There is a lot of noise about VoIP lately, especially because it can help you avoid a major part of your cellphone bill. The first VoIP handsets released were all USB-based, but now cordless, Bluetooth and WiFi handsets are springing one by one in the market. The most affordable WiFi handset in the market right now, selling for just $150, is the FiWin SS28S that was released at the beginning of the summer by FiWin. Geeks.com sent us in a unit for the purposes of this review.
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Member since:
2005-07-09
Member since:
2006-05-09
Member since:2006-01-01
>Don't you think that 8/10 is a very high score given the usability, security and USB problems?
Not at all. I was completely blown away by the audio quality. As I stated, I'm willing to overlook the issues because it was so impressive. Who really scans their networks looking for mac addresses in FiWin's range to find voip phones so that they can exploit them?
Usability issues were bad, but I spend most of my time on the same network, so I can overlook that one as well.
And hopefully FiWin will figure something out with the USB issue. Maybe they'll start selling the cable?
Member since:
2005-06-28
I have this phone too. I wrote a small review about it here: http://tuxtops.com/node/994
It's been less than 2 months since I got it and while in the beginning the battery would last about 30-40 hours in standby mode (connected to the wifi router, but not talking with it), it now does not make it through over 10 hours! The battery just loses its charge way too fast as the time goes by! The suggested standby time by FiWin is 60 hours, but this claim is just not true. At least not after just 2 months or extremely low usage (maybe about 40-50 calls in that whole time).
I am bammed about the usability and stability issues too btw (a friend called me twice from his Treo 600 with his SIP client Articulation application, and the phone crashed -- twice). However, when you actually call directly to most other SIP clients (not all) or to real phones or cellphones, it works fine (through the Gizmo/sipphone network).
In conclusion, the phone works 90% of the time when you call or you are called, depending how the other person is calling you from or to what client are you calling to.
The funniest bug I found: If I had Thom Holwerda (the osnews editor) in my contact list, the phone would call him EVEN if I was trying to call someone else from the contact list. There was something about his name (or Gizmo number) that would trigger a bug in the phone and it would only call him. After I removed his name from the contact list, everything went back to normal. This is a reproducible bug here.
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2005-06-28
BTW, regarding wifi reception: the phone lost its connection to my Netgear 802.11b/g router yesterday when I went to our apartment complex's laundry room. That's about 25-30 meters away from the router. Not sure if this is bad or good reception though. I let you decide.
