Grandstream is soon going to release the GXV3140 IP Multimedia Phone.

This is more than a telephone. It is a multi-communication unit. It seems to do everything you will need regarding communication.

This is not a review of the GXV3140. My experience with Grandstream so far is the BudgeTone series and extensive visits to their CeBIT Hannover booth for the past years.

This is a post about the crossover between telephony and something else.

Over the last years I have seen a lot of strange things from the Far East. Some good stuff - and a lot of bad stuff - and then we have the right out strange stuff. Because of this, it will also take quite a lot to get me excited over hard ware. But, if the product excites me - the manufacturer have a friend for life.

Don't get me wrong. I love telecom stuff from the Far East. As a side note: To make me really happy, you just have to provide me with a No-name cell phone capable of at least GSM and WiFi with a built in SIP client. Add a few other things and I am happy as a clam.

What excites me about the GXV?

Before musing on the the All Singing and Dancing Boxes, let med give you a short run down of what do excite me about the GXV3140.

The first thing I checked out was can it be connected to a television? The answer is Yes It Can!. If it really do work this is wonderful. Why is this important? I see a usage for these telephone outside the office space. I would love giving my parent and my family such devices. Currently we are using Skype - but Skype on a PC is not user friendly enough for some of my some of my family members. I doubt that my family is very unique in this respect. Given the price tag - and if the thing is in fact working as promised - this is a very good solution for anyone who want to do video telephony with their family, even the ones that find computers difficult to use.

Normally my first check is always to see if the VoIP unit has any form of provisioning built in. Too many of the VoIP Terminals from the Far East does not do any kind of remote provisioning. Talking to the suppliers always will yield the same answer "Yes We Can Do That" and "Comming Later This Year". When confronting the supplier the next year will re-iterate the same answers. Quite funny, but not very usable.

The second thing I looked up was provisioning. TR-069. Well done Grandstream! However, TR-069 is not for the faint of heart and can be a bit over the top to set up in small environments. If the device also had the possibility to do a Phone Home action like the Snom and the Linksys SPA does I would be even more happy. The Phone Home functionality found in these devices means that everyone can set up their own provisioning system quite easily. The phone may have this, but I have not yet seen the user manual, or had the chance to play with a unit.

What else made med excited about the unit? According to the press release the unit have

a full HTML web browser, IM with Yahoo/MSN/Google, thousands of internet radio stations, popular online music networks such as Last.fm, Yahoo Flickr web photo album, personalized RSS feeds of news/weather/stock/currencies, calendar, alarm clock, and 9 languages

This is not a telephone anymore. This is something else.

Is this a good thing?

Before I give an answer to that I'll shortly recount another All Singing and Dancing Box. The box had: Wifi, SIP, DECT, FXS, FXO, WAN and a number LAN ports. Pretty cool at first sight. Darn useful given the high number of DECT deployed hand sets in Northern Europe. This could really be a killer app for VoIP terminal adapters. Did the unit have remote, automated, provisioning: NO. Did the unit have the ability to route calls to/from a particular DECT hand set or FXS/FXO ports to/from VoIP: NO. Did the unit support more than one active SIP configuration at a time: NO. Was the supplier willing to change the firm ware: NO (well: "Yes We Can" repeatedly over a 5 month period without any action).

So basically what seems like The Collest Device Of 2006 failed horribly due to the lack of internal routing between VoIP, DECT and FXS/FXO.

I am skeptic to the All Singing and Dancing features of the GXV3140. Based on the picture on the Grandstream product page (same picture as at the top of this article) I immediately notice the lack of a decent input source (read: Keyboard). Doing IM with a telephone keyboard? Thanks, but no thanks.

Even if the unit do have T9 built in (the press release said nothing about this) a lot of people would not be using the unit for more than telephone calls. All the extra features make the GXV seems like The Collest Unit of 2009 - but will fail unless the input is handled better.

I am no fan of T9 - but am I less of a fan of spelling out anything on a telephone key pad.

The idea of providing a All Singing and Dancing Telephone is a good idea - but based on the information in the press release and the FAQ, the execution of said product is not very good.

If the best way of configuring your RSS feeds, your IM contacts, your favorite radio stations, etc, must be done with the aid of a computer because of a less than ideal interface - then the product is seriously flawed.

Do Grandstream believe that providing a All Singing and Dancing Telephone will sell this telephone in large number of units? Maybe a first sight - but given the flaws outlined above, this will backfire and give the Grandstream brand a even cheaper name.

I really like the idea of the GXV3140. I would even consider such products for my family - but not due to the "multimedia feature". Only due to the fact that it is a good looking video telephone.