NEWS FLASH Digium A-25 Phone / Fanvil X4G Phone

kenn10

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I picked up an open box Fanvil X4G phone on Amazon for $42. It worked well when I installed it but then I checked the Fanvil site for firmware and saw there was more current firmware which I loaded. The newest version has a lot of enhancements that make this a really great phone. The new load has more options for the line and BLF LEDs so you can turn them off when a line is not in use and you can adjust colors (red, green, orange) depending on the state of the LED. The whole Fanvil X-series gives good variety for home or office scenarios at about 50% of the Digium series price.

I was also looking at Digium phones and noticed their new series for Asterisk (the A series.) Those are virtually identical to the Fanvil X series phones. I downloaded the Asterisk firmware for the A-25 and loaded it on my Fanvil phone. It worked just fine. The only difference I could see was that it shows the Asterisk logo when the phone boots. The Digium firmware is about 8 iterations behind the current Fanvil load.

For a sub-$80 phone, I think this is a very good device. Fanvil is based in Hong Kong but the devices are sold all over the US. Fanvil seems to be a favorite for 3CX users.

This is the Fanvil X4G
upload_2019-2-23_16-5-34.png

This is the Fanvil X4G booting the Asterisk A-25 load:
upload_2019-2-23_16-29-54.png

This is the Asterisk A-25. Slightly different on the outside case but same displays and functions as Fanvil.
upload_2019-2-23_16-8-7.png
 
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rygel_fievel

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I've bought the X4S series and have been manually configuring it. Do you know the difference between X4S and X4G? I think I went with the X4S at the time because of Opus support. If it is just a matter of firmware to make it think it is the A series? Can we use FreePBX 14 with the EndPoint Manager for free?
 

kenn10

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The only difference between the X4S and the X4G is that the X4G has a gigabit ethernet port whereas the X4S has a 10/100 ethernet port. The same Fanvil firmware is used for both models.

I found no advantage to using the A25 firmware from Digium. The firmware was many releases behind the actual Fanvil firmware. Yeah, it gave a cute Asterisk logo when the phone boots, but I lost some control over appearance and color of the DSS button LED's. There are a lot of ways to provision the X4 just by saving a basic configuration and then loading it to each set you install. Then your can just customize the SIP registrations. The phone supports Option-66 for provisioning. I found no A25 or X4 templates to use with the OSS Endpoint Manager. I do not use FreePBX-14 so cannot comment on whether they offer templates for it.

One note is that the dial plan rules for the X4 are quite different from what we are used to with phones such as GrandStream, Aastra/Mitel or Linksys/Cisco. Once I figured out how to set up the dial plan, it is quite flexible and comprehensive.

I've played with the X4 on 3CX and their provisioning works OK but they also are using a very old release of the firmware. I also note that 3CX does not download dial plan values to customize the phone and thus you have to hit the dial button or wait for the timer to expire to dial the phone.


I've bought the X4S series and have been manually configuring it. Do you know the difference between X4S and X4G? I think I went with the X4S at the time because of Opus support. If it is just a matter of firmware to make it think it is the A series? Can we use FreePBX 14 with the EndPoint Manager for free?
 
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rygel_fievel

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Just went back on my e-mails and I could've swore I bought gigabit phones. Found out it was the X5S I ordered which does have gigabit network port.
 

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