Review / Shortcomings of the Panasonic KX-UT670

Posted: January 17, 2012 in IP Phone
Tags: , ,


———– Update 01/26/2012————-
Panasonic has been in contact with me regarding these issues and it seems that many of them will be addressed in firmware updates. Please see the follow up posts on the KX-UT670 at Link

The Panasonic KX-UT670 is an Android based 7″ SIP Phone.
It has all the bells and whistles you would expect of an Android phone.
The screen is bright and nice, interface is quick and snappy, and Panasonic provides a great SDK.

Here are the shortcomings I have found:
1) No Exchange support
2) No Bluetooth. Even though their site says it supports it I can not find a setting for it
3) Firmware upgrade does not work from the web admin. (The option is there but it doesn’t work)
4) Handset volume does not go loud enough
5) Screen is not dual touch (no pinch zoom) and does not scroll smoothly with light swipes
6) No marketplace
7) Can not add “Flexible Button” (BLF, speed dial, etc.) properties from the web admin
8) Officially supports only about 5 of Panasonic’s most expensive cameras (see next)
9) I can not get even the officially supported camera to work. There is an error saying that it does not support the camera’s settings but does not indicate what they should be
10) When you pickup the handset the “Check Voice mail” buttons disappears. You need to press the button and then pickup then handset
11) The sound quality is not as good as the other Panasonic IP phones. I am not sure if the handset is bad or it’s the phone
12) When you press the voice mail button and pick up the phone the dial pad disappears I then have to press the dial pad button before I can enter my password
13) Can’t make any changes without an SD card, install programs, change ring tones, etc but it doesn’t come with one
14) The touchscreen is a little off, I need to press below the key for it to register the correct key

At first looks it’s a great phone but the short coming above really limit its use.
Until at least some of these are corrected I would say stay away.

Comments
  1. ch3ster says:

    I agree with all of these observations, beautiful phone but needs some of these issues cleared up. I would like to add that after power cycling the phone the web admin is disabled again, it does not seem to remember this setting in my firmware version. I just set up one of these to work with our Asterisk 1.8 based IP-PBX. It is sending/receiving calls, and voicemail/MWI seems to work fine. Poster, do you have links to additional documentation for this device, current firmware, etc? I have only found the user manual and SDK posted on Panasonic’s website. The manual is sparse to say the least…

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