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| Hitachi-Cable WIP-5000 - WiFi SIP handset | ||
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After having tested the Senao, this handset seemed the obvious next choice. It seems that ABP and Hitachi-Cable worked together on creating a WiFi handset, that really matches up with the quality of better cellphones and they definatly have done a good job. But let's start at the beginning: The Hitachi-Cable handset has sneaket itself into the marked without being pushed too much, suddenly it just was there. The dealers, I so far have found are VoIP Supply at around $320 in the U.S. or GoIP in Denmark for around 300 EUR, if you are looking for somebody located in Europe. It doesn't exactly come cheap, but the quality of the phone itself is superior to others like ZyXEL and Senao. Dimensions for the Hitachi are 127×43×20.2 mm (HxWxT) and it weighs 102g. The manufacturer promises 55 hours stand-by time or approx. 3 hours talk time, which sounds reasonable. Supported codecs are G.711 ulaw and alaw and G.729a. The phone comes with the charger, a nice stand and a quick guide, that tell's you the basic things needed. The phone was clearly developed for deployment in bigger installations or by integrators. It has a lot of options to set it up, tweak network and SIP parameters and can be provisioned remotely, if necessary. There is also some Windows based management software for the phone, this would require the use of the optional USB cable though, which I unfortunatly don't have. That USB cable can also be used for charging the phone. | |
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On the side of the phone you will find the connector for a headset, standard mini-jack, volume button and a button to lock the phone. Once the lock button has been pressed for approx. 3 seconds, the phone will ask you for the "user password". This password also needs to be entered, to unlock the phone again. You can accept calls, while the lock is on, but nothing else can be done, really. The phone can be switched off, the battery be pulled off etc., it'll still want the password before unlocking again. |
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Now, I've ordered my phone from VoIP Supply in the U.S. and what I sometimes don't get with american companies is, why they don't think ? A phone like the Hitachi is destinied for travelling, but still did ABP / Hitachi only supply a power supply for 100V with it. Luckily the connector was screwed together with two screws, not glued or any other nasty stuff, so a soldering iron and a 5V 100V-240V power supply did the job of making the charger of this phone friendly for usage anywhere in the world. The power supply either goes in the back of the stand or directly in the phone, when travelling. During the time, where the connector of the phone not is plugged in, it gets protected by a plastic plug, that is attached to the phone, similar as the one in the headset connector. | |
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This phone is really handy in size. Try to look at this picture. The phones on row there are the Senao SI-7800H, a Nokia 6210i, the Hitachi-Cable WIP-5000 and an Ericsson T610. Nothing to complain on the size. My phone came out of the box with bootrom v1.0.3 and software v1.5.6. The first impression is good, however the radio is not as powerfull, as the one from the Senao. Also the sound is not as good as compared with the Senao, when using G.729, still speech is clear and easy and the phone has none of the problems with hangs etc. like the Senao has. I haven't gone fully through all functionality of the phone yet, more thorough information will follow soon. |
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The webinterface can be accessed on port 8080 of the phones ip-address, once the webserver has been enabled in the phones admin menu. It's not particular fancy or descriptive and definatly not been designed, if you want to call it design at all, against the enduser. | |
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Once you press the "System Setup" or "Configuration" menu, the phone will ask you for username and password. These are not defined initially, so you can just press "ok" in the dialog box and get on. The "System Setup" menu let's you upgrade or configure the phone from a tftp server, change the admin id and password and disable the webserver again. |
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The "System Configuration" is a bit more thorough. The options are sometimes a bit unclear, or what options are valid. If in doubt, try googling :). I'll be walking through the most important ones here, when I expand the review. I'm using the Hitachi together with Asterisk and that worked out without problems. Also one of the things I had trouble with the Senao, DTMF, is not a problem here. The Hitachi supports DTMF over RTP, SIP-INFO or RFC2833. I haven't gone fully through all functionality of the phone yet, more thorough information will follow soon. | |
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Created June 4th, 2005 - last updated: February 6th, 2006 | ||
