Review – Vonage V-Phone: The VOIP Phone On A Keychain

The V-Phone is a slim, orange-colored memory stick that comes with a bit of white cable that acts as a headset. You pop the stick into the USB port of any computer and a virtual keypad appears on screen, a phone line is quickly established over the internet, and if you place the connected cable to your ear you’ll hear a dial-tone and can call out to anyone you want. You can also receive incoming calls through this connection. The phone line is a Vonage VOIP account, which will cost you from $20 - $40 a month depending on the level of service and features, and because it is based over the internet comes with little-to-no long distance charges. The V-Phone itself costs $30.

This is a better travel solution that what has previously been the option – storing a small adapter box, ethernet cable, and possibly a phone into your luggage, just so you can use your Primus or Vonage account from a hotel room. Saving on long-distance calls can certainly make the hassle worthwhile, but reducing that down to a product the size of a keychain is so much better.

There are, however, a number of issues that you’ll have to come to terms with.

The V-Phone is a PC-only product and is not compatible with Mac software.

The headset that comes included with the phone, the small tangle of white cable, is of poor, let’s face it, cheap quality. In my tests the microphone could barely pick up my voice beyond a muffle and no change in settings or mic placement made a difference. I had to replace the headset with a Plantronics one which immediately solved the problem, but of course meant spending more money.

Once connected, the V-Phone turned off my computer speakers and routed all of the audio to the headset. This meant having to disconnect the V-phone and avoid incoming calls whenever I wanted to watch a movie or listen to music. The software does come with a settings menu where you can switch the speakers and microphone connections, but after playing around with these, I still couldn’t get the audio back to my computer speakers. This was a problem on two of the three laptops I tested the V-Phone on.

While connecting the V-Phone is as simple as pie, actually removing the V-Phone is a pain. Simply exiting from the Vonage Talk software isn’t enough, like all USB memory drives you need to click on the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon on the lower right corner of your Windows desktop. With every laptop I tried to remove the V-Phone from I received the error message “The device ‘Generic drive’ cannot be stopped now. Try stopping the device again later”. Trying again later, of course, didn’t help and I was forced to pull the V-Phone out anyway which can be bad both for the computer and the memory drive.

The virtual phone itself is simple and easy to use. A small square keypad that takes up little space on the desktop, it’s divided into three tabs – Contacts list, Keypad, and History. Adding a contact is as easy as filling out a small info card, the keypad offers both numbers you can click on and a field where you can type the number in, and the history is just a running log listing call numbers, connection times, and dates. Voicemail is just a small icon click away.

The more advanced functions – call transfer, hold, conference, headset volume levels, appear only when you need them in the call window that pops up whenever you dial out or receive an incoming call.

I made several long-distance calls with the line and found no problems with the service itself. All my calls were clear and well-connected.

I certainly love the idea of a phone-on-a-keychain solution for a VOIP line, but because of the issues that I’ve faced with the V-Phone can’t quite give it a full recommendation. The good news is that the issues are not hardware based, the 256 MB USB drive used to make the V-Phone is bright, stylish, and fairly durable, so its quite possible that Vonage could resolve the V-Phone’s audio and disconnection problems with a simple patch. This is their first attempt at releasing a keychain phone and I expect the idea of the product will be received well enough for Vonage Canada to release a second, updated model with a better headset and updated software. I expect that will be worth buying.

Review – Vonage V-Phone: The VOIP Phone On A Keychain
by Kris Abel

Enjoy to talk with VoIP !