Now, the phone at home gets smart

‘‘Nobody” has home phone lines anymore. “Nobody” reads printed newspapers. “Nobody” wants books on paper. Is anybody else getting tired of all the “analog is dead” proclamations by 28-year-old new-media hotshots

Sorry hotshots, but several hundred million nobodies still have home phone lines, subscribe to printed papers and read printed and bound books. Their popularity may be trending downward, but it’s far from zero.

So it’s reassuring to find out that a few engineers are still advancing the state of the art in a technology that the 28-year-olds have given up for dead: the home phone. In the last couple of months, two electronics giants – Panasonic and Verizon – have tried to drag the thing into 2009.

The name of Panasonic’s latest cordless phone, the KX-TG7432, may not come trippingly off the tongue; in fact, you pretty much have to look it up every time you want to refer to it.

It has a lot in common with previous Panasonic phones: for example, the base unit ($90) contains a digital answering machine, and you can park extension handsets (reasonably priced at $30 each) around the house; they all communicate wirelessly. What’s new is the encroachment of cellphone technologies, beginning with the clickable navigation joystick. A huge, bold, black-and-white screen displays icons for things like Caller List, Voice Mail, Settings and so on. It’s now ok to misplace the user manual; you pretty much don’t need it. As on the iPhone, you’re not condemned to listening to your messages in sequence. You can summon a list of them (on any handset), and listen to the most important ones first. The phone also offers Do Not Disturb feature, which lets you establish certain hours during which the phone doesn’t ring. Sweet.

The best trick, however, is spoken Caller ID. Between rings, a synthesized voice calls out the name of whoever’s calling.

Last night, for example, during dinner, we heard “Rrrring! ...Brown University... Rrrrring! ...” My wife and I exchanged eye rolls; it was her alma mater, calling for money. This time, we weren’t the suckers who got up from the table to answer it.

Any name you’ve entered into the built-in phone book is spoken; you also hear most names of businesses and home-phone callers. Unfortunately, Caller ID generally isn’t available for incoming cellphone calls. In that case, the Panasonic just speaks the cellphone’s hometown: “Trenton, NJ,” for example.

The handset design is clean and comfortable; the audio is incredibly clear and lifelike; the keys are big, rubberised and illuminated. Nits to pick: when you call in for your messages, you can’t change your outgoing greeting. Also, there’s no two-line version with these features.

Besides, although it’s very cool, the KX--TG7432-MAZDARX7 (or whatever it’s called) is still basically a landline phone. The Verizon Hub ($150 with two-year contract), on the other hand, is far more ambitious. It combines elements of a landline phone, a cellphone, a Vonage-type Internet phone and a set of refrigerator magnets.

You’d be tempted to call the result a Frankenphone, but the result isn’t nearly that horrific. Some software refinements and a $50 price drop have made the Hub a more enticing proposition than it was when it was introduced earlier this spring.

The biggest problem Verizon will have is just trying to describe the thing. (It’s sold exclusively online.)

It’s a sleek, black, good-looking touch-screen base station with a compact cordless handset and a plastic stylus that you’ll lose within a week. (Your finger also works.) It’s an Internet phone. If the power goes out, you lose your Hub phone line — but incoming calls are auto-routed to another number, like your cellphone.

Setup is easy. The Hub gets to the Internet by hopping effortlessly onto your home Wi-Fi network; it can also accept an Ethernet cable. Once it’s online, it does a hundred things a regular home phone can’t do — and almost every one of them needs some refinement. For example, this home phone can, for the first time, also send text and picture messages to cellphones. Right from the kitchen counter, you can text your kids in real time.

Required refinement: You can exchange these messages only with Verizon cellphones. The company says it’s working on the technical barriers to other carriers’ phones.