Vonage @ CES - Hands-on with the UTStarcom F-1000, Vonage's WiFi phone
By Peter Rojas 
posted January 9th 2005 2:35PM
posted January 9th 2005 2:35PM
That videophone was nice, but the real reason we stopped by Vonage's booth at CES was to get hands-on with the UTStarcom F-1000, their first WiFi phone which is due out in a few months. We were able to glean a few details about the F-1000 (which has the not-quite-yet-retro look of a mid-Nineties cellphone), like its battery will have three hours of talk time and 60 hours of standby (something which'll probably get a lot better when the next generation of these phones comes out), and that you'll be able to program up to five different network settings profiles into the phone to make it easier to log into different wireless networks.
I am so excited about this that I can barely contain myself...oh, yeah, I'm wondering what the cost will be?????
I am so excited about this that I can barely contain myself...oh, yeah, I'm wondering what the cost will be?????
I wonder if the phone will have some sort of wifi-finder, for wardriving with your phone. Stuck somewhere and a quick drive thru a neighborhood, looking for open networks so you can make that emergency booty-call.
Looks like a Vertu without the bling!
Does anybody else see the Vertu-like-ness of this phone? The Wide "V" and spaced font with the dark carbon face plate.
Here's the v'tu
http://economy.enorth.com.cn/images/xinwen5/020303.jpg
A link for the PDF spech sheet on this phone.
Some more realalistic specs "up to 3 hours talk" only "WEP".
http://www.utstar.com/Solutions/Document_Library/Handsets/docs/WiFi/F1000DataSheet.pdf
"Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry: inappropriate or purely promotional comments may be removed." Does this talk about XM? No. So what if they are biased, no one is forcing you to read this and I'm sure there are plenty of other places to get your CES fix.
It's not confirmed, but on a Hungarian site they say it's gonna be free for existing Vonage subscribers and $100 otherwise. We'll see...
Please keep your comments relevant to the specific post you are commenting on. Otherwise these comment boards will become useless for everyone.
I have been a Vonage subscriber for a year and a half and I'm wondering how on God's Earth would this be a useful phone to have in your pocket? You can only receive calls when you are near a Hotspot? Better have another phone in your pocket as well!
I spend the summers in a place where I am locked out of long-distance and in a town that has very poor cell service; believe it or not there is such a place in the US. Anyway, I could see where this would be an improvement over standing on the one noisy corner in town that has at best weak reception. I should note that there are only limited hotspots, but limited hotspots are better than virtually no cellphone service.
"limited hotspots are better than virtually no cellphone service"
exactly! that, and you can set up a hotspot on your own in places you know you'll be a lot (at home and possibly at school or work, anyways)
I know that my cell phone gets a crap signal in both my home and at my dads home
AFAIK, the battery doesn't last longer EXACTLY because the phone scans for connections all the time. so yes, it can be used as a wifi-finder. that's what it does.
about the price, $100, dunno if free for users, i guess free for NEW users... anyway, you gotta spend $10/mo to their softphone service (I do, and I barely use it. that's why i'm gathering all this info!)
the only thing that put me down is that some said it will only work on password-protected wifis (and if you have the password, of course), not open ones. dunno about it, jsut waiting for more info.
but now, the battery is simply not enough... 8 hours idle would be enough for a commute. 6 hours is not enough.
better wait, so.
My experience with a wi-fi pda (iPaq 5455) is that it kills the battery like nothing else. 1 hour of surfing and the thing is dead. I assume that it has something to do with the amount of power that the unit is broadcasting, and I would think that a wi-fi phone would use a similar amount of power as a 2.4 gHz phone. The ipaq has like a 1900 mAhr battery. Dinky.
Have YOU noticed any cellphone sized 2.4 Ghz phones? I haven't. Those little Uniden thingees use the 5.8 gHz band, not 2.4.
So... if you want a wi-fi phone that works with the b and g standards, AND has decent talk time, I speculate that you will require a huge battery, and thus a huge phone.
If the Vonage wi-fi phone is cellular sized, you are probably going to sacrifice battery life.
Myself, I'm not so enamored with small phones. In fact, I like the Engenius ultra-long range 900 mHz phone, and has a "big" antenna to boost range (which, with a high gain antenna on the roof, is like 5 miles or so, enough to use like a cellphone around town).
You can always buy ZyXEL's WiFi phone today and use it with Vonage.
http://www.us.zyxel.com/products/model.php?indexcate=1075688089&indexFlagvalue=1079378556
Works fine with Vonage. (Although I think Vonage charges you an extra $5/mo as they consider it the same as running SoftPhone on your PC)
In response to Eric Cherry on the wifi scanning feature to wardrive with the phone... I have one of these which is unlocked, however the publicly available models will be locked so that only the defined profiles are usable. I am pretty sure there will be cracks or underground updates to unlock the phone, eventually.
The UTStarcom WiFi phone was on display at CeBIT this week in Hannover, Germany, along with several other products from WiFon, Samsung, Siemens, and Motorola. The harware design and firmware of the F-1000 haven't changed since CES, but there was talk of a new chipset that will solve the power consumption problem.
From the quick pass I took, it’s a combination of ambient sound with guided relaxation and was actually quite nice. The price is higher than I might like to see at $40 for a single user,
http://www.jfsky.com http://www.21down.cn http://www.8down.net
what is the deal with this phone? i have not been able to find any real current information or updates on this thing. it is now the end of july and i have not seen or heard much about it. anyone?
remind me the update of vonage/wifi