FoggyLog

Thu Jan 6th 2005 23:00:09: Onis Vox 200 Cordless Phones

My 2 Onis Vox Cordless handsets are now two years old (I brought the first one in the January sale 2 years ago!) and they have started playing up. I come to answer a call or make a call and I get "Failed" appear on the screen. After a bit of hunting on google I find I'm not alone.

The Philips help desk advised the following:

Make sure that, a) that there was an aerial symbol in the right hand corner of the screen, if there is not one then re-register the hand set with the base station and b) re-set the phones by disconnecting the base station from the mains power and the phone line and removing the batteries from the hand-sets, leave them for 5 minutes before reconnecting everything.

But non of that worked. When I put the handsets next to each other I noticed that they were disconnecting from the base in order - first "Philips 1" would disconnect and reconnect, then straight after that "Philips 2" would do the same. A few seconds later it would happen again. So I decided to try all possible combinations of registering and unregistering the hand sets (unregister and reregister both, only register one, only register the other etc). The last thing I tried was to register my handsets the other way round, so Philips 1 became Philips 2 and vica versa. So far that seems to have fixed the problem! Strange. I'll have to see how they go....

Update: 7/1/05

Well it might have fixed the problem, but not for long. This morning they are exactly like they used to be, so it's back to the drawing board with trying to make them work properly...

Update: 15/1/06

I finally got fed up with my Onis dect phone and got a new one. I've now got a BT Synergy 3505 (which has a similar spec to the Onis Vox), however it actually works all the time :-). I've now "connected" my old Philips handsets to the BT base station and they seem to work fine. Therefore I recon the problems I described above are something to do with the base station electronics. Therefore if you buy a new base station you can probably still make use of your Onis handsets.

Comments (6) | Permanent Link

interesting comments...i seem to have lost the battle with my pair of cordless phones also two years old. I am unable to re-register one of them...i tried everything!!

Comment by Ric at 11:10 on Sat 19 November 2005

Gary/Ric

I'm on my second round of Philips phones in our house. The last solution was ripped out and replaced at quite some cost. Sadly, before it all failed so hopelessly, I bought a base and 3 handsets for my parents and a base and 4 handsets for my sister. I've spend a LOT of money on Philips gear. Idiot.

Last time around I spent a few hundred £ on a Philips Onis 200 set up (I have a base and 5 handsets) I'm determined to make 'em work and get value.

Currently, following your advice, I have the base unplugged and batteries out on each phone to see if some starvation might help. But my expectations are low.

Like lightbulbs, do you think that the phones have a deliberate life expectancy to be sure that, every few years they fail, and every few years you replace.

Claire

Comment by Claire at 21:25 on Thu 22 June 2006

Hi Claire,

I would suggest buying a new base station by someone other than Philips (never buy Philips phones IMHO!). You should then be able to connect the old Philips handsets to the new base station (all these type of phones use the DECT standard). The answer phone and stuff probably won't work, however you'll be able to make calls and do all the basic things.

I doubt Philips have done it on purpose. My guess is it's just a bad design which becomes unreliable with age.

Gary

Comment by Gary at 21:36 on Thu 22 June 2006

Has anyone had problems with CLI (Caller line identity display) not working through an ADSL filter on these philips Onis vox 200 phones?

Comment by Baloo Bear at 13:56 on Tue 12 December 2006

Hi Baloo,

I've not had any problems myself. I've heard of analogue computer modems getting confused by a low quality ADSL filter. Perhaps you could try getting a better ADSL filter, or putting multiple filters together and see if that fixes your problem? If not, then perhaps it could be your phone line supplier messing up and switching CLI off?

Gary

Comment by Gary at 17:02 on Tue 19 December 2006

I have just had the same fault appear - although to be fair, the Onis has given me about 5 years of good service! I agree that it is the Base station that is the problem (I can connect the handset to other bases) and I reckon that it is just the DECT radio in the base that has gone (the base station still rings when the number is dialled - but obviously I can't answer it because of the DECT radio failure!) I have just bought a new Philips system (CD235) because I was so pleased with the Onis system, and my only dissapointment is that this system doesn't have a shared address book - so I have to program each number separately into each handset.. :-( You'd think that a common phone book would be an obvious requirement in a multi-handset system!

Comment by Chris at 14:03 on Tue 4 September 2007

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