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Product Review - Philips VoIP321 USB Skype DualPhone

A product with potential... but lacks quality software support.

The wait is over...

The Philips VOIP321 is a highly anticipated dual-function cordless phone in the Skype community that offers the convenience to handle traditional landline calls and the latest Skype technology all in one unit. Additionally, the overall design should meet the needs of many people wanting an “old school” feeling to their phone for their daily VoIP communications. We, AmperorDirect, also want the Philips VOIP321 to eventually get into our product offering line as an alternative Skype cordless phone that offers more features, such as hands-free speakerphone and conference function.

We received a Philips VOIP321 sample last week. Our first impression of the phone was: it has a decent look. The fact that its base unit is separated from the handset cradle is a plus. We can leave the base unit close to the computer and have the handset/cradle placed where it is used the most. The base unit uses DECT technology to communicate with the handset which reduces the chance for this phone to interfere with a Wi-Fi router or other cordless home devices.

The paper manual that comes with the unit covers the installation and basic operations, but for a detailed user guide, we need to look to the CD to find it. The Philips VOIP321 is a USB plug-and-play device so it’s not difficult to follow the on-screen installation wizard and go through the whole setup process. During the install, we found that a potential issue may be that the wizard points us to the official Skype site to download the latest version of the Skype software. If Philips cannot keep up with the speed that Skype updates its software – and we know how often that is - it could be a problem.

DualPhone Features and Quality

The first thing we tested was the phone’s ability to make landline calls. The communication quality is almost identical to my Panasonics KX-T7453, which is a proven digital desktop phone solution. The voice quality is good and the person we are talking to can hear our voice very clearly. We also compared the hands-free speakerphone performance of the Philips VOIP321 to the Panasonic KX-T7453. Although the speakerphone on the latter is a little louder, the overall performance is the same.

Then, we moved on to test the Philips VOIP321’s ability to make Skype calls. We wanted to call the Skype echo123 testing center to run a basic test, however, things started to go downhill from here. The Philips VOIP321 can show all of your online Skype contacts on the handset screen, but it cannot pick up a call that was started through the computer itself. If the call was not started through the phone, the phone does not acknowledge that it exists. So, we needed to add the Skype testing center into my contact list on my computer. However, the newly added contact won’t show up on the handset screen until we restart the computer. (We’ve waited for 5 minutes and it still did not re-synchronize.) It sounds to us like the phone is not setup to check for updates in the Skype contact list in the computer very often.

RTX's DualPhone still King... for now.

The worst thing of all during our testing happened when we finally went through the whole adding-a-contact-and-restart-computer process. The Skype call would go through, the person on the other side could hear our voice, but we could not hear anything through the handset. All the sound device settings on the Windows control panel and the Skype tool bar are pointed to the Philips VOIP321, and are not muted. WE JUST COULD NOT HEAR ANYTHING THROUGH THE HANDSET! We have tried several things, such as removing the VOIP321 application from the computer start-up list, run the program manually both before Skype started on a re-boot, and after Skype started from a clean boot, or quit-and-re-load Skype while the phone was connected. Even after all of that, only one thing would make the phone work: On boot, un-plugging the USB connector of the phone from the computer and re-connecting it again. This is very inconvenient indeed to a user whose computer’s USB port is not easy to get to.

What makes the situation even worse is that after we checked the Philips support page, the drivers on the site are an older version: V3.5.0 (The driver on the installation CD is V3.7.0) so there is no hope of solving the problem from the manufacturer’s site just yet.

The voice quality of the Skype calls is actually fairly good, but after we cycled the USB connection and made the phone work. It is slightly below the high standards set by the RTX DUALphone, but can match the Linksys CIT200 for voice quality. Philips just needs to fix the issues we ran into before it will become a good alternative to making Skype calls. However, until Philips fixes the problem, it would be better to buy an RTX DUALphone if you really want a 2-in-1 Skype phone.

(The testing computer has Windows XP SP2, Skype 2.5.130, and Philips VOIP321 V3.7.0 driver installed.)