Casey Halverson, SeattleWireless

The Senao SI-680H is a WiFi VoIP handset which resembles a Nokia 3300/8200 in terms of design, functionality, and feature set. It has a candybar form factor, numeric key pad, and several soft keys.

The feature set is very basic. It provides voice dialing and text messaging functionality. It also supports vibrate, several ringer presets, and various profiles similar to the 8200 line.

I could write a lot more fluff about this phone, but frankly we don't really care. We all know how a phone is supposed to work, and we all know the intent of this product. What we are interested in is the user experience -- and more importantly -- if I put this next to a Nokia 8260, would the user experience be transparent.

There are a few bugs in the current version of firmware:

Signal strength indicator is useless. Unless you are directly in contact with the access point, it displays either 0-1 bars.

After power up, handset does not listen to a static IP address programmed in earlier. I am still trying to narrow down this bug.

WLAN profiles do not appear to work

WebUI does not display SIP proxy IP

Sometimes displays "wrong number" when a call is ended

Added 12/29/05 Phone displays "WLan Error. Pls Reboot" sometimes while on our Cisco WEP network. I left it on all night on my non-WEP network. Not certain what the difference is.

Added 12/29/05 Phone occasionally loses network address on our Cisco WEP network, hasn't done this on non-WEP network. I suspect its trying to reassociate and DHCP for an address, but it never works.

displays

And some bothersome UI/execution issues:

* and # key do not generate "*" and "#" on input. * ends up cycling through multiple punctuation, and # changes text entry mode. This makes the user experience complete trash when attempting to dial numbers like "*2" or "*67" or other special feature codes a carrier would setup.

Power button needs to be held down a little too long before power up sequence starts. Typically, a user will think the phone is broken and give up before pressing it long enough for powerup.

Low battery alarm is irritating

Low battery alarm should go off sooner, right now the alarm indicates about 30 seconds of battery life left during a call

No method of locking out provisioning menu from end-user. Anyone can modify SIP servers, proxies, wireless lan settings, etc. and essentially render their phone useless in a matter of seconds.

Phone numbers look like phone numbers unless you look at the dial history. Each number is in the format [number]@[gateway ip address]. This is ghetto -- a user is going to be mighty confused.

Text messaging difficult to operate -- different from other MO-SMS apps on cell phones. User is uncertain if message was sent. No apparent provisioning inputs for specifying SIMP messaging server...one would guess its probably using the registration server?

Startup screen is cheesy, but no option to change this bitmap

Get rid of general IP address/SIP clutter that comes with such a VoIP handset. Users, especially end users using it as a cell phone, really dont care about this. Transparency is the key.

Conclusion

A pretty good stab at WiFi VoIP, especially since a lot of fundamental issues have been addressed well in this handset compared to more unfavorable units *cough*Zyxel*cough*. Being able to roam seamlessly across a wireless network is absolutely important -- and it does it quite well. Better than most laptops on a WiFi network could. There was very little noticable drop out during handovers. This is with the G.711 codec!

Audio quality was also outstanding. While G.711 on the 680 blows my $400 CDMA phone out of the water, G.723 still sounded remarkably clearer. After calling several other numbers with my VoIP phone -- both circuit and packet switched -- I was beginning to notice that there are certainly a lot of VoIP phones out there with absolutely awful audio quality. Some of them were just a little overmodulated or tin can sounding.

BUT -- that aside -- A little bit of customization is desired in order to make this handset more "carrier grade" and "user friendly". If I could disable/lock the provisioning menu on the handset, customize the startup image, and make the #/* keys work, and got rid of all the VoIP/SIP techno clutter, i'd probably give it a higher rating.

On the horizon is the SI-681H. This is a color version of the phone, with improved internals, and a more Nokia-like user interface. This phone also looks much more customizable. This phone has not been released from Senao yet, but as soon as it is, i might snag one.

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