BT VERVE 450+ TWIN Home Phone

We bought these phones a couple of years ago and have been pretty happy with them. They are reliable and functional and do pretty much everything you want from a decent home phone. We keep the main one downstairs and the twin in our bedroom. The phone is also an answer machine which has 15 minutes recording time.

The handsets are black and fairly slim-line (about 1cm thick), They are rectangular in shape and have a fairly decent sized screen at the top half of the phone. This screen shows you which phone it is (main phone or twin) and you can name them if you like - ours are uniquely called upstairs and downstairs, this name is shown clearly on the screen. The screen also shows the time, date and how much battery life is left. There are many other symbols which may appear depending on what functions you have activated. The handset has fairly large dial buttons to the bottom of the set with a middle section containing various functions buttons you may need during or before you make a call.

There is a facility to store up to 200 numbers in the phone (accessed by button on handset), this used to be a handy option but with our children now having their own mobiles I think they rarely use the house phone unless they have to answer it.

Other handy features include:
Redial - accessed by a button on the handset
Call list - shows list of numbers that have dialled your house, again access by a button on the handset
Call timer - shows how long call has taken on screen
Ringer and handset volume control
SMS text messaging service (may cost)
Long battery life - approx 10 hours talking or 100 hrs standby
option to add a further 3 phones to system

~~~My opinion~~~
This phone has never let us down but now we find that the battery life is very much reduced and if we forget to place the phones back into the cradles they can die quite quickly. If we are stupid enough to do this to both phones (which has happened in the past) we have no way of answering a call. Is it time to replace the phone or the battery? Cost may decide this for us.