The Onis is on Me or the London Jinx (Philips Onis Memo 6511)

Member Name: mattygroves10

Product:	Philips Onis Memo 6511
Date:	04/08/05 (748 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Extremely clear reception, easy to use, excellent range

Disadvantages: The all important green button failed, thus making hard to make and receive calls

Oh, my tales of woe continue. I am the jinx of South West London. I need only look at an electrical gadget, and it invariably stops working, works bizarrely or needs a repair or replacement of some description.

My Philips Onis 2 Memo DECT phone is no exception. But yet again, I am getting ahead of myself.

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The History
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Back in the dim and distant past of maybe twelve or more years ago, we acquired a Southwestern Bell cordless phone. This was before the days of DECT phones with ditzy little handsets.

True to form, after a few years, the phone contracted some kind of terminal illness. The battery wouldn't hold a charge, and the number 5 key ceased working. So for a while, we went back to our old-fashioned corded pulse dial phone (you know, the kind that when you dial [in this case, press the buttons] you get a click-click-click sound rather than a nifty tone).

Around four or five years ago, a colleague where I was then working was about to return a DECT cordless phone he'd only just purchased - it turned out it wasn't compatible with the system he already had (he was a gadget freak). It was unused and unopened.

I asked if I could buy it, for the original price (around £75 at the time), but spread over a couple of months (I was flat broke at the time). "No problem," says he. "Good deal", say I. So I go home at the end of the day with my new acquisition.

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At Home
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My husband and I open the box with something akin to awe (actually, it was with my fingernails, but you get the idea). Tucked neatly away in the packing was a petite phone with a petite cradle. Also apparent were the power cable, the phone cable and the instruction manual (which sits open in front of me now).

Setting it up couldn't be easier. Find an appropriate bit in your home for the base station (ideally not too far away from the various places you need to plug it in, and away from other electronic devices that can interfere with reception).

The manual is very clear, and ONLY in English. Even a reasonably clued up child should be able to set up the phone, and enable its various features.

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Distraction
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Oh, I do love these manuals. It tells me that 'significant obstacles such as concrete walls or metallic supports (windows and door frames...etc) will lesson the communication range...' Um...so I should keep it away from walls and windows? What, shall I use it outside? Sorry. I digress.
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End of Distraction
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You plug the power cable into the power cable hole in the phone, sticking the other end into the power socket (which is, unsurprisingly, in the wall) Then you plug the phone cable bit into the appropriate hole in the base station, and the other end into phone cable socket (also usually in the wall).

Make sure the handset has its supplied rechargeable AA batteries installed, charge the handset for (according to the manual) at least 16 hours, and you're ready to go.

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Nifty Features
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Although you can just start using your phone after it's fully charged, you can do all sorts of nifty things first.

The first thing you'll likely do is set up the date and time. If you do this, messages on your answerphone will be date and time coded, as will the missed call list. It's a good idea to do this, and truly not difficult.

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Answerphone
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Yes, the Philips Onus 2 Memo (apparently identical to the phone in the picture above) had an integrated answerphone feature. On the handset, below the LCD display, you'll find on the right, a little button with a symbol of a tape cassette on it. This is called the memo key, apparently. Of course, this being a digital phone, you don't actually need a tape.

The instruction manual is refreshingly clear, so I won't duplicate its instructions for every feature, but just to show you how simple the phone is to use, I'll run through setting up the answerphone. Aren't I nice?!

You can record an outgoing message of up to 30 seconds simply by pressing the 'memo' key, then pressing the number four key (which, under the number, has a little black circle · - as an aside, on the memo handset, all the number keys also have little symbols on them to control the answerphone). Once you're done, you press the 'stop' square (the number 8), and Bob's your proverbial uncle.

You can decide how many rings you want before the answerphone picks up, which is handy (depending on whether you are using the answerphone to screen your calls, or to answer them whilst you are out).

Turning the answerphone on requires only two button presses - the little 'memo' key followed by the 'on' button (which doubles as the number 7).

When you return home, if you have any messages, a little red light will be blinking on the handset (this light is steady red if the answerphone is on but there are no message, and it's steady green if the answerphone is off, and blinking green if someone is using the handset). Just press the memo button, and the message will play. Press the X button (the number 6) to erase the message. Then to turn the answerphone off, just press the Off button (number 9). Easy peasy!

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Phone Book
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You can store up to 40 names and numbers in the phone. There's a little button near the bottom labelled R/[funny, unduplicatable symbol]. This accesses the menu. The menu allows you to do all sorts of things, including setting up the phone book.

You can store names up to 10 characters, and a number of up to 23 digits. Again, the instruction booklet is very clear; detailing the buttons you need to press, how many times you need to press it (for example, to get letters), and what you should see on the display. I find it takes around two minutes per entry. More or less (I've never actually timed it!)

Deleting names and numbers is even simpler, and also well detailed in the manual.

There is a dedicated button on the phone, which allows you to access your stored numbers, making dialling them child's play.

There is another 'cool' (as my 14 year old daughter would say) feature about the phone book. If you have caller ID enabled (you need to do that with your phone company), and you receive an incoming call, if the caller is a programmed number, the display will give you not the number, but the name that is programmed in. I know most mobiles do this, but I still enjoy messing with people's brains by greeting them by name when they phone!

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Caller List
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Missed a call? Thinking of dialling 1471? No need - the bottommost button stores the number (or name, if you're using the feature detailed above) of the last missed calls. It stores really quite a lot of them. Just press the button, and you'll get the number or name of the most recent missed call, press it again, and you'll get details of the previous call and so on.

If, however, you press the OK button, it'll tell you how many times that number called you, and give dates and times, assuming you've set up the date and time (of course). You can also delete the details of missed calls by pressing the OK button a couple of times.

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Loudspeaker
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Again, there is a dedicated key for this. The icon is in the shape of a loudspeaker (doh). This allows hands-free usage. The reception is very clear - many speakerphones I've used in the past distort and crackle voices. This doesn't. I know this for a fact, as my daughter often uses it when calling me (I'd tell you from what room she is calling, but she's sometimes reads what I write, so I'd better not).

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Ringer Melody
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Yes, like with modern mobiles, you can choose how you want your phone to sound when it rings. I've only done this once, when I first set up the phone. But if variety is your thing, just use the R/thingy button, and follow the menu instructions.

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Battery Saver and other features I don't use
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I've never used this, but you can set the handset up so that when a call comes in, only the base station rings, not the handset. This could be useful if you have the phone outside with you whilst on a massive gardening spree (for example). But I don't use it.

You can apparently use the phone as a baby alarm, but you need two handsets to do this.
You can set the phone up to use with a PABX system. Not required in my old little house!

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But How Does the Phone Sound? And other details
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Being a DECT, the sound and reception quality are superb. My mother loathes cordless phones; she says she can always tell when she's speaking to someone who uses one. Except mine. From both ends of the conversation, the reception and clarity are usually indistinguishable from a normal corded phone.

The base unit was on a shelf, just over chest level, in the living room (ground floor). I have used the base unit upstairs and in the garden. Indeed, I'd used the base unit as far away as the car park (I lived until a couple of weeks ago in a newish estate, so the car park isn't directly in front of the house - it's down a path, past three houses in the terrace). So the range is very good.

So all in all, this sounds like a good phone. But remember what I said three and a half pages ago, at the start of the op? Yes, I had problems.

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The Jinx Strikes Again
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You should know that the buttons are 'soft' - a sort of vinyl feel (if that makes sense).

There is a large green button on the handset, marked with a silhouette of a telephone. This is the most important button on the phone. If the phone rings, you press the green button to answer it. If you want to make a call, you press the green button to get the dialling tone.

My green button is poorly. I press it, and nothing happens. I press it harder, and nothing happens. I start panicking, since the phone has now rung six of seven times. I press the button at an angle, and nothing happens. I jiggle the button. Maybe, if I'm lucky, the green button has actually worked. By now, the green button has little fingernail indentations, such is the vigour employed in trying to press the damned button. There is clearly something wrong with the green button.

One of the little arrow keys at the top of the phone is beginning to suffer the same problem. These are the keys that allow you to scroll through the names in your address book (amongst other uses those buttons have).

But that I can live with. The green button problem is, however, getting worse. Perhaps part of the reason I am such an electronics jinx is that we don't take things in to be repaired soon enoughbut this must be fixed. Or else it's back to the click-click-click phone for us (which works perfectly, despite being over 15 years old. Typical).

I never did have this fixed - I ended up replacing the phone with a BT phone. The sound quality isn't quite as good as it was on the Phillips...but it works. Every time.

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Summary and Verdict
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THE GOOD
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+ Excellent instruction manual
+ Superb reception and sound clarity
+ Long range between base and handset
+ Nifty features, including integrated answerphone, caller display, missed call display and phone book
+ Very easy to use
+ Petite and lightweight handset

THE NOT SO GOOD
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~ Because the handset is so petite, you can't cradle it between your ear and shoulder.
~ Really popular people might want the ability to store more than 40 numbers
~ Like with any cordless phone, it will not work in the event of a power outage, so you need to have a normal corded phone for emergencies.
~ Folks with large fingers might find the buttons a bit small and close together.

THE BAD AND THE UGLY
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- MY GREEN BUTTON doesn't work properly, and I don't know why.
- Another button is heading down the same route, not wishing to be pressed.
- It was terminally ill, and ended up getting thrown away. A bit of research unearthed the fact that this was not a unique problem, and was indeed fairly common.


MATTY'S VERDICT
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If it weren't for the green button problem, I'd wholeheartedly recommend the Philips Onis 2 Digital Cordless Telephone. But a phone is to make and receive calls - this is tricky when you can't answer the phone, or get a line in order to make a call.

However, since I do have these problems, the Philips Onis 2 Memo DECT phone only gets two stars from me.

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And Finally
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I'm not sure you can still get this exact model of phone. The instruction manual is copyright 1998, and looking at the Philips website, this model may have been superseded by the Onis 200 and 300 ranges. Argos are doing various Philips DECT phones for around £80, and they'll give you a £10 Argos gift voucher as well, apparently.

There is a Philips Onis 2 going on ebay for £4.99. It would seem a good deal...but the seller notes that the phone doesn't work. I wonder if it's the green button...

Check out www.consumer.philips.com for more information on the current ranges.

Summary: While it worked it was great. When it failed, it was poor. The buttons stopped working.

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