The Archos Smart Home Phone

The Archos Smart Home Phone is an interesting idea. It is an Android phone that looks, feels and works like a mobile phone, but it is a home phone. In other words, instead of working with a mobile phone service, it works with your land line instead. You get all the benefits of a mobile phone, but without the monthly contract. Of course, there are charges for a land line, but most people have a land line anyway, so switching from a normal phone to the Archos Smart Home Phone involves no extra cost.

It is basically a mobile phone and it has 8Gb of memory, runs Android 2.2, a 1GHz processor and... well, it's just like any other budget Android phone so it's hardly worth listing the features here. The difference is that it has a base unit that plugs into your phone line. The phone uses the DECT standard (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunication) and you can put the base unity anywhere in your home.

Is this a revolutionary new device that we will all want in our homes? It is certainly a fascinating idea and it looks very tempting. The land line phone I have now is positively stone age compared to this. It's a brilliant idea and I'd love one, but does it have a future?

Surely it would be very easy to incorporate the technology into a standard mobile phone. Then you would have a device that works as a land line at home and a mobile when you leave and go out. All Android phones have Wi-Fi, so all it needs is a Wi-Fi base unit that plugs into a standard phone socket. Is this possible? Alternatively, DECT could be built into the mobile phone. Mobile phone companies are always looking for new features to make their products stand out from the crowd. How about it?