Rating: Summary: Good phone but deteriorating battery life Review: This phone is packed with features. The only problem I faced was the battery life. The life of the battery started deteriorating 4 months after the purchase. I had to change it after 6 months as it would not last for more than 15 minutes. I thought that I was the only one with this problem and that turned out to be incorrect. My colleagues and relatives who bought the same phone had battery issues too.
Rating: Summary: Knocks my Wireless Signal Out!!! Review: While my wireless laptop runs on the standard 2.4ghz signal, I was surprised to see that the Panny base would knock my wireless signal out every time I used the phone. I would have to continuously reboot my signal because of this. When the base was put in another room, my wireless signal would be preserved. The Uniden 5.8ghz also had a tendency to do this.The Vtech 5.8ghz was the ONLY phone of this ilk that didn't knock my signal off when the base was next to my laptop. I mean seriously, what is the use of having the base if you have to put it in another room. This prevents me from screening the answering machine calls and using the convenient dial pad on the base. Another negative was that the phone uses NiCd batteries! OMG! What is Panasonic thinking? These Product Manager should b flogged for putting cheap Nicd batteries in a $$ phone when the much superior NiMH modern batteries can be found in $ phones! NiCd, so you kow, develops short battery life over time due to the "memory" charge problems which is a well known problem with this battery technology. Check the Panny 2.4ghz reviews here on Amazon to see that the NiCd short battery life is proving to be an atrociously bad epidemic for the entire upper echelon Panny line. Aside from all this, the phone performs well. It still doesn't have a time function on the LCD screen like the competing Vtech, ATT or Uniden models. Speaker phone on base is the most unique among the competition as it's dual duplex. That means people on both sides of the line can talk at the SAME time, instead of back and forth like a walkie talkie. All other competitor phones did not have this nice feature. In reality though, really only one person can speak at a time, unless you want to interrupt someone talking on the other line who won't be able to hear you as he's currently speaking. As of today, the Vtech is the best phone in terms of price, voice quality, feature, battery life. The Panny is nice as well, but it's more expensive, and use the dreaded NiCd battery which will most certainly cause the user headaches. These 5.8ghz phones should be noted as be a marketing ploy to keep margins on these commoditized phone products from bottoming out (an article in my local newspaper quoted a Product Manager at one of these companies as admitting to this). In many reviews that I have read, people have preferred the voice quality of the much cheaper 900mhz DSS Digital phones that also have a similar range as the best-in-class 5.8ghz phones. I'll stick with teh Vtech 5.8ghz, because I like the speakerphone feature on the handset. Otherwise I would have bought a 900mhz unit as I do indeed find them to be the best bargains out there and WON't INTERFERE with the wireless computer connections that are becoming all the rage these days. Another
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