Block nuisance calls with this smartphone for your landline
The BT Home SmartPhone S is a cordless landline phone that uses the Android operating system. This means you can use it not only to make phone calls from your landline number –like any other cordless phone
– but also to browse the web, use apps and make video calls using the front-facing camera. Most intriguingly of all, BT claims that the Home SmartPhone S can also block nuisance calls.
Getting started
Setting up the Home SmartPhone S is a doddle. Alongside the phone and a charging cradle, you’ll find a cordless base station included. You only need to connect the base station to your phone socket. The phone, itself, can go anywhere in your home.The Home SmartPhone S comes with a clear, easy-to-follow user guide that outlines how to set up the phone and how to undertake basic tasks, such as accessing voicemail messages and navigating the Android operating system. For help with anything more advanced – for example, downloading more apps – you’ll need to call a freephone number and speak to BT’s helpdesk.
Android
The Home SmartPhone S runs version 4.2.2 of Android. Unlike some other phone manufacturers that modify the Android interface with loads of pointless add-ons, BT has stuck by Google’s standard design – with one significant exception: as we went to press, there’s still no way to add more apps to the Home SmartPhone S via the Google Play store. You can download apps from the Opera app store, but its selection is limited. Google Play support is reportedly on the way, but BT was unable to confirm when. Although it doesn’t load complex webpages quickly, it works well enough for occasional web browsing, email checking and using social-networking apps such as Facebook.
Screen and call quality
The 3.5in touchscreen is very responsive with no lag or juddery motion. The display looks good when viewed face on, but its viewing angles aren’t particularly wide. This means that colours morph into a dark grey, if you view the screen from an angle. This will be particularly annoying if members of your family want to crowd round the phone to watch a video or see someone on a video call.
We also found that the screen was susceptible to oily smears from our fingers and ears, even when they were relatively dry and didn’t leave smears on our other smartphones. This meant we frequently had to put the phone to sleep and wipe the marks off it before continuing to use it, which was a pain.
We were pleased with the sound quality of the phone, though. Although you can hear the tell-tale hiss common to all cordless phones, it’s much less intrusive than on other cordless phones we’ve used and wasn’t distracting during calls.
Call blocking
BT claims the Home SmartPhone S will block up to 80 per cent of nuisance calls, but to do this you must also have the BT Privacy with Caller Display service enabled on your BT landline. This costs an extra £1.75 per month, but is free for the first 12 months if you’re a new BT customer. You use the preinstalled Nuisance Calls app to determine which call types you want to allow and which you want to block. For example, you can choose to allow or block calls from numbers that are categorised as international, unavailable or withheld, as well as calls from phone boxes. You can also stop calls from specific numbers.
The phone doesn’t provide you with a list of blocked calls. These are still listed in the phone’s general log along with other, legitimate calls. Examining this log, we found that the phone had successfully blocked two nuisance calls in our 24-hour test period, not allowing any through. You can also use the Nuisance Calls app to set times of the day during which you don’t want to be disturbed, such as between midnight and 8am. As with blocked calls, the phone won’t ring whenever Do Not Disturb is enabled, and the caller won’t be able to leave a message on the answering machine.
Conclusion
The BT Home SmartPhone S isn’t a serious alternative to a tablet or smartphone because of its limited selection of apps, flawed screen and unimpressive performance. However, it did a good job of blocking nuisance calls – a service that very few other phones provide. However, you pay a lot for this – £170 for the phone itself plus BT’s subscription fees. If you want to block unwanted calls, the BT 6500 cordless phone is better value at just £56. It doesn’t run Android so it doesn’t try to be a substitute for a smartphone or tablet, but it has all the nuisance call-blocking features of the Home SmartPhone S at a much lower price.
