Aastra 6739i

Aastra 6739i: At a Glance

Category	Rating (0-5)
First Impressions
Phone Configuration
JN Testing
Voice Quality
Ease of Use

First unveiled late last year at the BroadSoft Connections executive conference, the 6739i is Aastra’s most advanced enterprise class IP desk phone to date. It has drawn many comparisons to other premium solutions from top competing brands like the Polycom 670 and the Snom 870. We will eventually get to testing and reviewing all of them; the 6739i just happens to be the first one up.

First Impressions

Simply put, the Aastra 6739i is the nicest desk phone I’ve ever used. This probably has a lot to do with the 5.7” 640 X 480 display, Aastra’s first color, touch screen display. The resolution is comparable to what you get on the iPhone 3G and 3GS; much better than the 320x160 display on the Polycom 550 that I’m used to. The large screen may make the device seem bulky at first, but the 6739i actually uses the exact same frame as the models in the brand’s 5Xi series. High end enterprise class IP phones from competitors like Polycom and Grandstream are bigger and heavier.

The phone comes feature loaded with the capacity for 9 lines and 9 separate call appearances. Three lines get dedicated hard keys with their own LED indicators, and the rest can be programmed in as softkeys that show up on your touch screen. Here is just a quick list of all the main features, taken straight from one of Aastra’s data sheets:

All of this does come at a price though. Expect to shell out over $360 to get your hands on one of these.

Phone Configuration

Configuring the 6739i is quick and painless. Once you have everything plugged in, select the ‘options’ hard key > status. You can check your firmware version and your phone’s IP address in this menu. Be sure to upgrade your firmware version to 3.0.1 before continuing any further.

I’m going to show you here how to provision an OnSIP account, but you can use the same steps for pretty much any SIP provider. First you will need your account credentials. These include your SIP address, password, username, auth username, proxy/domain, and outbound proxy server.

Type the phone’s IP address into your web browser to get to Aastra’s web interface (default name/password are ‘admin’/’22222’). Select either ‘Global SIP’ or ‘Line 1’ under ‘Advanced Settings’ in the left hand navigation menu and enter in your user credentials.

Under ‘Global SIP’, scroll down until you see the codec preference list. For OnSIP users, it should look a little something like this.

Click Reset > Restart Phone and your phone should reboot with your new settings within a few seconds. I did run into an instance where the phone was stuck restarting but after I unplugged it and tried again, I was unable to reproduce the issue.

JN Interoperability Test

All Testing of the Aastra 6739i was done on firmware version 3.0.1.38

At Junction Networks, we put each of the phones we use through a multi-step interoperability test in which we put the phones through 30 test cases. An example of a test case would be the following:

Test phone calls phone B

B picks up

B puts Test phone on hold

B calls phone C

C picks up

B transfers test phone to C

Call must be transferred correctly to C. B must be released correctly after the transfer. When C picks up, audio must work in both ways between test phone and C. When test phone is on hold, there is no audio between it and phone B.

The Aastra 6739i passed each of our test cases.

Voice Quality

At the 2009 ITEXPO, Aastra announced that it was providing G.722 wideband audio codec support in the form of a firmware upgrade to their 67xxi phones. Keep in mind that many of Aastra’s older phones do not have all the hardware components to support HD audio in all its glory, making these phones more HD compatible than HD capable. We’ve tested out Aastra’s ‘Hi-Q’ for ourselves on the older 6757i model. While there was a very noticeable improvement in audio quality, it still wasn’t quite as good as the ‘HD voice’ audio of our Polycom 550s/650s.

Enter the 6739i, a phone with the upgraded ‘full frequency response’ hardware to give rival Polycom some good competition. The sound quality is indeed excellent, but is it better than what you get on a high end Polycom 650 phone? To be honest, I cannot really tell the difference. If I had to pick favorites, I would choose the voice quality on the 6739i handset over the 650 handset, and the 650 speakerphone over the one on the 6739i.

Regardless of which phone you choose, you’re going to get amazing audio.

For a more in-depth analysis of the voice quality of the 6739i, I will defer to VoIP blogger Michael Graves. In this post, he pits the two phones head to head with full audio clips and graphs that show energy vs. frequency (very cool!). While he admits that his tests are “completely unscientific and not really a rational basis for comparison”, it should still give you a good idea of how the 6739i measures up against one of the best sounding phones available.

Ease of Use

If you were not happy with Aastra’s rubber buttons on previous models, then you probably will be disappointed to learn that the 6739i does indeed have rubber buttons. While I would agree that solid keys are more satisfying to use, this is not a major issue for me. Many of the buttons have been moved to the touch screen so it should not be as big a problem for people who strongly prefer solid keycaps.

Some people have brought up that the phone does not tilt high enough. Users complained that they had to get right up to the screen on some Aastra models just to see anything. If you happen to have fluorescent light fixtures directly above your desk (like I do right now) then there might be times when your screen is obscured with glare. However, since the display on this phone is so above and beyond anything previously released from Aastra (not to mention that it takes up the majority of the real estate on the phone), it is very unlikely you will find yourself struggling to make out the screen.

Aastra does now offer an optional High Angle Stand for their 67xxi phones. This accessory will run you about $20.

The remainder of this section I will cover in videos.

Phone Tilt, Conference Calling

Hardkeys, Softkeys, Phone Navigation

XML Applications and Softkey Setup

Setting softkeys up all at once in the web interface is much easier.

The Touch Screen

Built In Bluetooth

Unfortunately I have not yet tested the bluetooth capability. I did do a little digging around on the feature and found that most of the feedback has been positive.

Built-in Bluetooth works very well, we've used a number of different headsets with it without issues. [Link]

The main reason for me getting the 6739i was for the bluetooth and some of its other features. I've been using a Jawbone icon bluetooth headset without a problem for the past few days. It's nice to be able to walk around the office and do things while talking on the phone instead of being tied to my desk. The phone automatically connects to the headset if you go out of range and come back into range, which in my office is about 15-20 feet I'd say before you lose connection. [Link]

Do take these comments with a grain of salt since you never really know who is actually a reseller.

VoIP blogger Michael Graves wrote another interesting post on the subject, where he points out that Aastra's recommended bluetooth headsets for the phone do not support wideband audio.

Final Thoughts

Is the Aastra 6739i worth the price? That depends. To be honest, it would take a lot of convincing to get me to spend $360+ on any desk phone, regardless of how many features it has or how nice the LCD display is--but that's just me.

I will say that the phone does a lot of the convincing all by itself, but if you're not a heavy phone user, then the 6739i probably isn't for you. If, however, some of features mentioned in this review would make your work life significantly easier or you have something like a dedicated Asterisk server for some of the cooler XML applications, then maybe this phone is the perfect fit.

Published July 21st, 2010

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Average: 5 (2 votes)