invoxia Voice Bridge - landline On your Mobile

Summary: Connect this little box to your phone line (as if it were another phone), by Ethernet to a port on your home network router, and to power (USB power wall-wart supplied). Install an app on your iOS or Android smart-phone (or tablet), and then you can use the app to make outgoing calls on your land line, and take incoming calls (which ring on your smart-phone via the app as well as your land line phones). The remarkable thing is that this works even while you are away from home, as long as you have Internet access on your smart-phone (by mobile network or WiFi). Even with the smart-phone in sleep, the app is still alive in the background and wakes on an incoming call.THE GOOD: this product works brilliantly on iOS (in my case an iPad Pro Mini, but presumably any iPad or iPhone except the iPad is hard to hold to your ear!). Now works on Android too* (see below).* When purchased, the app for Android was still under development and only worked with some phones, in my case not with a Samsung Galaxy A3(2016). I was assured it worked with some smart-phones, and the developers said they are working hard to make the product compatible with all Android phones. As of February 2017, having requested access to the beta software testing, with my Android phone now on beta software version 5.2.1, my phone pairs with the Voice Bridge unit (when it wouldn't using 5.1.9), and I was able to place an outgoing call from my home WiFi network and from outside. I was having trouble picking up incoming calls though, and after discussion with the developers I was advised to disable power saving for the VoiceBridge app (Settings.. Battery.. App power saving), after which it has been working fine.Top marks to Invoxia, who seem very willing to help. If you find it's not compatible with your phone, contact them to see whether there is a software update available.THE BAD: there isn't any. It's a great product at a great price.TO BE AWARE OF: I found the product injected a noticeable hum or buzz on the phone line (although not apparent to external callers) when connected to my BT HomeHub4 or a Thomson TG585 router. This is not the case when a Netgear DGND3700 router is used, and I do not understand why there would be a difference.TO BE AWARE OF: In the previous version of this review, I queried the mechanism by which "On the Go" (ie connected via the Internet rather than the home WiFi) works. In their comment to this review, the developers say there is a server, using encrypted communications. This raises the question of what happens if for some reason Invoxia cease to be - presumably it will then only work at home and not On the Go (which is my reason for purchase). However, that said, this is one of only a very few options available.BONUS: I actually use the Voice Bridge downstream of a trueCall call filtering unit (intercepting or allowing through calls based on their caller-ID), and it works fine (only calls authorised to ring the home phones make it through the trueCall, and therefore I don't get nuisance calls to my VoiceBridge app either).

My initial experience with Voice Bridge was very positive. It is reasonably easy to install, surprisingly intuitive product that provides, assuming you have fast internet connection on both sides, quite good quality of phone calls.Alas, same cannot be said for app that is essential to use the gadget, and that is full of bugs, temperamental and overall unreliable, more so with time, and for the product and customer support that were bad to begin with but with time are getting worse and worse, at this stage to the point that after more than a month, other than acknowledgement of receipt of my request, nothing was communicated - so one is left high and dry with limited internet resources and no way to contact the support, as they are not replying to requests submitted on the web page. Pity, for the company obviously has capacity to create interesting products, but not to turn them into fully functional products ready for standard production, so everything is in beta testing phase, which is not good for a product that you pay for. I hope Invoxia will sort out the issues, but do not feel confident it will be any time soon, provided they still exist in a couple of years.

This is a great idea and seems to work very well. I don’t have a phone at home so all calls go through to my mobile. Very easy to set up but calls do seem to have a very loud echo and you can hear yourself repeat everything which is very annoying so you wouldn’t want to have to long a conversation. I vary rarely used my home phone so it just a way of receiving any important calls you might need to pick up while not at home.

I wonder why we still have a landline? We pay the rent on a landline because we have BT fibre broadband and for whatever reason just keep the landline that we have had for a couple of decades going. Our two grown children think it is very last century! We have 4 Bang & Olufsen DECT cordless land line phones which were state of the art 20 years ago but are looking very geriatric now and the expensive batteries keep failing. The volume is not good and the user interface is awful. The calls have no clarity and frankly we could hardly hear what anyone was saying and the caller ID is pretty well useless because we only have about 10 numbers programmed into them. We no longer use the B&O answer machine that came with our system and we spend 6 months of the year abroad and therefore no-one apart from close friends or the bank ever ring us on our land line.Enter Voice bridge!!!!! I always wonder if tech stuff is going to work when I buy it. Often the promises never quite make it to reality and it takes far longer than you think to set it up. Voice Bridge is easy. It really is. It sits in a cupboard next to our router and incoming BT line. We have Apple iPhones and the system works flawlessly. It's like getting four extra home phones and it rings wherever you are, whatever country you are in if you are on WIFI/4G. The voice quality is crystal clear. My one bugbear is that the selection of ring tones is horrible. Note to Invoxia - please sort that on the next update. Then we might ditch the B&O phones. One other thing to mention is that the house phones ring once before the system rings on the iPhones attached to voice bridge which I think is reasonable as the system will always have a slight delay