Digium D6x Series IP Phones Get Overhaul, Boast Full-Color Screens

Unified communications and telephony specialist Digium announced its newest IP desk phones, the D6x series, which includes the D60 value phone, the D62 Gigabit networking value phone and the D65 Gigabit networking feature phone.

List pricing for the series starts at $139 for the D60, $189 for the D62 and $239 for the D65. Each phone boasts a 4.3 inch full-color screen.

The D6x series features a complete physical overhaul of the phones’ aesthetic, with a new design that provides a slim desk presence and modern design and comfort cues.

“Color displays are important to users because they provide an immeasurable enhancement when they sit down and use the product,” Malcolm Davenport, senior product manager for IP phones at Digium, told eWEEK. “In a world of four-shades of grey it’s exceedingly difficult, even with a very good user experience plan and user interface design, to have the user do what they need to do at various stages of operating the product. With color in play, we’re able to do much more to guide the user with very obvious cues that make the product easier to navigate for both the familiar and unfamiliar user.”

The D6x series of IP phones require Switchvox 6.2 IP PBX or Digium Phone Module for Asterisk (DPMA) 3.1 or later, and include new features such as multicast audio playback and 802.1X authentication.

Businesses can take advantage of the new multicast audio playback feature by upgrading to Switchvox 6.3 or DPMA 3.1 Or, if they provision their Digium phones using XML, they can check out the updated configuration options on the company’s wiki docs.

“Mobile technology has impacted business telephony needs greatly to this point, and will continue to do so in both the near and far future,” Davenport said. “For ourselves, we see an increasing need to provide a seamless calling experience for the user, regardless of the device technology they’re bringing to the table—whether it’s a desk or a mobile endpoint.”

Launching alongside the IP phones is the latest release of Switchvox, version 6.3, with new features including multicast audio and call parking enhancements.

Multicast audio support enables phones to receive wide-area announcements and pages without consuming additional resources on a Switchvox system, and a significant enhancement to call parking allows users to create multiple custom-defined parking lots and assign them to different users and groups.