Home > Consumer Reviews > GE - SKYPE - Dect 6.0 Cordless phone

I have owned this phone for about 3 weeks now, and my review is based on my experience with it in that time.

First off, the setup was a snap. It took less than five minutes to get the phone up and running (and perhaps another 20 to complete the optional firmware update). Setup consists of connecting the base station to your internet router and to an electrical outlet, then configuring the hand unit for your Skype account. Additional tinkering was necessary to customize the features to my liking, but I found the interface fairly user friendly and this process was also easy.

While user friendly, the interface is definitely the weakest aspect of the phone. It is slow and a bit clunky. There are noticeable pauses while switching between screens and especially when scrolling through contacts. The refresh rate on the color LCD screen is slow enough that when it scrolls a long contact name across the screen, the letters become significantly blurred and almost impossible to read. Additionally, it requires several clicks to view missed calls and access voicemails (e.g. Menu -> History -> Voicemail -> Options -> Play).

The most annoying behavior occurs during a phone call. First and foremost, the phone stops displaying the battery indicator during calls, so you have no idea how much talk time you have left. Second, the backlight on the screen turns off after a minute or so to conserve power, but there is no way to turn it back on without pressing a button on the phone, and there are no buttons which don't automatically perform some function (place the call on hold, hang up, etc...). This would be a bigger annoyance if the phone were actually displaying useful information during the call.

Despite these shortcomings, the phone does work well. Sound quality is acceptable. Battery life is also decent, perhaps 2-3 hours of talk time, 1-2 days standby. I love that you can easily swap out the standard AAA batteries, unlike most cordless phones which can only charge on their base station. The AAA batteries do charge inside the phone while it's connected to the charging station (NiMH rechargeables only).

Ergonomically, the phone is fairly comfortable for extended use. It fits well to my face, though the edges at the top are slightly sharp and can get uncomfortable after a while as they dig into my ear. Volume is sufficient and can be controlled using the up and down arrows on the key pad. The speakerphone is not quite loud enough sometimes, but generally gets the job done.

Integration with the Skype service is nearly perfect, and you really can't beat the cost of their Skype Pro service (even with SkypeIn, it's 90% cheaper than comparable service through my local phone company). In comparison to Vonage and other VoIP services I have used, the reliability, call quality and easy of use is far superior with this phone and Skype (not to mention a fraction of the cost).

All-in-all this is a good phone with a few annoying design flaws. The overriding selling point is certainly its compatibility with the wonderful Skype network. I would recommend it at least until a more streamlined version is released.

Update - 4/4/2008:

After a few months of usage, I'm still very happy with this phone. I haven't discovered any new problems beyond the ones I originally outlined in my review. Having had time to get used to all the interface quirks, I'd say that my only standing complaint is the sound quality. It's just not as clear as Skype through a computer, or even my cell phone. It seems like they could fix this with a better quality speaker.

Reliability has been extremely good in comparison to Vonage and even our land-based carrier. I haven't yet experienced a service outage or dropped call that wasn't the result of my cable internet going down, nor have I experienced any of the lock-ups that another reviewer mentioned.

Overall, I'm still very pleased with the phone. I will leave it at 4 stars due to the quirky interface and sub-par sound quality.

I bought this phone along with the Linksys CIT 400.

Pros for this phone:


The phone works when used as a standard phone to Skype out.
It has better fidelity for the person at the other end of the line than the Linksys.
The speaker phone is louder than the linksys.

Cons

Poor design and ergonomics. Program takes a perceptible irritating pause between each keystroke to recognize keystrokes and respond. Phone makes really ugly low key buzzing/moaning sound each time key is pressed. I'm sure this is supposed to be helpful, but would go nicely on the shelf with a bunch of the home appliances in the movie Brazil.
Occasionally the phone will lockup and not respond to key presses. Fix is to remove and replace battery.
There is no volume control for this phone.
Volume is adequate when used as a handset, and just barely adequate when used as a speaker phone.
Volume is NOT adequate when external headset is used. Speaker phone fidelity is not good, sound seems to be distorted when compared to standard Uniden cordless.
IMHO the phone and its internet interface is ugly, with a light and very cheap feel. The Linksys is much better in this regard.
AAA NIMH batteries. AA would give longer battery life.


Other than above, phone works as advertised.

I wound up returning the GE because its design and UI was really slow and clunky.

However, I feel both it and the Linksys could use serious improvement. Both do not fare well against the standard Uniden (non Skype) cordless phones, especially re lack of volume control, fidelity for the person on the other end of the line, speaker phone and headset volume and key visibility in the dark.

However, there does not seem to be much out there yet -- GE, Phillips and Linksys seem to be it for stand alone Skype internet phones... so choice is limited. If this catches on, there should be more choice from mainstream cordless phone manufacturers.

I would initially have given this telephone a 4-5 star rating, because at first it seemed pretty good. The interface worked, and it was really nice to have a phone that could call in and out on skype and our landline without leaving a computer on. I also bought 2 additional handsets and was ready to ditch our old phones. Good thing we didn't!

A little over 1 month into our use of the phone, it went on the fritz. The base station refused to communicate with the handsets, despite resetting, both hard and soft, and various efforts to manipulate the phone. I finally called Support, which is hard to reach, and they laboriously walked me through everything I'd already tried before finally conceded defeat. I had to send it in.

It is now over 2 months since I sent it in and we have seen neither hide nor hair of the thing. I finally got really impatient 2 weeks ago and called to see what had happened. Apparently, they had some migration of their service department, and weren't ready to take care of things. The representative didn't want to tell me how much longer I would have to wait, but then sort of agreed that it would likely go out in a week or two. I can now tell you that it has been over 2 weeks and we still haven't got it. Meanwhile, we have 3 handsets here we can't use. At this point, I'm ready to send it all back to the company and demand a refund, so I can get the Phillips version. At least they've been using that in Europe for a while and hopefully have the bugs out.

My biggest concern about the phone, while it was still otherwise working well, was the flimsy feel to the phone. It's largely composed of plastic and is very light. All in all, feels like a toy phone and it's probably not surprising it broke.

Addendum: It's now 3 months since we sent in our phone and we still have no firm date on when, if ever, we will get the base unit back. This is the worst service I have ever experienced for an electronics product from a company of this size.

I am new to the skype community and I have done several weeks of reading and research on which skype phone to purchase. I needed to find a decent phone locally so I could take it back if I did not like it.

The Setup is for the phone is really simple, plug in the box to your router, plug in the phone line, insert batterers into the phone, turn phone on.

The skype setup was smooth and simple, up to date firmware was already installed.

The phone cames with 500 minutes of skypeout.

I went ahead and purchased 1 year of phone service At 29.99 and a phone number, 60.00 per year. Within minutes both were working.

The call quality is great so far, the spouse says it sounds better than out land line.

The phone runs on 2 AAA rechargeable batteries.

The things that I am disappointed about are not fault of the phone but rather skype software. Like if you are required to press the number "1" on the phone, you better be near your computer, because you still can't do that on the phone yet.

GE 28310EE1 is not as stylish and well made as discontinued Phillips VOIP841. I have been using VOIP841 for over a year. I liked that phone despite the need to reboot the base station about once a month but I wanted a system that really works with several handsets.

I purchased GE 28310EE1 with two extra handsets. I had no problem registering additional handsets with the base station. The process was very simple, reset a new handset that you want to add (Settings->Advanced->Reset), leave it on a cradle and press the reset button in the base unit. I can tell that GE 28310EE1 was designed to work with several handsets. You can rename each handset (e.g., "Kitchen", "Bed Room"), make intercom calls or join a pending Skype call.

Unfortunately, the phone has a few drawbacks. First, GE handsets tend to malfunction (some users call it freeze). How frequently this occurs, depends on how many options you use in the phone. If you open Contacts, select an item, press Options then go to Settings->Phone Settings, the handset will freeze after a few iterations. When you do not visit Settings, the handset will probably work fine for a week or so. When the freeze happens, the handset becomes very slow. Its communication with the base station is broken, you cannot fetch the contact list nor input more than 3-4 numbers. The problem is not caused by the base unit but the handset itself - the other handsets would work fine. The only way to fix the problem is to remove batteries to reset the handset (or to register it again with the base station but you will lose the handset name). The problem can be serious when you have only one handset. The phone will not ring and you may not notice this for quite a while. But if you have two handsets you can be almost sure that one of them will ring. Amazingly, the base station seem to be stable and does not require manual resets (or it resets itself automatically from time to time). I contacted the Danish company RTX, that designed the phone, and asked if they plan to fix the firmware but they directed me to GE. Well, I am not sure how much GE knows about this phone. This problem was reported by users and reviewers in 2007 and has not been fixed for more than a year.

Removing batteries from the handset to reset it is simple but there are side effects. It appears that the handset is not able to measure precisely the voltage of installed batteries and it uses time to determine how long to charge. If you remove and put back fully charged batteries - the battery status becomes low and a full charging cycle is applied. So after resetting the handset by brute-force battery removal, batteries are charged again and they become hot to the touch. I am not sure if this poses any fire hazard (charging is slow so should be safe) but if you are worry about house safety, leave the handset off the cradle for a few hours. Also, when you put the battery, the handset may not boot properly so you will be forced to repeat the process several times.

My handsets came with firmware version 1.01. This version does not allow you to send DTMF tones during 1-800 calls (press 1 for this, press 2 for that, etc.). The phone is almost useless without this feature when calling banks, credit cards, airlines or support lines. Fortunately, firmware can be updated to a newer version 2.24 that fixes this problem. The process of upgrading firmware was very smooth for me: Settings->Advanced->Firmware Update->Latest firmware. All handsets have to be left in cradles during this process. New firmware is downloaded from Internet to the base station and to handsets, one after another.

In November we had a daylight time switch in California. I noticed that the phone displayed wrong time with settings: "Time & Date-> Daylight saving-> Daylight saving" (Time Server must be activated). Interestingly, disabling daylight saving provided correct time. This looks like a firmware bug. BTW, should this option be called "Daylight saving->Enable"?

The user interface in this phone is rather slow. After pressing "Contacts" you need to wait about 4 seconds for the list of 10 items to show up. The phone makes long "booooo" sounds when any key is pressed. A shorter beep would create appearance of a faster response. There is one case when pressing buttons does not produce any beeps, lift the handset and press the "Call/Speaker" button to select the landline. Now pressing buttons is silent - another firmware bug.

Screen fonts used to display contact info and phone numbers are narrow. The good side of this choice is that the names can be longer than in VOIP841 but they are harder to read on a small color display. Increasing display contrast improves readability.

Keypad buttons feel like a "hard" remote control. The round navigation button is particularly flimsy and uncomfortable. The base station plastic case looks cheap. The handset clip is made of shiny black plastic but the handset black plastic has mat finish. Did GE outsource plastic injection molding to two CM? The base station has no "page" button to locate a missing handset but if you have a second handsets you can call it and find it that way. Another annoying thing of this phone is that the display turns off after 60 seconds and there is no way to turn it on without activating some function assigned to a button. Moreover, when the connection cannot be made, the phone momentarily displays a message ("Not Available" or "Sorry, the user is busy") and goes back to the main screen. When you hold the handset next to your ear, you would not know what happened - you dialed a number a moment ago and now the phone shows the main screen as nothing happened.. The phone should emit a warning beep and wait with the message for the user to confirm - another firmware bug, same as in VOIP841.

GE 28310EE1 does not have an internal web page that can be viewed with a web browser. All configuration have to be performed using a handset. I have a network printer, home alarm, router, DSL modem, network storage - all those network devices have internal web servers to view and/or change configurations. Philips VOIP841 has a simple internal web page as well. Surprisingly, GE 28310EE1 does not offer this useful feature.

Finally, the 28310EE1 user manual is bad. Fortunately, there is a solution for this problem. You can use dualphone 3088 manuals (European version of this phone). There are two interesting manuals, one for a single handset system and one explaining features of an extra handset. Clear language with color screen captures will guide you through advanced features, e.g. how setup 3-way conference calls. Apparently the phone has some shortcuts, e.g. pressing "Menu" then "555" pops up screen contrast control. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut to soft reset of a handset.

In my view the phone is not reliable enough to disconnect the landline. Moreover, the phone does not fully integrate skype with landline. The phone has no answering machine so you need to keep your old answering machine connected. Of course, for a small fee, Skype would provide the voice mail service but this will not include your landline calls. It would be great to have a phone with one, integrated, local answering machine for both skype and landline calls. Also the phone should allow all contact info to be stored locally rather than on the skype server. If skype goes out of business, this phone is completely useless.

On the positive side, a nice feature of 28310EE1 is that different melodies can be selected for incoming landline, skype and intercom calls. The base station is also Energy Star according to the GE website. The power supply is rated 12 VDC @ 300 mA so the power consumption should not exceed 4 Watts, excellent. The voice quality is good, especially when calling a similar phone (skype-to-skype); if you call your family a lot you may consider buying them a similar phone and enjoy voice quality that is better than landline. In my local Fry's store I also bought for a few bucks a simple, GE branded headset with 2.5mm jack and a microphone on a cord (elongated shape). The rubber trim around the ear bud started to fall almost immediately but the voice quality is very good, better than Philips. Volume can be adjusted by pressing up/down arrows on the round navigation button but only after the connection is made - it would be good if the telephone could display a number between 1 and 10 representing the current volume. The phone works fine with default network settings and the WRT54GS Linksys router.

Overall, I would give GE 28310EE1 3 stars (out of 5). The user interface is sluggish and the handsets occasionally freeze preventing you from receiving or making calls. The industrial design is uninspiring. There is no built-in web server to change phone settings or to view phone logs. The manual is rather poorly written, even the electrical specification is missing (power consumption, max talk time, screen resolution, etc). Certainly, GE should overhaul its QA department and work a bit harder on industrial design. Unfortunately, there are almost no other choices of PC-less Skype phones that work outside 2.4 GHz and with several handsets. In socialism people used to say: "if you do not have what you like, you have to like what you have". Now I repeat the same phrase every time I look at this phone.