Elements Of Corded, Cordless Style To Debut At CES

New York— The fashionable, young and old, will find something for their home telephony tastes at next month's International CES.

Borrowing heavily from their wireless peers, telephony vendors will introduce a corded riff on the Blackberry organizer and a diminutive cordless phone with a slide-out keypad.

Dealers at the show will also find a cordless system with 2-mile open-field range.

Here's a look at a few home-phone products that will be introduced at CES in January.

ParkerVision: The wireless networking manufacturer will feature its first entry into the cordless phone market with the introduction of the ParkerVision Cordless Telephone. It features a 2-mile open-field signal range powered by the company's D2D extended range wireless technology, which the company says is also capable of sending the signal through walls and floors.

The phone incorporates “tri-level security encryption” to protect the phone transmission from eavesdroppers. The phone is also said to be resistant to outside interference from microwave ovens, wireless networks and other common sources of RF.

The unit features a speakerphone on the handset and base station, caller ID, back-lit displays, a power backup and headset jack. Pricing was unavailable.

Sakar:The company's riff on the popular BlackBerry handheld is its own Berry series of hands-free corded phone and organizer. It will be available in four colors: BlueBerry, GreyBerry, GrapeBerry and StrawBerry

The Berries ship with a hands-free headset.

For a suggested $19.99, the organizer/phone can deliver a variety of PDA-functions, including storing dozens of phone numbers, e-mail addresses and dates. It features password protection to secure stored contacts.

The Berries are powered by two AAA batteries (not included) and will ship in the first quarter of 2005.

Uniden: A 2.4GHz digital system expandable to four handsets will feature a sliding keypad and a cellphone-inspired design.

The DMX776, for a suggested $79.99, features caller ID/call waiting, baby monitoring, three-way conferencing, voice-mail-waiting indicator light in both the handset and base, a keypad lock, and handset-to-handset call transfer.

The handsets feature a speakerphone, can send 10 preset text messages back and forth and offer 100 programmable memory locations that are transferable between handsets. The handsets also feature the company's DirectLink two-way radio capability.

The step-up DMX778, for a suggested $99.99, includes all the features of the DMX776 but adds four-way conferencing, photo caller ID (input via USB connection and included software), base-to-handset call transfer and an integrated digital answering system.