TwinCites Asterisk Users Group

I recently purchased a Symbian S60 (3rd Ed.) smartphone Nokia N80 and upgraded it to the Internet Edition so I could use the Internet tel. SIP phone that nokia has made available to the N80, N80ie, E61, E70 and some other phones in these series as well.

The N80 Internet Edition or N80 standard upgraded to Internet Edition can be used as both a cell phone and a VoIP SIP phone. Users can download and use software for any VoIP SIP service.

The quality I have experienced has been excellent compared to the other wifi sip phone I had which was a UT Starcom phone which I thought in my honest opinion to be pretty poor. The best thing I have found with the Nokia SIP Internet tel. phone is the ability to walk into a saved wireless network access point and immediately be connected to your asterisk box and (although manually even though it gives an option for automatic) connect to gizmo project and be connected to both at the same time. So I can either answer my normal cell phone number (cingular sim inside my phone) or my gizmo project call in number, or my Sound Choice Communications US Plus phone line all at the same time! So these phones actually have the power to handle the registration of two different SIP accounts and work as a regular GSM phone and actually work without getting all locked up like a Sprint Windows Mobile smartphone which I had tested and found to not work very well although it did have a skype client which worked over the Rev. A EVDO network halfway decently. The only phone I could see being better than these would be a Nokia N95 which has not been released yet in the states but should be coming soon.

At the next Asterisk meeting I will be passing this ($500+) phone around! (but be careful! you break, you buy!) I haven't dropped it yet thankfully (knock on wood!) (and no it is NOT a door prize).

Also with a 3 megapixel camera built in it beats the 2 megapixels of the Apple iPhone, and the only phone which is better than both of the aforementioned phones in my opinion would be the mighty Nokia N95 with its 5 Megapixel cam with Zeiss optics and even VGA video capture and navigation. I would take a N80 or N95 over an Apple iPhone any day. I don't really care about the touchscreen of the iPhone, I would rather have a non locked down phone with rock solid quality with SIP Intenet tel. and a better than 2 megapixel camera. I guess if someone hacks the iPhone and figures out how to put Symbian S60 (3rd Ed.) or something like it on it with touchscreen functionality I guess I wouldn't care about it only having a 2 megapixel camera so much.

So if you want to check out this photo of my N80:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/179/428088072_f36857c9ee_b.jpg