Customer Reviews

D-Link DPH-541 802.11g/b Wi-Fi VoIP Phone (Silver )

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Great phone when you get it to work, manual terrible. very hard to understand and worst of all if the battery dies there is no way of getting a spare. If you contac a dealer he will sell you the phone but for batteries you will be referred to D-Link. On the other hand, no one in D-Link has a clue on where you can get a battery.Sad situation for a relatively expensive good product

I have this phone for some months. And I can say, THIS PHONE IS VERY BAD!!!

No matter what firmware version do you have, the phone always says the battery is at 100%. Suddenly, the phone dies because it got run out of battery, and if you can see the battery meter just before the phone goes off, IT STILL SAYS 100%!!!!

I never had a phone that could be SO UNSTABLE!!!! I think the original manufacturer didn't use any hardware codec to accelerate audio coding/decoding to cut costs, so the main CPU does it all. I think the OS runs the "connecting to the AP" process, or "coding/decoding audio" process in realtime. As the CPU phone seems to be slow, it only can run this processes, so the phone can FREEZE during a call, for example. The phone can't EVEN REACT TO THE BUTTONS!!!! I.e: you cannot send DTMF or end the call easily. This flaw doesn't happen always but it's annoying.

The roaming SIMPLY DOESN'T WORK if the roaming requires to change to another ESSID. Almost 90% of all cases the phone can connect to the new AP, but the phone can't register to the SIP proxy. You must RESTART the phone. Luckily, in the Tools menu, you can reset the phone choosing "RESTART".

Not only the software has design flaws in the behaviour, but has another flaws in other areas. Some things I remember:
- If you make a call from the Call Log or the Phonebook, it inserts garbage in the number dialed. For example: if I try to dial 124 from the Call Log, the phone shows "124p" when dials. Fortunately, I can filter the garbage in Asterisk, but this is a simple case. If I dialed from a large number, say, 9-1-305-XXXXXXX, it inserts 5 or 8 random characters (not only ASCII!!!). What a shame....
- If any IP information is entered with a DNS name, when you need to establish a call, or receive, the phone waits until the DNS gives the answer. Someone could say "that's normal" but the main problem is THE PHONE HANGS DURING 4-8 SECONDS!!!! If you put IP numbers, the problem disappears immediately.
- The people that wrote the manual doesn't know the phone very well. The phone has two buttons (one labeled "||" and another with two arrows turning clockwise and counterclockwise). In the manual, THERE ISN'T A SINGLE REFERENCE to this two buttons. In the layout phone explanation, this two buttons are intentionally ignored. I only discovered the || button holds the call, the meaning of the second button is still a mistery for me.
- Closing or opening the phone only makes a tone play, but the phone ignores it: if you are talking and you close the phone, the call isn't terminated. And, if the phone is ringing, you can't answer the call opening it.

Sadly, as you can see, the phone has software errors. Surprisingly, the hardware works perfectly: you can charge the phone with any mini-USB charger. I use a Motorola and works flawlessly. You can charge it with a USB port, and doesn't need any driver. Audio sounds excellent, and react VERY WELL when the phone begins to lose incoming RTP packets, sounds like a cellphone losing signal.

Because of that, I rate the phone as 1 star. The design flaws in the software made me think the software wasn't tested thoroughly. All the bugs can be solved easily, but seems the original manufacturer didn't know the meaning of the word "debug" (the phone is a D-Link-rebadged, because the phone is made by a Japanese manufacturer).

I will phase out this phone, So I prefer to use a Nokia E71 that has GSM/UMTS connectivity and can made SIP/VoIP calls, all in only one phone.

The battery cover removed easily and inserting the battery was a breeze. After creating a mandatory password for networking, my Dlink DPH-541 immediately found my router and accepted an IP (you must remember to enter your security key, if any, and to turn off MAC filtering if it's been turned on). All I had to do was enter my SIP provider's info to receive inbound calls and make outbound calls, all in less than 30 minutes.

This phone only works with providers that don't have audio codec conflicts when all codecs must coexist in the queue. That's because the DPH-541 does not have a means of removing conflicting codecs from the queue. It's best to test your SIP provider's compatibility by placing its SIP credentials into a free softphone first to see if inbound calls can be heard without having to remove any codecs from the queue.

There is no Keep-Alive feature with the DPH-541, so if your VOIP provider or PBX service does not periodically send a Keep-Alive ping you'll find that the phone stops receiving calls after an hour or so, even when registered.

Lastly, I found that you can't go clicking the buttons on this phone as quickly as you would on a cellphone or it might lock up, in which case you'll need to remove and reinsert the battery.

This phone UN-registers all the time !!! It doesn't stay connected with the provider and the battery (new) doesn't even last 2 hours !!!

This phone is not for every one

Pretty good phone if you are a VOIP Enthusiast and want to try out your asterisk/sip provider or want to have another phone while travelling

The set up was easy[of-course you need to know basics of VOIP]


The only disadvantage I found so far is the keep alive function

From M.L's Review
There is no Keep-Alive feature with the DPH-541, so if your VOIP provider or PBX service does not periodically send a Keep-Alive ping you'll find that the phone stops receiving calls after an hour or so, even when registered.


my advise is
1. To read the quickstart guide even before touching the phone
2. First time charge the phone for 8 hrs with POWER-ON
3. Be patient while configuring

Using with Asterisk PDX system, with remote locations on for continents.
Using in Belgium with server in the US. Sound quality is very good! Very easy to use once set up with nice set of features. Battery life is a little short. If left plugged in when not is use, no problems. Setting up wifi connection is a pain if you do not know what security the wifi router is using.

Product is not compatible with most VoIP systems commonly used by those of us who are not VoIP literate. So I wasted my money unless I want to add another phone service and the associated expense.