How-To: Use a Pocket PC PDA as a WiFiphone
posted August 31st 2004 1:20PM
This week's How-To is a handy one for the folks out there who use the Vonage Voice Over IP (VOIP) service and happen to have a Pocket PC device with WiFi. We're going to show you how to turn just about any Pocket PC PDA device in to a real telephone with a working telephone number. At the end of this, we're also going to post our phone number so you can test it out (it might be a long distance call for you).
Ingredients for this How-To:
- Pocket PC with WiFi (we're using an iPAQ h6315 and h4100 Pocket PCs for testing)
- Vonage account with SoftPhone
- WiFi
Pocket PCs with WiFi
We recently started using the new HP iPAQ h6315 Pocket PC
Phone which sports WiFi, GSM/GPRS and Bluetooth. This triad of connectivity allows many forms of communication,
including voice, SMS, instant messaging, and IRC.
Late last week we spotted a post on
MobileWhack about Vonage on
Pocket PCs and shared it with a few of our Pocket PC-owning, Vonage-using friends, but they needed a little help
getting it going so we decided we'd write a how to on turning a Pocket PC in to a telephone with a working phone
number. If you travel a lot it's worth the $200 you'll pay on eBay for a WiFi-enabled Pocket PC and a $10 monthly
Vonage account. After just a few weeks on the road and they should pay for themselves
What is Vonage?
Basically, Vonage allows you to use your broadband connection (DSL, Cable modem)
to place calls from the corded or cordless phone you already have through a special free adaptar you receive when you
sign up. Voicemail, call forwarding, call logs, caller ID, are all included. We've been using it for awhile, and we'll
never use a "regular" phone line again.
You get a a real phone number in an area code of your choice, even if it's out of state, with plans starting as low as
$30 a month for unlimited calling in the USA and Canada. This also means you could use your phone anywhere in the world
if it was connected to the web (one of the reasons we like this). But for that, you'll need to add a feature to your
account, a SoftPhone account.
What is a SoftPhone account?
A SoftPhone account is $10 extra per month and
includes unlimited calling in the USA. This account allows you to use software on your PC/Mac/Linux computer to make
phone calls just like you would at home, and you get an additional phone number (calls can be made to and from your PC)
so you have full-functioning telephone at all times. Just like your other account you have Caller ID, Call Forwarding,
and more.
If you have a Vonage account, just click "Features" in the top menu of your dashboard.
Now that we've got that going, it's time to put all the Voice over IP goodness to task on a Pocket PC.
For our tests we used iPAQ h6315 and h4100 Pocket PCs, both worked well—the Pocket PC which also doubles a real
phone, though of the two the h6315, of course, had better mic pickup as it was designed to be a phone.
SJphone
SJphone is a VOIP softphone that allows you to speak with any Phone, PC, PDA, stand-alone and IP-phone with your
Vonage account. You can download the installer or cab files here.
Once it is installed, we'll need to add your Vonage SoftPhone settings to the Pocket PC.
Setting up the Phone
Open the app by tapping Start >
Programs SJPhone.
Tap Menu > Options > Tap the right arrow > Tap Profiles. Tap "New" to create a new profile. We named ours
Vonage SoftPhone.
Initization settings (we left these default).
Tap the SIP Proxy tab. In Proxy Domain enter: 216.115.25.198. After the : which is the port, enter 5061. For User
domain set it to: sphone.vopr.vonage.com
SIP is left default. Redirection and STUN are also left default.
When you click the OK button at the upper right, it will ask for your account and password. Your account is your
Vonage SoftPhone phone number. The password is what you set it to on your SoftPhone account.
If you entered everything in correctly, you now have a working US phone, with a real phone number that can be used
anywhere in the world with a net (WiFi) connection. In Japan? In Europe? Someone can call your USA number and it will
ring right there on your Pocket PC.
That's it!
Stepping back, and looking at the device we're using we can use GSM to make regular phone calls through our
provider, or we use our SoftPhone account any time we have Wifi and make unlimited calls. Depending where you live
there tends to be a lot of friendly WiFi spots.
We think as phones get WiFi this should be built in, of course this is a really complicated business thing to figure
out, but it has a lot of consumer appeal.
Call us...
Okay, if you didn't already notice here's our SoftPhone number.
1-360-243-0739
Call us for some hot gadget action.
Phillip Torrone can be reached via his personal site, http://www.flashenabled.com or torrone@gmail.com
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hey ketan and also priesh am just commenting on the discussion u peeps were avin, i fink that the ASDA zip drive would also comply with the O.C config. moreover the PAK! R/U5 can be compressed using the amstrad cpc464 hopefully i have been of some help geezers
VoIP for using with your PDA (PocketPC's) is a great (cheaper) proposition to replace cel phone charges + taxes, etc. But it requires one to hunt for a Wi-Fi hot spot and it all sounds like a planned event. Making phone calls or receiving calls is a spontaneous action, one should not have to schedule time to make a phone call.
So I wonder if one already had a fast broadband connection on their PocketPC e.g. Verizon's Wireless Broadband, can we then use VoIP for making phone calls using your VoIP supported PDA and VoIP telephone software. I believe the answer should be yes. Also I wonder if you are have a data connection e.g. Tmobile data package where you use your wireless provider to connect to the internet using your cel phone as modem e.g. T610 (Bluetooth) you normally get a connection speed ~ 115kbps, would then VoIP work once the internet connection is dedicted??
Anyone has any answers or opinions about my thoughts???
CK.
Pretty neat. I can't wait for Google to WiFi enable NYC - this way I can stop using my AT&T / Cingular phone. Quality of Service on those networks is sad.
I use this bluetooth headset from tangshop with
very good result:
http://www.tangshop.com/bluetooth-headset.html
I have an ipaq H-2200, I ride motorcycles and wanting to know if I plug in a WiFi card and set up a peer-to-peer network, can I talk between the 2 H-2200's? Some type of closed network Voip.
why one earth would you guys use vonage?! you could use something like sipphone.com (now gizmoproject.com) or many other much cheaper providers out there. check out sipbroker.com for a huge list of them.
then you can just get a free phone number from ipkall.com that links to your sip address. bang!
Voipuser.org allows free outbound calls to uk numbers. There is also sipgate.co.uk which provides a free local (0161 for example) number to call your pocket pc on. Hope that helps all the UK users. Sound quality is great. If you are handing out your number, for someone who doesnt call you often, you should hand out your voipuser number as this is how they generate revenue, or make a donation.