Tuesday, May 12, 2009

SciPhone G2 Phone Use

Here are some updates since yesterday's post.

The ringer on the G2 is very loud! You don't need to worry about missing it. I haven't tried changing the ringtone yet, but the default will let you know you've got a call and no mistake.

The speakerphone output is somewhat quiet, however. Not too quiet, but not loud enough to use unless you're in a moderately quiet environment. A normal indoor room (conference room, office) will be fine. It would be usable in a car with moderate road noise. If you've got background conversation noise, or a loud stretch of road (like Interstate 80 right after winter where the truck chains have removed the road surface) then it may not be loud enough. If you depend on it under these conditions, you'll want a headset.

The transmitted sound is good, both in handset mode and in speakerphone use. I haven't tried the included headset yet.

The sound you receive is good, but it seems to amplify high frequency background noises more than my Nokia did. Clicks, mostly. This is just a first impression, I've only had a couple of brief conversations on it, so I'll be posting more on what it sounds like when I've made more calls with it.

Dialing is easy, and it plays the standard DTMF phone tones as you dial, which makes it nicer to dial without having real buttons. You can also select phone numbers off the SIM card directly. I haven't had a chance to play with speed dial or other such features, yet.

I also got the G2 to talk to my home Wifi once I followed the manufacturer's directions, as relayed on the Sciphone forums. There's a file that includes directions (multilingual, English comes second) on how to configure the phone so that you can select the Wifi as the network connection for the included applications to use.

I was able to browse easily with the included Opera Mini browser. I still have some things to learn about using Opera Mini (particularly with Delicious, since I don't have any bookmarks on the phone.)

The music plays good and loud. The music is a bit tinny through the internal speaker but I didn't expect anything else. Hopefully I'll have a chance to try it with headphones soon. One downside to the G2: It doesn't use standard headphones. It has special ones that use the phone's USB port. I'm not sure if it's compatible with SciPhone i68+ headphones or not, but it looks the same at first glance.

My Articles on the Sciphone G2:
Posted by saundby at 10:07 AM
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