Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Cellphones

Oh sure, you’ve already read over our (and Ryan Block’s) brief one-day impressions of T-Mobile’s G1, but one lucky (lucky!) user over at AndroidCommunity has been able to handle one for more than just a few hours. As a precious gift to the world, he’s penned a nice list of pros and cons along with a Q&A, and it seems that the “review” is actually growing with time. Right from the top, he notes that the G1 is lke a “SideKick on massive steriods,” albeit one with a minty fresh OS. Speaking of, he also states that the handset “doesn’t run as smoothly as you would think,” asserting that some of the applications “suttered” upon opening. We’re also told that it requires a reboot from time to time just to keep things humming along, but we’re hoping all of these quirks are just part of the Rev. A rigamarole. It’s glaringly obvious that the user adores Android (and the phone, too), but we can’t help but hope these niggles he speaks of are addressed in short order.

[Thanks, Oscar]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

It’s not too often we get to toy around with a $4,449.99 laptop, but that’s precisely what we were able to do when Sony’s packed-to-the-hilt VAIO TT (VGN-TT198U to be precise) arrived on our doorstop. The model we received included dual 128GB SSDs, a Blu-ray writer, 11.1-inch LED-backlit display, HDMI output, built-in MOTION EYE webcam, 802.11n WiFi, a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo SU9400 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, Bluetooth and a pair of USB 2.0 ports. The 2.87-pound unit is essentially a huge thumb of the nose to netbooks everywhere, boasting a frame that’s in the same ballpark (in terms of size) with innards and a price tag that contrast sharply. For those just interested in seeing what south of five large can buy you these days, head on down to the gallery below; if you’re actually considering one of these puppies, hop on the past the break for a few impressions.

Continue reading Sony VAIO TT: unboxing, hands-on and impressions

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

Given that most of the world won’t see Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic until 2009, you may be better off just forcing yourself to overlook this here review until you can snag one without importing. If you’re just too impatient for all that, however, you should know that an early critique of the affectionately dubbed Tube deemed it mighty impressive. Call quality was solid, the OS was stable in most areas, and the display was a joy to look at and interact with. In fact, reviewers had a difficult time finding anything exceptionally negative to say, noting that this is the handset for anyone after a “well-rounded, do-it-all solution.” It was also made clear that this phone and the iPhone were really two different animals not worth comparing, but that didn’t stop critics from confessing that the 5800 packs an “unparalleled price / quality ratio that changes the rules for all phone makers out there, including Nokia itself.”

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Digital Cameras

With a zoom this long, it has to be good, right? Evidently that’s absolutely correct, as the critics over at PhotographyBLOG adored what the FinePix S2000HD was packin’. The camera wasn’t the sharpest nor most evenly exposed megazoom they’d ever seen, but given the respectable asking price ($269), it was still deemed a winner. More specifically, reviewers found the image quality to be “perfectly acceptable given the build and asking price,” and while the video wasn’t true HD, it still trumped that of most rivals. In the end, the relatively compact 10-megapixel cam was seen as a perfect option for those not ready to splurge on a DSLR and a decent zoom lens, notching a very admirable 4 out of 5 overall rating.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops

Sony’s VAIO VGC-JS190J (you know, the little fellow of the bunch) managed to snag itself a pretty great review late last month, so it’s no shock at all to see the bigger, sleeker and all-around better VGC-RT150Y land similar sentiments. The 25.5-inch unit was rolled out as part of a trio at CEDIA, and besides packing quite a bit of horsepower, this thing actually looks shockingly like a svelte LCD. Reviewers instantly fell in love with the expansive panel, beautiful array of ports, inbuilt HDTV tuner and Blu-ray burner, though reality began to set in when refocusing on the $3,999 list price. Sure, multimedia performance was above par, and it can easily be hung on a wall, but unless you’ve just got oodles of cash to burn (and have something against making donations), this one probably deserves a skip.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops, Peripherals

We could tell from the press shot that this here laptop bag was far and away the most beautiful of the TSA-approved bunch, and a recent review over at Gadling confirms it. Put simply, the Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer is “fantastic,” and even the reviewer found himself startled at just how much he dug it. The build quality was remarkable, the ease of use was commendable and the design itself was obviously worthy of praise. The only real rub is the bloated sticker; the price of admission is a stiff $220, and that’s before you add in any useful straps or extra packing cubes. Unfortunately, the critic didn’t actually attempt to clear security at an airport with the bag, though we don’t suspect you’ll have any too many difficulties. Check the full writeup and a hands-on gallery in the read link.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

There’s really no denying it — T-Mobile’s G1 and Sony Ericsson’s XPERIA X1 are two of the hottest mobiles around right now, and as predicted, all sorts of sparks flew when the two sat down for a side-by-side photo session. In a Dutch comparison of the two handsets, reviewers pointed out that the G1 was “significantly larger” than the SE counterpart, and while it’s completely subjective, they also asserted that the X1 was a “true piece of art in comparison to the dusty look of the G1 [nice one, Google Translator].” Do yourself a favor and check out the whole thing in the read link.

[Via CoolSmartphone]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

The snom m3 SIP wireless (DECT) phone is one of my favorite VoIP phones. I’ve been testing and reviewing it for a few months but haven’t had time to write up the review until now. First, let me point out that the problem with IP-PBXs is they typically give you a desk phone or a softphone with no real mobility options to walk around, which is critical in some vertical markets, such as retail and manufacturing. Even sales professionals want the flexibility to take calls while roaming the office. In the past, I have used analog telephony adapters to connect my cordless phone to my SIP-based IP-PBX, but the cordless phone lacks multiple lines, call transfer, call conference, call waiting, or even a message waiting indication (MWI). Enter the snom m3, a SIP wireless phone that like a home cordless phone which not only gives you mobility while on the phone, but full IP-PBX functionality as well, including call hold, call transfer, message waiting indicator, and more. In fact, while the caller is holding, music-on-hold is available from the IP-PBX, giving the same business professional experience from a desktop phone.

I should mention that there are WiFi SIP phones, but the battery life on these phones isn’t great. snom takes advantage of Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT), a wireless communication standard which can seamlessly hand off calls as a handset moves between multiple base stations in a large office, but also has superior battery life than WiFi SIP phones. The Lithium Ion battery offers a very good eight hours of talk time and 100 hours of standby. Additionally, DECT devices use the 1.9 GHz band while WiFi uses 2.4Ghz so they don’t interfere with one another. DECT also doesn’t suffer the microwave oven interference that often plagues WiFi access points.

             snom m3 Main Menu

The snom m3 supports up to 8 different SIP identities (registrations) allowing you to connect to separate IP-PBXs (or SIP service providers) or the same IP-PBX to support multiple lines. The m3 is 2″ x 5″ and less than an inch thick sporting a nice 1.75″ color LCD (128×128 pixels and 65,536 colors), 2.5mm headset jack, and a speakerphone. The headset jack is a nice feature that I haven’t seen on any cordless DECT phones. The phone also comes with a belt clip so you can easily use the headset for talking while walking. The m3 is surprisingly very lightweight - much lighter than I would have expected. The phone also has volume controls, the basic 12 dialpad keys, five navigation keys, and two function keys. The snom m3 ships with some documentation, but for real technical details, the snom m3 wiki is the place to go.

The m3 communicates with the base station which is connected directly to your network via a standard Ethernet cable. Once connected and booted up, the base station obtains an IP address from the DHCP server. By default (factory setting), snom m3 phones are configured to use HTTP as the transfer protocol for provisioning, but TFTP can also be used. Since I was testing this with an Asterisk-based trixbox system, I changed the gateway to use TFTP. Also, the snom m3 supports Option 66 on the DHCP server to automatically acquire the IP address of the TFTP server. Nice!

The TFTP boot server address can be an IP address, a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), or an URL. I also created a config file (/tftpboot/m3/settings/0004132A10E4.cfg) on the TFTP server for the snom m3 to download. I was able to get access to the firmware, upload the new firmware to /tftpboot/m3/firmware/ and it automatically downloaded the latest firmware. Even better you can have it set to connect directly with snom’s server (http://provisioning.snom.com/m3/firmware/) to download the latest firmware and even set a schedule to automatically grab the latest version.

Features:

• Display: 128 x 128 pixels, 65536 colors, backlit
• Li-Ion battery pack for 20 hours of calls or 100 hours standby
• Range: 50 meters indoors, 100 meters outdoors
• 12 numerical keys, 5 navigation keys, 2 function keys
• Speakerphone on mobile handset
• Polyphonic ringtones
• Automatic registration of handset
• Separate charging cradle for handset
• 8 handsets per base station
• 8 SIP registrations with different servers/registrars
• Up to 3 concurrent calls per base station
• Three-way conference
• Remote setup, password protection
• Open DECT GAP standard

Since the snom m3 supports multiple handsets, this leads to some interesting multi-handset functionality. For instance, the Telephony Settings on the web interface lets you pick which identity (CallerID) each handset will use when making outbound calls. You can also set which handsets will ring on incoming calls for each SIP registration/phone number. Thus, you can have one SIP registration ring your home office m3 handset, another ring your son/daughter’s m3 handset, and another phone number be the shared kitchen m3 phone. In fact, the snom m3 supports three concurrent calls per base station so you can receive 3 simultaneous calls to the handsets.

The snom m3 supports the most common VoIP codecs, including G.711u (PCMU), G.711a (PCMA), G.729ab, and iLBC. G.711 is the standard used by traditional phone systems and it features the best voice quality at the expense of more bandwidth used (80kbs), which isn’t ideal for some DSL connections that only sport 256kbs upstream. Fortunately, the snom m3 supports G.729a which only use 8kbps at a slight loss of voice quality. iLBC (Internet Low Bitrate Codec), although not as widely supported, is designed for narrow band speech and supports two bit rates, 15Kbps (20ms frame rate) and 13.3 Kbps(30ms frame rate), though the m3 only supports 20ms frame rather @15Kbps. iLBC yields slightly better voice quality than G.729a yet also has a higher robustness in dealing with packet loss while using roughly the same amount of bandwidth. It also has a more dynamic range of sound than G.729a. So kudos to snom for including iLBC as a choice.

You can also configure various settings from the phone itself, though it’s more tedious. The VoIP settings is protected by a PIN / password which defaults to 0000. From the phone you can configure the timezone and it even supports NTP time servers for accurate time. Additionally, you can add contacts, however adding contacts via the phone is a bit tedious. I wished the web interface let me add them there and then it would push the contacts down to the multiple handsets.

So how’s the phone’s range? snom claims the phone needs to be within 50 meters indoors or 100 meters outdoors from the base station. I walked around TMC’s offices and didn’t lose a signal. Then I went outside walked about 250 feet and it was crystal clear. Excellent range I have to say. The voice quality of the earpiece was very good and the remote end said I sounded very good during my test calls. I also tested the speakerphone, and although it wasn’t the best voice quality, I didn’t expect a fantastic sounding speakerphone on such a small handset. I should mention that you can also perform intercom calls to either a single m3 handset or you can intercom page all handsets. Useful if you are trying to reach someone and don’t know where they are located.

Ratings Score Installation Documentation Features Usability Performance Overall

All in all, the snom m3 is an excellent wireless VoIP phone with excellent battery life, very good range, and very good features. The multiple simultaneous SIP registrations is a huge plus. I wished the base station supported PoE, but it’s not a big deal for home users since most home users don’t have Power over Ethernet switches. I’ll be interested to compare the snom m3 with the new line of Polycom KIRK wireless DECT SIP phones, but for now the snom m3 is my favorite cordless SIP-based VoIP phone!

Price:
You can buy the snom complete set (with base + handset) Click for Amazon price:
Snom M3 Complete Set
Buy Now‘, STICKY, TIMEOUT, 6000);” onmouseout=”return nd();”>on Amazon for $172
, and an additional Click for Amazon price:
Snom M3 Enhancement Set
Buy Now‘, STICKY, TIMEOUT, 6000);” onmouseout=”return nd();”>handset on Amazon for $142.

Tags: DECT, review, SIP, snom m3, VoIP, wifi

Related Entries
• snom m3 DECT SIP Phone Coming to North America -
  May 19, 2008
• Junction Networks Confirms Aastra IP Phones Compatible With OnSIP Hosted PBX Service -
  Sep 16, 2008
• friends of fring -
  Sep 02, 2008
• New 3CX VoIP Phone SIP Softphone -
  Sep 02, 2008
• Microsoft develops Vi-Fi (Vehicle Wi-Fi). VoIP while driving baby! -
  Aug 27, 2008
• 3CX Free SIP Softphone -
  Jul 31, 2008
• T-Mobile VoIP Shenanigans - AGAIN! -
  Jul 18, 2008
• BroadSoft, Fonality, and ITEXPO news all rolled in one -
  Jul 16, 2008
• ACN IRIS 3000 Videophone & The State of the Videophone -
  Jul 15, 2008
• Truphone on iPhone Apple Store enables VoIP -
  Jul 11, 2008

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: snom m3 review

Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Cellphones

Not even a fortnight after HTC’s Touch HD went official in Germany, out pops a review from Deutschland calling it the best thing since sliced bread. Okay, so maybe our translation skills are a bit off, but one thing’s for sure — it was hailed as the first “iPhone killer to deserve that name.” Right off the bat, reviewers praised the TouchFLO 3D interface for masking Windows Mobile, and of course, the expansive display was drooled upon numerous times. Additionally, critics praised the Opera browser while scolding Internet Explorer, and while it’s hard to say for certain whether the battery life was remarkable, it definitely seemed to get their vote of approval. Of note, the 3.5-millimeter headphone jack was also loved, making us weep while thinking of what could have been with the T-Mobile G1. At any rate, it seems pretty clear that the Touch HD is going to rock some socks off, but we’re trying to push it out of our minds until it becomes available on this side of the drink. Too bad that approach isn’t working at all.

[Via WMPowerUser]

Read - Early Touch HD review
Read - Video showing off Stocks tab

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Robots

WowWee goes out of its way to make one thing very clear about the Rovio: “this is not a toy.” That being said, it doesn’t make the patrolling sentry any less fantastic, as critics over at Robots-Dreams proclaimed that it was “intuitive and a pleasure to use from the moment you first open the box.” From the painless setup process to the unparalleled mobility, reviewers sounded like they were grinning from ear-to-ear during the entire writeup process. It performed its robotic sentry duties with vigor and valor, and the review crew couldn’t help but note that this bugger was “positioned to be the hottest robot for the upcoming holiday season, and for a long time to come.” In other words, if you’ve been on the fence about dropping three bills on this thing, all your worries about it potentially sucking just got thrashed.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

Time to face the music, folks — 18.4-inches is the new 17-inch. Sony’s recently unveiled VAIO AW is undoubtedly going toe-to-toe with HP’s new HDX 18t, and while both will garner all sorts of stares from onlookers, it appears that the VGN-AW190 may have an edge in terms of extras. For starters, this unit’s Adobe RGB-compatible display will be mighty impressive to those who dabble in photos to make ends meet, and the included RAM, CPU and Blu-ray drive were all smiled upon. Strangely enough, Sony tossed in a pathetically slow 4,200RPM hard drive to put a damper on overall performance, but that — along with the $3k+ sticker — was the only real weak spot. Overall, critics found that this machine would likely suit graphic designers and photographers quite well, but the average joe / jane may not appreciate the pricey extras enough to make it worthwhile.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

Laptop Mag would evidently like to make two things quite clear: if you pick up MSI’s Wind U90, you better love SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and be totally cool with the sub-2 hour battery life. For those of you still with us, you can probably guess that the 10-inch Wind didn’t do so hot during its review, with those two rubs really overshadowing the solid design, great keyboard and delicious price tag ($350). For whatever reason, MSI figured it’d be peachy to toss a 3-cell battery in there and let mobile users just deal with the 1 hour, 39 minute lifespan; obviously, that’s an issue serious road warriors can’t ignore. If you’re willing to pony up for an extra battery and install your own OS (if SUSE isn’t your cup of tea), the Wind U90 might not make for a bad companion, but as-is, you better do some serious soul searching before pulling the trigger.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops

Who woulda thunk it? All-in-ones are officially back in. Yeah, some would argue that they never really left, but with Sony’s latest family of monitor-bound PCs and HP’s freshened TouchSmart line upping the ante, we’d say the war is back on. The high(er)-end TouchSmart IQ506 was recently taken for a ride over at DesktopReview, and it didn’t take long for them to realize that HP was aiming for something very different with this machine. Rather than catering to the gaming or barebones crowd, this one emphasizes interaction and entertainment, and apparently, it did so in fantastic fashion. Additionally, those folks couldn’t resist cracking the casing open and giving us a look inside, so if you’ve got a thing for untouched PCB and silicon, you know where to look.

[Thanks, Janet]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

You could tell from the specs sheet that Lenovo’s ThinkPad W700 wasn’t a common man’s machine, and a review from the cats at Laptop Mag has all but confirmed that. Dubbed “a beast of a 17-inch [laptop],” this rig was marveled upon right from the get-go; after all, it’s not everyday that you see a full-fledged digitizer built right into the palm rest, not to mention the integrated color calibrator. Unfortunately, such niceties weren’t bundled in for free, as the review unit they had rocked a $3,802 price tag. Still, the design, build quality and performance were all stellar, but critics couldn’t help but point out that this unique creature wouldn’t be worthwhile for everyone. In fact, they praised Lenovo for “incorporated some truly innovative features,” but they did confess that they weren’t “entirely convinced of their practicality.” Think long and hard before digging into your kids’ college fund for this one, you hear?

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

HP’s exceptionally fresh EliteBook 2730p tablet was recently reviewed by the notebook mavens over at GottaBeMobile, and right out of the gate, they delivered the line that tells all: “The HP 2730p EliteBook tablet is more than worthy of your consideration as your next or your first tablet PC.” So, what did this thing do right in order to garner such a recommendation? Let’s see — overly satisfactory performance, an excellent design, smile-worthy battery life (4-hours in normal use on a single 6-cell), and perfectly implemented inking / tablet features. Granted, not everything was rosy, as the WXGA (1,280 x 800) screen left a little to be desired and the keyboard layout was similarly scolded. Overall, the unit still performed well enough to make it into their short list, but it sounds like you may want to try one in person before buying blind.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph