Netgear will release the world's first Skype wireless mobile telephone. The Netgear WiFi phone will make mobile Internet telephony a reality for Skype users. Unlike other devices that must connect with a PC, Netgear's Skype WiFi phone will work wherever a consumer is connected to a wireless Internet access point.





The Skype experience remains the same, in that users can make free domestic and international calls, as well as host conference calls and chat, with other Skype users anywhere in the world, and to non-Skype users for a small fee. With this device, headphones or USB phones plugged into a laptop or PC are not required.

The Netgear phone is pre-loaded with Skype's software, ready out-of-the-box to use with a wireless network. All a user needs to do after turning on the phone is enter a Skype username and password. The Skype software pulls up the user's full contact list, displays the connection status on the phone screen, and allows the consumer to connect to any other Skype user for free. The phone will also allow users to connect to non-Skype users with the SkypeOut feature.

Still if you do not have many friends using Skype, this phone will be useless to you. But in the other hand, it is easy to use and allow you to skype-ing without pc. The standby time is only 50 hours which could be caused by the power needed to maintain a connection to wireless router.

Specifications

* 42 x 19 x 108mm
* 90g
* Up to 3 hours talk time
* Up to 50 hours standby time

More information on Netgear's Skype WiFi phone, including pricing and availability, is planned for the first quarter of 2006.

More info:

http://tools.netgear.com/skype/

I'd say a bit ahead of its time -VoIP usage would have to be far more commonplace for this to catch on, and if it were you'd have choices other thanSkype as a provider, so seems to be aiming at a narrow market.

Olympia make a cordless 'dualphone' for use with Skype on a home-based PC, which means that you can make Skype calls and 'ordinary' landline calls from the same phone. That makes more sense to me.

Strictly for VoIP junkies in the meantime....