Netgear unveils world's first Skype WiFi phone at London showcase event

[Bob Crabtree]

Netgear's SPH101 - the world's first Skype WiFi phone - made its UK debut yesterday afternoon at a products-showcase for over a dozen of Skype's hardware partners.

The Netgear is about the same size as most full-featured mobile phones and lets you to make and receive Skype calls from any wireless router or access point - with no need at all for a PC.

Naturally, it has phone books built in for Skype contacts and it also offers all the features you'd typically get when using Skype with a computer.

Skype sophisticates would give their right arm to own one - though the price they'll be expected to pay when it arrives in the UK, hopefully in August, will be considerably less onerous - around £140.

More in this HEXUS.headline - and expect additional images to appear there during this morning.

Update - Price of the Netgear has been changed from £110 to £140.

I'd written this piece at a time at night when I couldn't double check the price with Netgear (and I had my doubts that what I'd written down in my notebook was correct) but the company got back to me this morning and said the price I should have quoted was £140. Apologies for any confusion.

[Howard]

Finally!

[unrealrocks]

Looks cool, a good idea. Although not technically the first Skype wifi phone The XDA series have wifi and you can run Skype on those, AND they do normal phone calls as well

Will be interesting if other companies adopt this and we could see some very fully featured phones.

[Carlh]

This one looks better to me:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=411018

As it can be used with the majority of VOIP providers as it is conigurable using a web interface

[Bob Crabtree]

The price of the Netgear in this article should have been £140, not £110.

I'd written this piece at a time at night when I couldn't double check the price with Netgear (and I had my doubts that what I'd written down in my notebook was correct) but the company got back to me this morning and said the price I should have quoted was £140.

Apologies for any confusion.

[Bob Crabtree]

Update - Netgear won't work on access points requiring web-base login/authentication

I've now changed the intro para of the article to reflect the fact that theNetgear won't work on access points requiring web-base login/authentication.

To me, that means that the phone is probably less useful when out and about than the original wording of the article would have suggested.

Or am I being overly negative?

[Bob Crabtree]

This one looks better to me:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=411018

As it can be used with the majority of VOIP providers as it is conigurable using a web interface

Carl,

I'm struggling to make a lot of sense of the product info on Scan's site.

This might seem a stupid question but can you just let us know whether or not this phone will work DIRECTLY with a wireless router or access point or whether it's comms need to be routed through a PC.

I think that no PC is required - and that makes it a VERY interesting product cos it would appear to do what Netgear's product does (though without the friendly Skype front-end) and also allow you to connect to non-Skype VoIP services.

It would also appear to me that you can connect via access points that do require web-based log-in or authentication.

Care to clarify?

[FatalSaviour]

I'd be interested to know too, as I've been after one of these for far too long now

[Bob Crabtree]

Now updated to include all the shots I took at the event (well, those that came out okay and those of products mentioned)