Android In The Home: Binatone iHome Phone 2

(I'm going to be taking a look at a couple of "smarthomephone" options, starting with an odd device from Binatone)

I'm going to start this with a notice - it's so flaky that I have to wonder if there is something physically wrong the unit I have.

The Binatone iDECT iHomePhone 2 is possibly one of the oddest telephony gadgets that has come in to my possession. If you were to take the guts out of an old, low end, Android 2.2 smartphone and graft it into the body of a DECT cordless phone you would end up with something a lot like the iHomePhone.

It runs a fairly stock version of Android 2.2 (though there's no market, not even a third party one, let alone Google Play - so apps need to be side loaded), though it does use ADW.Launcher. The screen's resistive and there's a little stylus that slides inside the phone (you're probably not going to need it to make calls, but it is useful when trying to use the keyboard on the 2.8" screen). When compared to Android based mobile phones, the buttons have to be the second most oddest thing about this phone. It has the sort of buttons you would expect to find on a DECT phone - a green "phone" button, a red "end call" button (that doubles as the "home" button), a D Pad (where up and down are volume control and left and right appear to do nothing) and finally the usual Android "menu" and "back" buttons. However, the most oddest thing about this phone is the phone itself - the screen and buttons are on the back of device with the microphone and speaker on the other side (so, compared to practically all mobile phones, you have to turn the phone back to front when you make a call).

It's dock serves as both charging station and DECT base station. As it's GAP compatible, I decided to pair it up to my pre-existing Gigaset DECT base station instead. One of the nice little features is that it uses the standard Android power bars to display DECT signal strength.

The biggest problem I have with the phone isn't the design quirks. It's the fact that it likes to switch itself off for no apparent reason. Especially during calls. Bit of a fail there. Another, lesser, annoyance is that it's a bit slow to ring. Even when using it's own dock as the DECT base station, other phones will have already rung once or twice before it finally starts to ring.

If it wasn't for that fundamental flaw and it's design quirks it's a really interesting idea for a home phone. You can easily export your contacts from an Android mobile phone and load them into the iHomePhone (even the images that I had associated with my contacts came across). After having become so used to using phones with Android it's much easier to use than the other DECT phones in the house.

There's no built-in VOIP support (which isn't exactly surprising, seeing as it's running Froyo and built-in VOIP support didn't come to Android until Gingerbread). I am tempted to try and install Sipdroid. If I do then I'll write up how well it works.

Of the things noticeably missing number one is SMS messaging. I think it's the number one missing feature because it's a feature that both mobile phones (all of them) and even some DECT home phones have. While I doubt that all that many people use landline SMS, it would have been nice if it supported it.

One other other thing noticably missing is a camera. Probably for a best, if only to stop arguments over whether or not it was front facing camera. This does mean that if the Android based home phone of your dreams is also a videophone, then this is not the home phone for you.

Android on the O2 Joggler

A while back I purchased an O2 Joggler off eBay (I missed it in the shops when O2 discontinued it and dropped the price down to £50 - fortunately that was around the going rate for one on eBay when I got mine, so I didn't loose out much).  While out of the box it is still fundamentally flawed, it has long since been hacked into something potentially useful.

For awhile I was running Ubuntu on it, and while it worked it still felt like you really needed to connect a keyboard and mouse to make the most out of it. Recently a build of Android x86 Froyo has come out for it, so I decided to give it a spin. I have to say that after installing Froyo, you realize how the Joggler should have been an Android device from the start.

I'm hoping to get Android running on the internal 1Gb flash (I've got it booting off a 1Gb USB pen drive, so I'm hopeful) and then using a low profile USB drive (something like this) as the "SD Card" (in the worst case, I could just use the low profile drive for both the OS and the SD card).

It's not perfect - videos seems a bit iffy, apparently there are some issues with external speakers and not every app works or works well - but as a small computer for the kitchen it looks like it finally fits the bill.

Google Giveth, Google Taketh Away

Google Giveth

My Nexus One got the Gingerbread update the other week. One of the new features is built in SIP support (which you can find at the bottom of Settings -> Call Settings). It was reasonably straightforward to get it talking to the IP-01 (note to self: remember to click on the "Apply Changes" button in the top right corner after making changes). Sound quality needs a bit of work (I have a feeling some reconfiguration is in order).

I think I'm going to have to look into Locale scripting for turning "Receive incoming calls" on and off (if I'm not at home then there's not much point wasting battery while trying to keep in contact with a server it can't ever see).

One thing worth noting - if you normally don't bother with passwords on your SIP accounts, you'll need to have one on the account you want to use with Android as you currently can't set up a SIP account on the phone without one.

Google Taketh Away

I got an email at the weekend - Gizmo is getting shutdown. Apparently Google think Google Voice in GMail is a more than adequate replacement. I disagree on two counts.

One - the lack of SIP support. My hope is that SIP support for GVoice is coming soon (though you would think they would have gotten that up and running before shutting down Gizmo). After all, it's now built in to Android. It's probably best not to hold your breath though.

Two - US-centricity. Both Gizmo and Grandcentral were international. Google Voice is not. I had to go through hoops to keep my GrandCentral number working with Google Voice while in the UK that I did not have to go through with GrandCentral. Gizmo helped on the international front as it meant I did not need a second US telephone number to use GC and even after the move to GVoice it made things a lot easier. Now I'm going to have to go through even more hoops to keep using the service. I really don't get why Google so often fails when it comes to looking beyond America's borders (it's not just Google Voice where they often fail, but Voice is the poster child for Google's failures in this regard).

Atcom IP 01 Asterisk Server

Now that I have my VOIP setup up and running again, I've decided to move from running asterisk inside a virtual machine over to a dedicated server. Instead of cobbling together a server out of old computer parts I've gone and bought an Atcom IP-01. It's a tiny (about the same size as a 4 port switch) embedded linux server that not only saves space compared to an old PC, it's low power and silent as well.

The IP-01 is part of a family of asterisks servers, there's the IP-02,04 and 08 - the number reflects the number of FXO/FXS ports that can be installed. The IP-01 has one port and I decided to go with an FXO port.

It has a web based UI (which will be familar to anyone who has used an Asterisk web GUI) as well as SSH and telnet access. If you log in via SSH you're greated by a fairly standard Linux command line - you can attach to the running Asterisk console via asterisk -r, just like any Asterisk install.

The only problem I ran into was that I needed to do a firmware update to get the FXO to work right. Other than that getting it up and running was straightforward.

INQ1 On 3 (with Skype)

Last year I bought an INQ 1 on 3 - mostly because of the "free Skype & Instant Messenger for Life" ads. I played with it for a bit, put it somewhere safe and now that it has resurfaced I thought I would see if the "free Skype for life" claim was remotely true.

The phone itself is a nice enough little feature phone with Skype, MSN, and Facebook apps built in. There's no built in twitter client and the built in last.fm client is just a scrobbler (which was disappointing). The Skype client works, but it's a bit limited. You can voice call and IM with other Skype users and if you have Skype credit you can dial out to international numbers - UK phone numbers don't work though. Online Numbers (what Skype In is now called) don't appear to work either. Call quality was good, both Skype to Skype and Skype to Phone.

One interesting thing, I figured that any credit that was on the device would have long expired (it's got to be at least a year since I last used it) but I found that the credit didn't expire. This does mean that I have been unable to put the "free Skype for life" claim though.

Sipgate & Gizmo5/Google Voice

I got sipgate.co.uk up and running again without any major issue. As Tesco's voip service no longer exists I even went and bought some credit with sipgate for dial out.

Getting Google Voice and Gizmo 5 back up and running like it was back in the days of Grandcentral was more of a challenge (and I'm not yet happy with the way I've set up Gizmo through FreePBX, but at least I got something working). At first Google Voice wasn't sending calls to Gizmo and then I eventually noticed what appears to have been the problem - unlike Grandcentral, Google Voice won't route to Gizmo if you don't have a "real" phone number located in the US attached to your Voice account. I found this both disappointing (one of Grandcentral's selling points was that you didn't need a real phone) and easily surmountable.

Rebuilding My VOIP Setup

For various reasons I'm in the process of rebuilding my VOIP setup from scratch. Here's what I've got working so far:

Asterisk Now (running in a Virtual Machine)

I felt that the best way to get (re)started was to set up Asterisk Now (1.6 with the FreePBX GUI) running inside a VirtualBox virtual machine (configured with bridge networking instead of the VirtualBox default NAT networking so that it appears on the LAN). I figure I can move to dedicated hardware as and when I feel the need to.

Atcom AT-320 hard phones

I was able to pick up a couple of these cheap off of ebay. They support SIP or IAX2 depending on what firmware is installed (and can be switched by replacing the firmware). While they came with the SIP firmware I was able to find the IAX2 firmware on the web and after flashing them they're now happily talking to my Asterisk virtual server.

It took a little bit of head scratching to get it all working. FreePBX seems to have some odd default security settings on new IAX2 extensions where every IP address is blocked from using an extension and the phones seem to need the Asterisk extension configured with requirecalltoken set to no in order to work.

To Do

There's still a number of things to do, including setting up some outbound routes and figuring out what to do for an FXO.

Vodafone Sure Signal

Recently I went to visit my parents who happen to live a bit of Vodafone blackspot - if I'm lucky I can get a bar or two while indoors. This provided a perfect opportunity to splash out on a Vodafone Sure Signal 3G femtocell which should give me 5 bars of coverage.

The femtocell is about the same size as some of the larger ADSL modem routers and is a fairly simple install. To configure the device you have to log in to your Vodafone account on Vodafone's website and tell Vodafone where the phone is and what mobile phones will be allowed access. Other than that you should just have to plug in a lit up ethernet cable and wait. However, I ended up waiting a bit longer than I should have because Vodafone doesn't include any information on what firewall ports need to be opened up. I think they're relying on UPNP to open the firewall up (which if it works should mean just plug it in, wait a bit and go), but if for whatever reason that doesn't work you're left to some googleing to find the right settings.

Once everything was configured and running I got the full strength signal exactly as promised. Call quality was exactly like a normal cell phone call (I didn't run into any delay or echo problems that I've sometimes had with VOIP -> POTS services). I think that's what impressed me most about it - it actually delivers what is says it will deliver.

One other thing that as a software developer who uses a lot of open source software brought some joy - there was a piece of paper stating that open source software was used and said source is available on Vodafone's subversion repository. I really should check out what's there at some point.

Note to self - firewall settings

In order to save myself some pain from trying to find this page again:

Destination IP Addresses:

212.183.133.177

212.183.133.178

212.183.133.179

212.183.131.128/26

Ports and Protocols:

Port 50 - TCP/IP

Port 4500 - UDP

Port 500 - UDP

Sky Player

Sky have an "iPlayer like" service unimaginatively called Sky Player. I don't have a Sky subscription (I did until a tree grew too tall and blocked the signal) and due to moving home I will soon be giving up Homechoice/Tiscali TV/Talk Talk TV so I was hoping a Sky Player subscription would give me a way to access Sky content without a dish. I'm not interested in the Sports or Movie channels - all I want access to is the base channels. As I'm a desktop Linux user their desktop client is useless to me (why go with fairly open, almost universally installed technologies like flash when you can go with Silverlight?) but they have a relatively new XBox 360 app and I have a relatively new XBox 360 so I've decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, I can't say that I'm all that impressed with it.

Sky allow non Sky subscribers to access the base Sky Player package for £15 a month (though with a new XBox, you can take out a 3 month trial subscription for £10 - which is what I've gone for). For that £15 a month you don't get much - access to a small library of Video on Demand content and a handful of live channels. Not only is the VOD library far from extensive, it's most annoying feature is that it will happily show you all the content from Bravo that there is no way to get access to if you're a Sky Player only subscriber (Sky Player is available free to Sky subscribers, and if you have a package that includes Bravo then you can get Bravo's VOD content). Worse (and the reason why I won't be continuing to subscribe) is that not only is the number of live channels somewhat thin, Sky 1 is crippled - shows like the Simpsons get blocked. Why it's OK for Talk Talk to transmit the Simpsons on Sky 1 over IP while it's not OK for Sky to transmit the Simpsons on Sky 1 over IP is the sort of thing only a media lawyer could understand. Still, I don't have to understand Sky's reason - I just have to not give them my money.

I can see Sky Player being useful if you live in a Sky subscribing household and want to get limited Sky content in a room without having to install a second (or third) Sky box. I can see it being useful if you're a bored Sky subscriber sitting in a Starbucks with a laptop that's running Windows or Mac OS with time to kill (latte sippin' iPad fans are in the same boat as us Linux users - greetings comrades!). If you don't already have Sky then it's hard to see what's there to justify £15 a month. I guess if you want the sports channels, are unable to get them any way else and yet money is little object then maybe it's for you, but if all you want is "basic cable" over IP then Sky Player sadly isn't the way to go.

The End Of Tesco's VOIP Service

I got an email from Tesco's voip service - it comes to an end on the 27th of April. Sadly, the number's not portable to another service and credit appears to just disappear into the void (fortunatly I only had credit that came with devices).

edit 2010-7-8: I was going to write more about this, but I never got around to it - it's disappointing, but not surprising.

A Day With The VF360 Samsung H1

Yesterday, I went to the Vodafone AppStar UK Developer Day, during which I got to use their new Vodafone 360 phone - the Samsung H1. The whole day was spent talking about and developing widgets - using HTML+CSS+Javascript in a Zip file to write an application.

While the H1 appears to support JavaME, it looks like Vodafone is pushing widget development as the primary way to develop for the device. This follows on from Vodafone's Widget platform for Symbian S60 devices and current widgets should run with few if any changes on the H1 (the biggest difference widgets face is the difference in screen size).

Widgets written for the H1 can be sold through the Vodafone 360 service's app store and can also appear in the app stores of Verizon, SOFTBANK and China mobile thanks to the efforts of the "Joint Innovation Lab". JIL have released an SDK for Linux and Windows (with the Mac somewhere in the pipeline). It would be interesting to compare JIL's widget SDK with LiMo's Widget SDK (called BONDI), as the H1 is a LiMo phone.

I didn't make any calls with the phone, so I have no idea about call quality. The thing that impressed me most was the quality of the (touch) screen - which has a surprisingly high resolution of 800x480. No idea if it supports multitouch (if it does, I didn't stumble across anything that used it). One odd screen related thing that was noted during the presentation is that widgets can't switch to landscape mode, at least not easily. They showed Bloomberg's widget (apparently a port of their iPhone app), which does go into landscape mode (I'm guessing through CSS tricks), however the chrome around the widget remains in portrait mode (so it looked a little odd). It's certainly something I'd like to see fixed in the future 

I have an odd feeling that the VF360 Samsung H1 shows us what Samsung's newly announced Bada platform is going to look like - something "flashier" than a featurephone but not quite as powerful as a full blown and more expensive smartphone. The H1 is a LiMo device with a WebKit based browser - we should find out soon if Bada phones are Limo/WebKit combos as well.

Google Voice Search On S60

The Big G have launched a version of their Mobile App for Nokia S60 Symbian devices which includes voice search (in both English and Mandarin),

So far, so good as it seems to work with my cobbled together accent.

You can find out more here or just go to the mobile google home page on your phone to get a link to download.

Vodafone Acess Gateway Announced

Vodafone have announced the "Vodafone Access Gateway". As you can probably guess from the name, it's an in home "micro-cell" that transports up to four 3G voice calls over your home broadband connection. No word on 3G data or GSM only phones.

It would be great at my parents house, as Vodafone's signal disappears about 2m inside the house. Less useful for me in up in London, where I get a full strength signal at home.

It will be available July 1st has 3 different prices - £160 one off, £5 a month or free as part of a price plan. No word on if getting it "free" means getting a gateway in lieu of a phone (though I bet it will).

One thing - Vodafone are claiming it's the first of it's kind in Europe. I guess technically it is - but I do recall that BT offered mobile phones that would switch to VOIP in the home. The biggest difference is that the Access Gateway should work with any 3G phone (that's on the Vodafone network) and not a small range of specialized handsets.

A quick look at the 02 Joggler

I had a quick play with an O2 Joggler at an O2 Shop, and I quickly realized that I don't want to spend £149 (or even £49) for it as it has one feature missing and that missing feature is a show stopper - it doesn't have a web browser!

Instead of being a handy "kitchen computer", it's been hobbled into a digital photo frame with a calendar. Until there's an upgrade that includes either a browser or an app store (that has a browser available) I wouldn't bother spending money on it. It's a shame, as it if wasn't for the lack of a web browser it would have had a place in my kitchen.

Hopefully, somebody else will release something in the same form factor (basically, a large internet tablet), but with a browser. Ideally, it would be running either Android or Maemo. Maybe somebody will work out how to hack the Joggler to run Android and or Maemo. I'll have to keep an eye out.

Starbucks WiFi Switch

I've just been to the nearest Starbucks - there's now a BT Openzone sign on the wall. A quick WiFi scan with the Nokia shows that T-Mobile is no longer there (even though a T-Mobile sign remains on the door).

Vodafone Find & Go Sat Nav - Why?

I stumbled over Vodafone's Find & Go Sat Nav service when I was looking at the Vodafone Website, and I've got to ask, why would anyone ever use it?

For £5 a month you get turn by turn navigation - but dedicated GPS units can now be had for 50 - 60. It means 2 devices, but the dedicated GPS is probably going to be a better turn by turn navigation experience then your phone.

I use the GPS on my Nokia N95 8GB a lot (I prefer Google Maps over Nokia Maps, but both are free). I've never been in a position where turn by turn would be useful - while walking I just need to know where I am and where I'm going and the screen is too small to make it useful as an in-car GPS (that's what my Garmin nüvi 710 is for). If for some reason I do want directions on my N95, Google Maps can provide them.

So, like I said at the begining, why would anyone pay Vodafone £5 a month for Find & Go?

BT Openzone Coming To UK Starbucks

According to this BT press release, Openzone is coming to Starbucks in the UK.

No word on what happens to T-Mobile at Starbucks. I can't see why either need exclusive access to Starbucks - the Starbucks closest to me as I write this has already has both, thanks to BT's Wireless Westminster service. Alternatively, this could be a sign of T-Mobile more or less exiting the WiFi access point business in the UK. A quick check of their HotSpots in London had very few non Starbucks locations run by T-Mobile (they did list a lot of Openzone access points, as they have a roaming agreement with Openzone). And one of those T-Mobile HotSpots (at Waterloo Railway Station) appears to directly compete with an Openzone access point (I should go there and confirm).

Strangely, they haven't sent an email about this to Openzone customers - I stumbled across the news while looking for something else.

A 44 Page Mobile Phone Bill

I got my first phone bill since I switched on Google Latitude - it was 44 pages (printed on both sides) long. It seems Latitude makes lots of small connections to the net (2k every couple of minutes), which adds up to a lot of itemized items all charged at 0.

I showed it to family members for the comic effect.

Skype to support SIP

According Mashable, Skype is to start supporting SIP, at least for corporates (no idea if it will be made available to anyone).


So Skype have decided to become less of a toy.

Speaking of toys, I've run into a very odd issue with a USB Soundcard and VOIP apps (ekiga and gizmo) on linux. While the soundcard (soundbox seems a more appropriate term) happily works with most audio apps, it's not working right with these two. Audio output gets heavily distorted - it sounds a lot like what Single Side Band shortwave transmissions sound like through normal AM reception, but with judder. Audio input doesn't seem to work at all (but again it works fine with Audacity and Sound Recorder). I can get ekiga to output OK with some weird PulseAudio routing, but that trick doesn't work at all with gizmo. It's really odd and I haven't found much mention of similar problems on the net. What I have found is usally the voip software blaming the soundcard (even though the soundcard works fine with other apps).

Finally, I finally got the upgrade to Google Voice. Unsurprisingly, it's a lot like GrandCentral, but with a googlely interface.

On Skype Vs GVoice

From the NY Times

“Skype is light years ahead in terms of video, simultaneous chat and voice, and the installed base is huge,” said Ross Sandler, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. “I don’t think they have anything to worry about.”

Other than the whole "not making a profit" thing.

On a side note - I'm still waiting for my GrandCentral to Google Voice upgrade.