probonopd/phones.md

## phones.md

      
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              phones.md
            
          
    The sorry state of desk phones, 2018

Seemingly I cannot find ONE good desk phone as of 2018 that is not either technically outdated, or cheap-feeling, or unusable, or all of that...
Must have


Desk phone
SIP
G.722
"Unlimited" size of address book
Ethernet
WLAN
Low power consumption, not more than 1W standby
No color screen but great readable large bw OLED screen
Great "European" design
Many hardware short dial keys
Ideally no "menu" operation for essentials
Configurable via web browser
Senior-friendly but not a "Senior phone"
Supported for 10+ years (the last ISDN phone lasted for 20 years)
No DECT (WLAN radiation is already enough and I want to be able to use wherever there is any LAN or WLAN)
Price up to 200 EUR
Power supply included (not: PoE. No one has that at home)
Real handset, must rest safely on the phone
Great conference phone abilities (microphone array, think Amazon echo)
Not battery-powered

Should have


Made in Germany (Not v-tech etc.)
Open source firmware (e.g., OpenWRT)
Great brand (not Yealink, Grandstream,... but: Siemens, BOSCH, Gigaset, Telekom,...)
If color screen, then HD, touch, latest Android
If Android/touchscreen, then hardware buttons in addition ("real phone feeling")
Be able to show the stream of a door webcam
Clever integration with services like telefonbuch.de
Be available for purchase in nearby stores (MediaMarkt, Saturn, Telekom Shop, etc.)

Close candidates


Ubiquity UVP and UVP pro UniFi(R) VoIP 150 EUR 5 inch Android desk phone. Good but a) Android is outdated b) needs POE or cluncy 48V power supply rather than a normal 5V USB charger. Only the Pro model has WLAN and camera, and then costs 250 EUR. A cheap Android mobile phone costs a third of that! Is the app in German at all? I downloaded one from https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/216650337-UniFi-VoIP-How-to-Manually-Upgrade-UVP-App-Platform and it didn't seem so. I installs an Android Service which seems to be using PJSIP. When the service is installed, the Android phone shows the Ubuquity SIP phone UI.
Acer abTouchPhone. Acer, wasn't that Benq, the company that bought Siemens mobile and destroyed it? Besides, the phone seems to be pure vaporware and not available for purchase
Gigaset PRO Maxwell 10  if it was not utterly outdated, did not have bad customer ratings, was not 2-3x as expensive as need be, and had real keys
Amazon echo show if it had a real handset, and had real keys, and all Amazon software and services could be removed
snom D315, D715 if it wasn't bought by v-tech, wasn't made in China, and there weren't way too many models, and you could be sure you are not buying outdated technology
Android tablets if there was an accessory that would provide a microphone array, a real handset, and real keys
http://jablocom.com/raven/ but 3x too expensive (compared to a tablet); screen is "always-on 8″ = not energy efficient; Android is way outdated (4.2.2), I don't want umts/gsm
https://www.amazon.de/Altigen-iFusion-SmartStation-iPhone-Schwarz/dp/B005LFUE46 but unavailable for purchase, no Ethernet
UNIFY OpenStage 40 SIP but it seems to be 10+ years old now, it was already made when the company was still SIEMENS. And they have this weird policy in which you get software updates from dealers(!) rather than the manufacturer. Their "HFA" versions "just" need SIP  firmware but they seem to not give it to end users. Seems to be based on 2002-ish INCA-IP chip aka. Danube according to http://wiki.unify.com/wiki/OpenStage_40. snom 300 and 370 seem to use INCA-IP too. Infineon seemingly sold this business to Lantiq which was sold to Intel. INCA-IP chips are also used in IP phones like e.g. optiPoint 410/420 S. Does not work on a TP-LINK T240100-2-POE (24V, 1A) "passive" PoE injector, according to the manual it must be an (expensive) IEEE 802.3af "active" PoE injector. "Power in" plug even needs (crazy?) 38V, 420mA. Why not just run off 5V? Runnnig PoE from a hub would mean that I need to use the precious few pins of the cables in the house
Fanvil C400. Android 4.2, wtf?! Recent apps won't run there anmore

Self-made to the rescue


Hack an Android phone or tablet into a traditional desk phone with lots of effort?
Hack a small router into a traditional desk phone with lots of effort?
Hack an Orange Pi Zero into a traditional desk phone with lots of effort?
Use a USB handset? http://www.usedcomputerparts.de/de/telefone-handys/telefonanlage/t-com-netphone-handset-v1-1-ohne-usb - need to find one with a keyboard...
Baresip is a modular SIP User-Agent with audio and video support http://creytiv.com/baresip.html
https://github.com/alfredh/baresip

Here is my solution: https://github.com/probonopd/OpenPhone - Open source desk telephone implemented in Python and pjsua, running on a Orange Pi Zero single board computer
Any suggestions are welcome in the comments!

Tests

Since there are almost no phones on the market targeting consumers, I have been trying various phones originally targeting business customers. Since business phones are at least 2-3 times as expensive as consumer grade phones, I have been doing my experiments with "outdated" phones that can be had rather cheaply from eBay.
Unify OpenStage 40

Despite "open" in the name, and despite using plenty of open source software (including Linux and pjsip) in the phone, the firmware apparently is not open source (yet?). The phone is no longer actively produced, so why don't they release the complete source code and build instructions?

Built-in (on device) phone book randomly limited (=crippled) to just 99 entries, then "Maximale Anzahl der Kontakte überschritten" appears. Why the heck??? This alone is a frigging showstopper for this phone. This limitation is completely random and not technically necessary
Phone boots way slower than my PC
https://wiki.unify.com/wiki/OpenStage_40#Open_Source_Software_V3R1
I measured 3.7 Watts in standby on a Cisco CP-PWR-CUBE-3 Power Supply. Personally I think this is still rather much (e.g., compared to an Android phone on a USB charger)
Can fully configure the phone from the phone itself, and from the phone's HTTPS web interface (which is dog slow)
The manual is almost useless because regarding all of the more advanced functions it just refers to the "Fachpersonal" (which basically means "ask your local system administrator"). As a private user I do not have a system administrator, nor do I think a usable modern IP phone should need one
No built-in answerphone. Why can't they put a few GB flash storage into the phone and have it record its messages locally. My SIP provider does have a mailbox, but it forwards the messages by e-mail and apparently there is no way to make this setup work with the OpenStage
The setup is divided into a user and an administrator area. While the user area can be set to different languages including German, the setup area is hardwired to English?!

There is no batch upload for a local phonebook, but one can make subsequent HTTP requests using the Cookie seen by a browser like this:
#!/bin/bash

input="Documents/phonenumbers2019.csv"

# Format:
# ;08003302000;Telekom;Deutsche;;

while IFS= read -r line
do
  PHONE=$(echo "$line" | cut -d ';' -f 2 | sed -e 's| |+|g')
  LAST=$(echo "$line" | cut -d ';' -f 3| sed -e 's| |+|g')
  FIRST=$(echo "$line" | cut -d ';' -f 4| sed -e 's| |+|g')
  echo curl -k "https://192.168.178.111/page.cmd -H \"Cookie: $COOKIE\" -H \"Cookie-Installing-Permission: required\" --data \"page_submit=WEBM_User_Phonebook_NewContact&lang=de&lastName=$LAST&firstName=$FIRST&phoneNumber=$PHONE\""

done < "$input"

This worked neatly for me. I had copied the phone numbers into a CSV from Fritz!Box before. The advantage is that the numbers are stored locally in the phone, so the phone will have the numbers even if relocated to another local network, and no server is needed (one point of failure less).
Exercise for later, should it be wanted: Write a tiny LDAP server that uses the Fritz!Box address book.
Linux on Unify OpenStage

The OpenStage phones are running Linux:
BusyBox v1.15.3 (2014-06-05 23:05:20 CEST) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

Sourcing Opera Environment...
FipsMode from Phone.db = 
OPENSSL_FIPS = 0
$ uname -a
Linux OIP001ae8659145 3.4.84-WP_LO #1 Thu Jun 5 23:04:00 CEST 2014 mips GNU/Linux

$ lsmod 
sidecar 20816 2 - Live 0xc00e0000
st7529fb 3696 0 - Live 0xc00ce000
Backlight 3184 0 - Live 0xc00c5000
QSlider 23456 0 - Live 0xc00b8000
QLed 2528 1 QSlider, Live 0xc00aa000
QWheelTestIfc 3440 2 QSlider, Live 0xc00a2000
QWheel 3776 2 QSlider,QWheelTestIfc, Live 0xc009a000
Quantum_mux 3136 2 QSlider,QLed, Live 0xc0092000
Headset 7232 1 - Live 0xc0089000
mps_event 6864 1 Headset, Live 0xc007e000
LANstatus 5616 2 - Live 0xc0074000
hookSwitch 5504 0 - Live 0xc006a000
wkeypad 5040 2 - Live 0xc0060000
keyinput 7840 3 QSlider,Headset,LANstatus, Live 0xc0056000

$ mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
/dev/root on / type jffs2 (rw,relatime)
/proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)
/dev/shm on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,relatime)
/dev/mtdblock5 on /data type jffs2 (rw,relatime)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,mode=600)

$ df -h
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root                21.0M     17.5M      3.5M  83% /
/dev/shm                 29.0M    300.0K     28.7M   1% /tmp
/dev/mtdblock5            4.5M    244.0K      4.3M   5% /data

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo 
system type		: INCAIP2
processor		: 0
cpu model		: MIPS 24Kc V4.0
BogoMIPS		: 173.46
wait instruction	: yes
microsecond timers	: yes
tlb_entries		: 16
extra interrupt vector	: yes
hardware watchpoint	: yes, count: 4, address/irw mask: [0x0000, 0x0400, 0x0698, 0x0880]
ASEs implemented	: mips16 dsp
shadow register sets	: 1
kscratch registers	: 0
core			: 0
VCED exceptions		: not available
VCEI exceptions		: not available

Building own Linux for the device?

The INCA-IP2 SOC is from Infineon (ex-SIEMENS, now Lantiq/Intel). What a shame that this company that had a long-standing tradition in telecommunications once had all the technology from their own chips to entire phones, and now is scattered all over the place in disjunct pieces.
Can we build our own kernel and own runtime, thus removing arbitrary restrictions such as the crippled local phonebook?
Can we get OpenWrt to run on it? https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/hardware/soc/soc.lantiq
For a phone that has "open" in its name, we find suprisingly few peole talking about running your own entirely custom software stack on this hardware.
The source code is provided: https://wiki.unify.com/ftp/OpenStage-OSSW/
Qt

/etc/init.d/OperaEnv.sh sets QWS_MOUSE_PROTO. So it seems like the OpenStage uses Qt.
phone.db

/data/database/phone.db is a SQLite database that stores the phone configuration. One can interact with it like this:
$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Opera_Deploy

$ /Opera_Deploy/sqlite3 /data/database/phone.db ".tables" 
CALL_LOG                      FORWARDING_KEY_DESTINATIONS 
CANONICAL_LOOK_UP             GENERAL_CONFIG              
CODEC_SETTINGS                LINE_KEY_SETTINGS           
CONFIG_LOCKDOWN               LOCAL_FUNCTION_LOCKDOWN     
DEFLECT_KEY_DESTINATIONS      PHONE_BOOK                  
DISTINCTIVE_RINGING           REPERTORY_DIALLING          
DSS_KEY_SETTINGS              SELECTED_DIALLING           
FEATURE_KEYS                  SRTP_ENCRYPTION_SETTINGS    
FEATURE_KEY_SETTINGS          START_APPLICATION           
FEATURE_TOGGLE_KEY_SETTINGS   START_APPLICATION_FIXED_KEYS
FILEDOWNLOAD_SETTINGS_ENC     STIMULUS_KEY_SETTINGS       
FIXED_KEYS   

$ /Opera_Deploy/sqlite3 /data/database/phone.db "SELECT * FROM GENERAL_CONFIG"
...

$ /Opera_Deploy/sqlite3 /data/database/phone.db "SELECT * FROM PHONE_BOOK"
...

I wonder what would happen if we put more than 100 entries into PHONE_BOOK using SQLite.
Cisco


Phones boot way slower than my PC amd way slower than a 15 USD OrangePi Zero with OpenWrt
No way to configure the phone from the phone itself! Normally configured by enterprise-grade serverside Cisco configuration software
Has a web interface, but it is read-only and cannot be used to configure the phone
Need to use TFTP with XML for configuration and firmware updates, and HTTP with XML for phonebook
I have been coding something in Go to make configuration easier
Once the config is loaded via TFTP, the TFTP server is not needed anymore
Cannot get the time from a NTP time server to show correctly

7960


Proprietary Unix, not Linux based

9951


Linux based? Can use USB headsets, and can use a Cisco USB camera
I measured 6 W standby power consumption on the original power supply, with the display off. Personally I think this is WAY too much

Polycom

SoundStation IP 6000


"Spider" conference phone
Local adress book (XML)
Supposedly can use OpenLDAP address books
Gets very warm on the underside. Processor is from 2002

https://gist.github.com/probonopd/f60dcaa8db06334cf0647d19ed5a0d70
Reverse lookups of the caller

It looks like that the canonical way of doing this is to use a SIP proxy that can add the P-Asserted-Identity header from RFC 3325.
P-Asserted-Identity: “Andrew” <sip:Andrew@littlecompany.com>
P-Asserted-Identity: tel:+19524563516

So one "only" needs to write something to loop up the phone number in all available public directories (e.g., https://www.dasoertliche.de/?form_name=search_inv&ph=08003302000 but ideally via API and globally), "inject" this header into the SIP messages, and possibly cache the lookup infomration for this number for subsequent requests.