End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

HDVoice Deal Alert: Gigaset DE380IP-R Desk Phone

Some time ago the folks at Gigaset showed me their DE380-IP-R desk phone. It was about the time that they were just starting to ship their SIP/DECT products to the US. When they sent me some sample gear for evaluation a lone sample of this little desk phone came along for the ride.

I tried the DE380-IP-R for a short while but never really put it into service. I used it just long enough to confirm that it was truly wideband capable, supporting G.722.

The simple truth is that I found the phone to be just a little too quirky for my tastes. There are things about it that seem too Euro-centric in their design or implementation. Further, with a retail price of around $140 they were simply too odd when compared to the newly released Polycom Soundpoint IP335, which is also wideband capable.

It remained on a shelf until much later, when I used it to prove out a little idea about using wideband SIP phones in support of a community radio station. The DE380-IP-R has dual 3.5mm audio jacks for use with a PC style headset. I saw that as an opportunity to provide a convenient interface to a traditional audio mixer.

Another curious thing about the DE380-IP-R is that it has a dual network jacks. OK, that’s not at all uncommon. In its most basic form the DE380-IP-R can function as a two-port switch. More curiously, the DE380-IP-R can also function as a router supporting PPPoE. One presumes that with it acting as your router matters of QoS for the VoIP traffic would transparently handled. Issues of NAT should be easily conquered as well.

Just recently VUC sponsor E4Technologies has come into possession of a number of these desk phones. Evidently they didn’t make the splash that Gigaset might have hoped in the US. E4 Technologies is selling these off for $30 each! That’s 79% off the suggest list price.

This offer on the DE380-IP-R might just make them the cheapest real, HDVoice capable hard phone I’ve yet encountered. However, there is a condition of sale. At this price E4 Technologies is not providing any technical support beyond a simple sheet of setup instructions.

I doubt that this will be a problem for a lot of folks. The phone has a nice, fairly intuitive, web-based setup menu, not unlike the Gigaset SIP/DECT phones. And of course, the manual is available should find yourself in desperate straights.

So there you have it, at holiday time, when money is tight for everyone, the cheapest HDVoice plaything that you’ve ever seen. An affordable way to kill some of the time you’ll have after the turkey is done and dishes cleared away.

Update: On December 24th I took a few minutes to install the latest firmware into the D380IP-R. I noted that installing the firmware via the web GUI doesn’t worth from within Chrome, but worked fine in Firefox.

I also noted that the DE380IP-R does not work well with the ZipDX conference bridge. There’s a quirk in its G.722 implementation that results in unusable audio. I’m in the process of alerting Gigaset about this, with details provided by David Frankel of ZipDX.

It’s also worth noting that there are no interop problems with with any other HDVoice capable phone that I have tried, including Polycom, Cisco, Yealink, snom, Eyebeam, Blink & Acrobits.

Finally, E4 has offered up a couple of these little DE380s to be given away to VUC attendees. We gave away two last week, and have another one to give away later today.

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Hi

    We changed the price for this device on the site. I didn’t want the readers of your blog to feel left out.

    The Discount code of GRAVES380 brings them back to $29.99

    Cheers,
    MW

      1. Mr. Graves, you mentioned that this phone can be quirky. Is one of the quirks that this phone has trouble obtaining an ip address from a router? I got two of these phones and both are having the same prob. From what I read from the manual it seems by default is should use DCHP and just connect. Since it is happening to both phones I more inclined as this point to say it is user error, but based on what i read the phone should just connect to the network. Any help would be appreciated.

        1. This has not been my experience. The one that I have works well enough with the DHCP service in my m0n0wall router.

          That said, the phone can actually be a router itself. That is, it has settings to perform PPPoE login no the WAN side and then act as a router to other devices strung off its second network port. I wonder if in your case it’s simply in this mode?

          Was it packed as new, or open-box? Is it likely that someone had a little play with it before it got to you?

          1. A good example of why it is a never a good idea to post when you are tired and going to bed. You can forget to hit the reply button. I did give a friend one phone to try out. The reason i got two was to let him borrow one to try out the HDvoice .So I will see what he gets when he hooks the phone into his network.

  2. Thanks for the reply. It would appear then that these phones should pretty much just work if hooked into a router running dhcp. I did try bypassing my switch and hooking directly into the router (Netgear WNDR3700) but still nothing. It would just show the default ip referenced in the user guide in the phones network settings. After some time has past it would then go to zeros for the ip address.

    Your m0n0wall router did give an idea. I have a WRT54GL running DD-WRT. I reset the settings on the router to defaults (was using it before as an wifi access point) and the phones did get an ip address, but I could not connect to them. Firefox and IE would not connect to the ip address assigned to the phones. Tried to ping the phones but got destination unreachable.

    As far as the router setting on the phones I did factory reset the phones (using the menu on the phones), made sure the settings where dhcp and then rebooted them many times. I could not even use the PPPoE option since I have Cable internet and not DSL. Also I think the manual says you have to get a successful PPPoE connection before you can activate the router feature.

    I got the 2 phones from E4 Technologies from the link provided in this post. I also did use the discount code Michael White provided in the first Response. The website does state new and the everything seemed packaged as new.

    I’m thinking maybe i just got 2 phones that are not working for some reason. I would guess the Ethernet port on the phones are bad, but with very limited voip experience (few skype calls on my n800 and ipod touch, ooma phone service and my Comcast digital phone service) I just get the feeling that maybe I’m missing something. Kinda a stupid question but do the settings for the sip service need to be put in the phone using the keypad before I’m able to log into it? Based on the manual it would seem I should be able to put the settings using the web interface. Just thought i would ask. Again thanks for your help.

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