Unidata SQ 3000

Unidata SQ 3000: At a Glance

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

A week or two ago, we got asked for our opinion on phones from Unidata. Since we didn’t know much about the manufacturer at the time, the team figured it was as good a time as any to take a break from desktop phones and review something a little different.

From very minimal digging, we gathered that Unidata focused on two main products, the WPU 7700 wifi phone and their more interesting SQ 3000 wifi video-conferencing phone which features a touch-screen as well as support for the G.722 wideband codec. Some of their other products include the SQ 3100, a docking port for the SQ 3000 that essentially converts it into a deskphone, and the SQ 3500, a SQ 3000 with another camera slapped onto the back (because, you know, one camera is just never enough anymore).

The team finally decided on reviewing the SQ 3000, which we’re pretty sure is one of the first mobile wifi video-conferencing ‘HD’ touch-screen phones on the market. Since the majority of our readers employ VoIP for business, we will be specifically looking at how the SQ 3000 would hold up in a business environment.

Unidata SQ 3000 Feature Overview

This is taken from a SQ 3000 Datasheet available at Unidata.

*means optional

Price: ~$350

First Impressions

The Unidata SQ 3000 is about the size and weight of an IPhone. The touch screen display is just a tad smaller than the IPhone’s, but that is because the SQ 3000 also includes a standard numpad and the accompanying navigation buttons you would expect to find on any cell phone. Unfortunately, the phone does not give you a QWERTY keyboard like most of the nicer cell phones on the market today, meaning you will have to type in letters the old-fashioned way.

The look and feel of the device is very nice. Clicking on the ‘menu’ button by either using the touch screen or the case sensitive soft keys in the bottom left-hand corner of the phone takes the user to an arrangement of 8 options containing all the phones features and settings. For those that like to customize the look of their phone, the ‘display’ option allows users to change the background image as well as set the font for the text that appears on the main screen.

Users can listen to music, watch videos, and browse pictures by clicking on the ‘multimedia’ option. These are added features that we’re not particularly interested in as a business VoIP service, but someone who employs the SQ 3000 for personal use might find them more appealing.

What we’re far more interested in is that fact that this is one of the few wifi devices we’ve gotten our hands on that supports the G.722 wideband codec or ‘HD voice’, as it is more commonly known. The main selling feature of the SQ 3000 is its video calling and 3-way video conferencing capabilities. Although we don’t do many video calls in our day-to-day, we’re impressed that the manufacturer incorporated video communications in a mobile wifi device, and are very excited to test these features with our own video capable IP phones.

Phone Configuration

Setting up the phone is relatively easy. To see the wireless networks in range of the phone, go to ‘settings’ and then select ‘WiFi’. Select your service and it will prompt you to enter your wireless password. For ‘NAT traversal mode’, keep the ‘not in use’ setting. Similarly, for ‘Network Settings’, keep ‘DHCP’.

The SQ 3000 does have a web server interface, but it’s a little bare. To activate the web server go to ‘Settings’ >>> ‘System’ >>> ‘Web Server’, and select ‘enable’. Next, find the IP address on the phone. You can do this by going to ‘Settings’ >>> ‘Information’ >>> ‘Network Info’.

An interesting thing to note here is that simply typing the IP address into your browser probably won’t work. We had to include port 8080 to gain access to the web server (Long story short, including port 8080 increases security). You can do this by simply adding “ :8080 “ to the end of your phone’s IP address in your browser.

The login name and password are ‘admin’ and ‘admin’.

This is where you will end up…

Like we said, it’s a little bare. All you can input is your account/line information. It looks like you can also run firmware upgrades from the web server, but since our SQ 3000 came with the latest version, we have yet to test this.

Another thing that’s quite odd is that although your account information will show up in your phone almost immediately after you type it into your browser and hit ‘submit’, the user password will not. You will actually have to separately go in and input that into your phone. To input your account information into the phone directly, go to “Settings” >>> “Systems” >>> “SIP” >>> “Account 1/Account 2”.

As of now, it doesn’t seem like the web server serves much of a purpose for provisioning the phone since you have to input your SIP password directly. We hope Unidata upgrades this so users don’t have to type in their passwords using the numpad.

Junction Networks Interoperability Test

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.”

We ran into several majors issue while running our interoperability test plan on the SQ 3000.

It would appear that the SQ 3000 incorrectly makes referrals when trying to reach external extensions. Our phone rewrote packets and gave external extensions the wrong domain—its own. What we ended up with was a ‘404 not found’ error and an automatic hang up. Unfortunately, it does not appear like you can do anything about this flawed setting. This could mean a lot of serious problems if the people you’re trying to reach are on a phone system with an auto-attendant. If they don’t have or you don’t know their direct 10-digit phone numbers, then you’ll have trouble reaching them using the SQ 3000.

The phone has issues calling people with more than one device registration. The SQ 3000 responds to the device that is the quickest to send PRACK, and then goes on ignoring all requests from any other devices. Let's say you're calling Toby, who has a Polycom in the office, an Aastra at home, and an Eyebeam on his laptop. If the Polycom sends the PRACK first, then the call will only work if Toby picks up on his Polycom. If he picks up on any of the other devices he's registered to, your SQ 3000 will ignore the requests and continue ringing.

We also ran into a few other NAT issues that we were eventually able to solve using a STUN server (to input STUN server info, you’ll have to go back to setting up your Wifi connection and change the ‘NAT traversal mode’ configuration). We won’t mention the problems here specifically because they were not the result of any fundamental problems with the phone. However, we will say that the SQ 3000 would be much better off if there were a better way to change some of the settings. A fleshed out web interface would certainly do the trick.

All tests were done on firmware version 1.9.1 G.

Voice Quality

The phone supports 4 audio codecs: G.711u, G.711A, G.729, and G.722. From what we can tell, you can’t control which one gets first priority. For outgoing calls, the SQ 3000 seems to prefer G.711. We tested this with a Polycom 335, Polycom 550, and an Aastra 6730i. In each case, the calls from this phone were not in ‘HD’. Only when the SQ 3000 receives a call from another device that supports the G.722 will you get a call negotiated on the wideband codec. This is yet another awkward setting in the phone that we wish we could change.

Outgoing calls sound about as good as the standard VoIP or PSTN call. Incoming calls negotiated on the G.722 codec sound much better for the user on the other end if they're using a desktop IP phone, but the difference is not as huge on the SQ 3000. It still sounds better, but don’t expect Polycom 'HD' quality.

Speakerphone

The speakerphone quality varies depending on what the person on the other end of the call is using. For the most part, its actually sounds quite good, even when you're on G.711. We did, however, run into intermittent echo cancellation issues.

Video

This is the SQ 3000's main selling point. In fact, the default calling method is 'video'. Being able to easily walk around while literally talking face to face with someone is definitely nice. However, the quality of the video taken from the SQ 3000's camera isn't going to be as good as what the camera on your laptop or IPhone can do. The team tested this feature with the Eyebeam soft phone (which records from the laptop camera) so they immediately noticed the difference in video quality.

That being said, though, the SQ 3000's video calling feature works very well. The video, while being a bit on the grainy side, is fluid, and the speakerphone shines.

Ease of Use

Even though the phone can hold the information for two separate SIP lines/registrations, you can only have one active line/registration at a time.

At first, it seems like the SQ 3000 phone has no ‘hold’ or ‘transfer’ functionality. If you’re on a call and you click the only button on your screen, the ‘menu’ option, all you can do is mute yourself. What you actually have to do to hold and transfer calls is press the green ‘send’ button during a call. This will put the line on hold and bring up a blank sheet that lets you dial another number. Once another call is in progress, clicking on the ‘menu’ button again will give you the option to transfer the person on hold to the person on your second call. This means that you cannot do blind transfers using this phone.

A blind transfer would be the following:

"A calls B
B picks up the call
B transfers the call to C"

B, in this case, is the caller using a SQ 3000.

Using the SQ 3000 is a lot like using a smartphone. You can navigate around by using both the context-sensitive soft keys and the navigation square or by using the touch screen display. The touch screen is usually very responsive, but there will be times when an option at the very edge of the screen does not respond immediately when you tap it. If you are accustomed to the IPhone, you will be disappointed to know that you cannot scroll up, down or sideways by running your finger across the display screen. The touch screen feature is well made, but it’s not quite as nice as what you get from Apple.

The phone has a lot of extra features that you can access from the main menu. ‘Multimedia’ includes a video and music player as well as a place to view your pictures. ‘Tools’ contains an alarm clock, a unit converter, a calendar, a memo pad, and a place to keep track of the time in different places around the world. Unidata also included a menu dedicated to text messages. All of these options will appeal to someone with more personal uses for the SQ 3000.

Final Thoughts

While we applaud Unidata's efforts for bringing such an innovative device to the market, unfortunately, we cannot recommend this phone to the majority of our customers at this time. From our testing, we determined that the SQ 3000 has trouble successfully making calls to people with multiple registered devices. Furthermore, the phone rewrites packets incorrectly so external extensions are almost impossible to reach, a fatal flaw in the software.

We hope that Unidata rectifies these issues in the near future.

The phone is very good, however, for making on network extension-to-extension video calls (it might be very useful in hospitals, for example), but we were hoping for a bit more refinement for the ~$350 price tag.

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Average: 3 (1 vote)