A few weeks ago the Danish company RTX launched the DUALphone 3088, the first model of a new category of Skype devices, which we call cordless phones. Since then Linksys has also announced the CIT300, another cordless phone. Like the Wifi phones and the Sony Mylo released earlier, they are standalone devices that allow to used Skype without a PC.

The cordless phones are very interesting devices, which could be summarized in one line: This is the type of device I would give to my mother for using Skype. They are extremely simple to setup. Power them up and plug them to a free Ethernet outlet on your router. The device will get an IP address and connect to the network. Sign-in with your Skype user name and you are good to go. Since they use the familiar and well proven DECT technologie, the wireless aspect works out-of-the box, like your traditional cordless phone, without configuration like a Wifi phone would need. It also has a nice typical DECT phone battery life.

One thing reviewers have been complaining about the first generations of Skype devices is that they don’t support chat (except the Sony Mylo). For a heavy chat user like all Skype employees are, it’s a pity, however there are very good reasons for not supporting chat yet. Cordless phones have limited screen real-estate and only a standard phone keyboard. Having a good chat user experience on such a device is very difficult (power chat users can easily have 10 or more chat windows open on their PC). But our user interaction design are working on it.

The RTX phone was offered to Bush when he visited Estonia. It’s pretty cool to have been working on a device that is presented as a symbol of Estonia.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 12:52 am and is filed under Skype. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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