Pauldy’s House of Geek

It is January 26th and been a while since I had seen anything out of Grandstream with reguards to their POS GXP software when I decided to check the downloads site to see if they had any new firmware updates.  I wans’t shock not to see anything on the regular side but on the betatest side they had a new firmware labeled as Release_1.0.2.3_GXP2000.zip.  This raised an eyebrow as last I heard they were still working onthe bugs in 1.0.1.13.  So I downloaded the software and here is a quick review of features.

First thing I noticed was the fact it rebooted my phone over and over and over again until finally I removed the update images from my webserver.  Kind of anoying but par for the course for Grandstream.  It wasn’t until after i had gotten past this I noticed this firmware isn’t your normal Grandstream POS firmware written by two guys who still watch beavis and butthead episodes while trying to fart in each others faces.  This actually looks like some thought was put into it.

Ladies and gentlemen we have DND from the phone itslef without any crazy scripts or wierd dialplan entries we can control DND from the phone itslef now.  The indicator is a little retarded at the top of the screen but it is much better than what we had before.

First now when the bootup happens you can see on the phone itself when it is provisioning, downloading rom files, writting rom files, getting the ringers etc…  I like this part becuase it makes it easy to see when the phone is locked up although I have not seen that yet with the new firmware.   Then once the phone is up I did nottice some apparent improvements in audio quality.  They weren’t mind blowing but the person on the other end of my test call agreed.  Next when I spend a few more minutes with the phone I noticed the menu looks like a real menu system instead of some hack slapped together.  Real scroll bars etc…   Some of the more usefull features are a phone book and real call log with a history of recieved calls and missed calls.  I noticed that if you miss a call the display will show y9ou that you have x number of missed calls.  This is something that has been sorely missing.  In adition there are many more controls in the web interface including controls for using the phone as a NAT router for DSL?  Its in there why you would use your VOIP phone like that instead of just buying a cheapo dedicated box I don’t know but hey its an added feature with very simple and primitive controls ATM.

Inside the web conf most things are still there I couldn’t find anything that I esed that was missing anyway.  Some additions are for managing Updates whic are not very clear how they work.  Under basic setting we have a new option for speed dial keys BLF.  This means wen can setup those little red LEDs to monitor pretty much whatever on asterisk and turn them on via notification events that have been subscribed to by the phone.  This can make for some interesting setups where you could actually see how many lines are in use on the phone itself or possibly monitor other events with some creative dial plans.

Other than the above mentioned the only other noteworthy addition to the webconfig was the turn off speaker on remote disconnect.  This means no more anoying busy signal when the remote party disconnects.  The speaker phone just hangs up like it should.

So far I have only come across one anoying thing.  The routines for handling the screen redraw seem to be buggy leaving artifacts everywhere at certain times.  But my over all opinion is this may be the firmware that redeams Grandstream in my eyes at least.  To me this is the firmware they should have started out with as it really.

If you have a GXP-2000 and are looking for a way to make it work like a real enterprise phone should the next version of this firmware very well could do the job and the current one shows us they are finally on the right track.

I’m going to attempt to upload some video showing some of the new interface and I will appologize in advance for the poor quality.