Comments on: Siemens Gigaset 685IP Phones and Asterisk Review

By: Chris Gerhard

Chris Gerhard — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:23:32 +0000

I’ve been in contact with Siemens and I have been given two choices. Return the phone to be fixed, which would leave me either without a phone or having to buy another phone while I wait or wait for the next rev of the firmware which was due “mid December”. I opted for the latter and have now programmed my computer to tell me when the phone disappears so I can power cycle it. Hardly idea and I await the new firmware with relish.

Since it is now January I hope the firmware arrives soon.

By: randulo

randulo — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:14:59 +0000

@Geoff, thanks for coming back to share that info.

Routers are kind of like benevolent dictators, they protect you from threats but they also protect you from things that are in no way threats.

By: Geoff Tothill

Geoff Tothill — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:10:36 +0000

I thought that, in the interest of fairness to Siemens I ought to let you know how things have gone with the S685IP recently. Despite the problems I persisted and got the units fairly stable – only requiring restart every couple of days. I really didn’t have the time to worry about this too much but in the course of upgrading the network I replaced an aging Belkin Gb switch with a new D-Link smart switch.
Overnight my problems pretty much disappeared! The 685 base station retains registration with the asterisk server and calls connect very quickly. The base is directly connected to a port on the D-Link.
There is the option to turn on IEEE 802.1p QoS on each port that VOIP runs through but at the moment this does not seem necessary as the quality is pretty good.
So far then, so good. Although Im absolutely sure that the majority of my issues with asterisk integration were initially due to unstable firmware, it does appear that at least some of the disconnections from the server were due to the router. Although of academic interest I don’t have time to work out the reason – Im just pleased that it all seems to work well now!
Moral of the story – although there may be lots of other people having problems with a particular piece of hardware don’t assume that your problems arise from the same causes! I suspect that if I had looked at my Wireshark output more closely I would have been able to identify the switch as being, at least in part, the problem. Happy New Year!

By: Alexey

Alexey — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:53:36 +0000

Hi,
I have Nonoh and WebCallDirect as my VOIP providers which I use via downloaded programme or via Fring in my Nokia. However, I cannot register either of them in Siemens C475IP.
Could anyone help, please?
Thank you in advance!

By: randulo

randulo — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:00:21 +0000

I can’t believe how lucky we “VoIP Geeks” are that a large phone manufacturer built this device! We’ve been using it in our home office and I just bought another base and handset for the other office. For the record, I prefer the S675IP, but I do have one 685.

We’ve also been lucky that the North American head of sales has participated in our Friday conferences (and gave away several S675IP). Not only for the free phones, but especially since he got Siemens Gigaset developers to listen to us for firmware improvements. I’m told there is a NEW revised firmware out that is to fix a couple of outstanding issues.

If you don’t know about the VUC, please come and check it out, you’ll be pleased at the welcome you receive there from a great VoIP community. As David Duffet, UK Asterisk consultant and longtime VUC participant noted last week, “This must be a record. 15 minutes into the call before anyone mentioned the Gigaset line!”

Regards,

Randulo
http://voipusersconference.org

By: Dennis

Dennis — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:47:49 +0000

PS. Found the solution.. The output by the 685ip was wrong, everything connecting in 1 long line (in vcf format), solution: Open the vcf card with wordpad (this will bring the “tabs” and “enter” back in the file, next copy-paste the contents in a notepad file (.txt) and safe, and after that just change the extension from .txt into .vcf Sounds stupid? Well it worked for me.. Grtz to all.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:16:32 +0000

Hi Alan, yeah thanks, read that, and used it for my first phone!!
But was really looking for a way to pump my 250contacts directly from the 685 to the 675, strange enough it doesn’t work right away, (you would expect the format to be the same), and i really dont feel like changing 250ctcs again… anyway will figure it out, (unless someone has an easy answer.. lol)
thx and happy holidays!

By: Alan Lord

Alan Lord — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:47:06 +0000

I wrote this post about VCard formats on the S685IP some time ago. And do check the comments too.

HTH

By: Dennis

Dennis — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:43:59 +0000

Hey guys, have a question, own a 685ip, and enjoy it a lot (partly because of help on this site!!)
Now i just bought a 675ip as well, and i tried to transfer contacts through .vcf, however, no dice… it shows 1 entry for 5 secs, then goes back to home screen without doing anything… Any tips? TIA

By: Alan Lord

Alan Lord — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:19:30 +0000

I’ve read the comments on Michael Grave’s blog about this too. Strangely, I have been unaffected by this so far. In fact, I haven’t even had a notice that there is new firmware available on my handsets so I am still on version 021910000000 / 043.00.

Until I see further data I think I’ll stick on this release too.