[alligator]

I'm in the market again for another home phone. Of course, a corded phone doesn't make sense, so I'm looking for a cordless phone. Why can't we buy lithium based cordless phones? Why haven't the cool features from cell phones migrated down to home phones?

Can anyone recommend a nice home phone to me? I'd use my cell phone but my wife won't give up the home phone.

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

Wow, I wonder the opposite; why are land-phones so much cheaper, yet the sound quality and physical comfort is FAR better than the best cell phone?

I'll dump my land line when cells sound (and feel) as good.

[TETENAL]

[reader50]

Put me down with Silky Voice of The Gorn. Calls never drop on landlines ... unless you are calling someone's cell phone. The calls go through faster too.

[alligator]

Yes, but the phone features suck. They sound better, but handsets have cheap LCD screens, very few customizable ringers, and they still use NiCd or NiMH batteries!

[ghporter]

Wired instruments fall into two categories: sucky, cheap-ass, "Radio Shack is embarrassed to sell 'em" stuff and high-end commercial stuff that will wipe your nose, take your messages, put out the cat and remind you when to make the payments. There is very little in between. Part of the reason I finally moved to a wireless phone system at home is that I've come to use a lot of the features on my cell enough that I like to have them handy-and I haven't found a sub-$100 wired instrument that can match most of them. For $150 I got a FOUR remote wireless system that has all the features I want to have and more.

But it's not the "land line" that's the problem-it's the end equipment. That copper that comes into your rooms can be as much as 30 years old and still perform great. My neighborhood is less than 10 years old, my 5 year-old house is in the new end of it and has 5 year-old copper coming into it. I never had a problem with the actual line coming into the house, but I could often find noise, intermittent volume and other issues with my instruments. I have ZERO problems with my wireless phone system.

I wouldn't knock NiMH batteries in cordless phones too hard-they're cheap and last pretty well because the "intended" place for a handset is pretty much in the charger most of the time. That tends to work fine with NiMH.

[SSharon]

The phones I have at home have more features than most cordless phones since they include color lcds, customizable ringers, etc.
The biggest problem is that the 2 handsets don't talk to each other. When a call is missed both handsets read 1 missed call but when you check to see who it is the other phone still has the message up. This means they are totally out of sync unless you go through the steps twice.

[Scarpa]

Has anyone tried out the new DECT phones? Seems like that's the area we'll see cell-phone type features bleeding over to land lines.

[Cold Warrior]

I have a low-end Philips DECT (sold at Wal-Mart; 1 base with answering machine, and 1 other charging base) and don't like its voice quality. Also, there's a serious delay between pressing a number and hearing the tone -- about 1.5 seconds.

[brassplayersrock²]

"a low-end Philips DECT (sold at Wal-Mart)"

there's your problem

[alligator]

Anyone have a good recommendation for a phone they actually like to use?

Why haven't we seen phones built into tiny headsets for home use? Transmitting to a base station 50' away is much different than a cell phone using 2W of power to transmit 2 miles away.

[CaseCom]

I bought a new Panasonic DECT phone just a week ago, and so far I like it a lot. Voice quality is really good; sounds much better than my old 5.8 GHz phone (which was also Panasonic).

Only thing I don't like is the overly complicated menu system; it takes too many keystrokes to do simple things like clearing out caller ID.

Panasonic KX-TG1034S

Mine is a 4-handset model but they also have models with 2 or 3 handsets.

[badidea]

Originally Posted by alligator 

Anyone have a good recommendation for a phone they actually like to use?

Siemens Gigaset S455

[richwig83]

2nd that siemens are really good...... id get the Gigaset SL565 tho

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by alligator 

Why haven't we seen phones built into tiny headsets for home use? Transmitting to a base station 50' away is much different than a cell phone using 2W of power to transmit 2 miles away.

Because a cell phone has to be able to be stored in your pocket (or your purse, if you're a lady). A land phone doesn't. When you're done using a cordless landphone, you often end up leaving it lying around somewhere in the room. Have you ever noticed what happens when you do that with a cell phone? It gets lost right away, and then you're tearing up the room looking for it.

[fhoubi]

Originally Posted by CaseCom 

Only thing I don't like is the overly complicated menu system

My Panasonic DECT is by far, far, the only device I even struggle to program & set (f.e. date & time) with the manual next to it!

[alligator]

Can someone explain DECT? What is it?

[richwig83]

Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[MacosNerd]

I always prefer a land-line over a cellphone. Even though I love in a city, I find reception to be spotty at times, calls drop other times. Its not just one service, as I've had them all with the exception of T-Mobile. (cingular/at&t, sprint, verizon wireless)

Land-line phones just work, they may not be too sexy but they don't need to. I also don't spring for the cheap $19 dollar once but opt for a more expensive better built phone. So far I haven't been disappointed.

[Arty50]

I have a Uniden system that I love. The base is corded so I still have a working phone in case the power goes out (my number one reason to have a landline), I never get interference (5.8 Ghz), the sound quality is awesome, the NiMH battery in my cordless unit has held up well, and most importantly Uniden has this cool feature on some of their phones called Do Not Disturb.

All you have to do is hit one key and it turns off the ringers on all of the phones connected to the system and even shuts off the speaker on the answering machine if someone leaves a message. On other systems you have to go around to each and every handset and turn them off individually. So if you want to sleep in on the weekend and not be disturbed by your moronic friend/family member who likes to call at 7am on a Sunday, then you just hit Do Not Disturb button on the Uniden and all is well. I don't know if anyone else has this, but it's an awesome feature.

[Kvasir]

I've had a cell phone for at least a decade now, but the call quality just is not anywhere equal to a landline. For long weekend or evening converstions with the family (all long distance), I want my landline.

I currently have a Motorola 5.8GHz cordless set (2 handsets and answering machine). The nice thing is they have a great speaker phone in the handset, and I can do everything from the handset - listen to messages, change outgoing recording, all that stuff is done from the handset. So there's really never a need to even go near the base station.

P.S. and I have the power outage situation covered by plugging the base unit into a cheapo APC 500VA UPS - it powers it for at least 40 minutes (longest I've had it without power anyway).

[alligator]

Originally Posted by richwig83 

Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Okay, I read this, and I can't figure out how this differs from almost all cordless phones out there. Am I missing something? Some neat feature? My phones already behave like this.

[TETENAL]

It's just some standard for wireless phones.

[Kvasir]

Originally Posted by alligator 

Okay, I read this, and I can't figure out how this differs from almost all cordless phones out there. Am I missing something? Some neat feature? My phones already behave like this.

let's see, there's:
900MHz
2.4GHz
5.8GHz
and now 1.9GHz, or DECT 6.0

DECT 6.0 simply refers to the frequency standard, not any particular telephone set features. DECT 6.0 is less likely to experience interference then either 2.4GHz or 5.8GHZ, but does not suffer from the short range, poor signal quality and high power requrements of 900MHz. DECT 6.0 also includes enhanced digital signal security.

Exactly what feature set is in a DECT 6.0 telephone will be up to the manufacturer - DECT 6.0 merely refers to the radio frequency spectrum/technology at the guts of it.