phone Review

Generally speaking I turn a blind eye to late night infomercials and products that make guarantees that are just too good to be true.  Magic Jack appeared to be one of those products, but apparently the company has turned itself around since launch and sold over 3 million devices.

If you’re not familiar with Magicjack it’s a small device that lets you place VoIP (like Skype) calls from a regular landline phone through your computer’s broadband connection. It plugs into your computer’s USB port and for $40 includes unlimited calls to the US and CA with no monthly charges or minutes for up to 1 year.   After that it’s just $20 a year.

Now the company has plans to expand and perhaps even take on the big guys, such as AT&T.  Arriving sometime between Q3 of 2009 and Q1 of 2010 the company will introduce a femtocell product that lets you wirelessly reroute your cell phone calls through the MagicJack.  Apparently, the Femtocell MagicJack will be slightly larger than the current device and cost only a few dollars more.  AT&T and others carrier have plans to roll out a femtocell device sometime later this year (Verizon already released theirs), but their devices are said to be retardedly expensive but lack a monthly fee.

You can also expect the company to roll out number porting in the next 60 days, which will enable consumers to port preexisting numbers over to the MagicJack.  They’ve also got plans make the MagicJack Linux compatible by Q3 of this year and possibly roll out a mobile phone application similar to Skype that appeared on the iPhone recently.

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Skype for the iPhone hit the App store last week and it has become a massive success with over 1 million downloads since its launch.  As expected, the Skype service, which traditionally makes calls over a data connection from a computer, has been restricted on the iPhone so that consumers can’t make VoIP calls over AT&T’s 3G network.  Clearly, from a business logic this makes sense since consumers pay a monthly data fee with their iPhone service and if allowed could make unlimited calls with no restrictions on minutes, which in turn would heavily tax the carrier and contradict their business model.

But would it really?  At this point carriers, at least from my understanding make most of their money off data plans and text messages, with the latter being a God send since each message requires so little data usage it’s practically free for them to transmit and that means massive profits.  But one consumer group, Free Press, isn’t happy about the current Skype calling restriction on the iPhone and has requested that the Federal Communications Commission to investigate if Apple and AT&T are contradicting federal guidelines by preventing VoIP application from accessing the carrier’s 3G network.  Until an answer has been provided Skype iPhone users will be restricted to making calls over WiFi, which is free to all AT&T iPhone customers for free at hundred of Starbucks locations.

[WSJ]

Without a moment of hesitation and as promised, Skype released their iPhone app to the iTunes store at 12am EST March 30th, 2009.  As mentioned yesterday, this version, 1.01, includes Skype-to-Skype and VoIP calls, and instant messaging.  It’s free to download.  Enjoy!

Update: I rang my girlfriend.  Her first response: ‘I’m echoing’.  But within a few seconds the app, or Skype seemed to remedy itself and the audio was cell phone quality.  I attempted one other call and couldn’t connect, but didn’t reattempt.

[iTunes]

‘Take a deep breath’ because Skype, which has long existed on computers and via other iPhone apps, will officially launch its iPhone app tomorrow.  Skype users will be able to make VoIP calls over WiFi only, while cellular Skype calls will be reserved to earlier iPhone apps and hacks.  To keep things clean and neat the Skype iPhone app will utilize your iPhone’s phonebook eliminating the need for importing and deduplicating.  IM will be available while voicemail, SMS, video conferencing and conference calling are void from the first iteration.

I’ll be testing out the app when it hits tomorrow.  When I checked out Fring’s Skype abilities I ended up with a 1 second delay during voice calls, but I’m assuming Skype has worked through those types of hiccups.

[PCWorld]