BT Advanced Digital Home Phone vs BT Advanced Digital Home Phone with Alexa

[sammyh25]

Due to be switched to Digital Voice and I am trying to understand the difference between the BT Advanced Digital Home Phone (which I have been sent free of charge) and the version which has Alexa built in. 

In particular I am trying to find out if both handsets store their contacts on the Smart Hub 2.  This is mentioned in the user manual for the handset which has Alexa but not for the other unit. I don't want to manually retype 300+ contacts into a handset, so if I can import them into the Hub that would be amazing.  Don't particularly need Alexa, we're a Google household, but would go for those handsets if they were the only ones that use the Hub to store contacts.

Apart from the Alexa functionality what other differences are there between the units?

Many thanks.

[imjolly]

the digital phone store contacts in the phones not in the hub  the hub is just a dect base station for the phones

Having used both phones - with and without Alexa - the big advantage I found was without Alexa you had to key in contacts manually unless you had another BT phone where you could export contacts to new phone whereas with Alexa if you have on your mobile then your new DV phone is able to use the contact list from mobile so no need to key in any contacts

you also get the normal benefits of Alexa

[sammyh25]

That's really good information, thank you.

The manual for the Alexa handset talks about backing up and restoring contacts to/from the Hub when you access the Smart Hub 2 Web interface. I assumed this meant the contacts were stored centrally on the Hub. If not, when you restore contacts from a VCF file, is it sending each handset a copy of the file?

In your experience do you have to amend/add contacts to all of your handsets individually, or do you add to one device and its echoed in all of them?

Sorry for all the questions, want to get it clear in my head how this all works so I can make a judgement on what handsets we'll use. 

[imjolly]

it's a while since I used the older style but I remember the contacts were a real problem but it did share the contacts between handsets.  if you did a factory reset of hub then phones needed reset and all contacts deleted unless you had backed them up

the new ones with Alexa you do not need to enter any contacts as long as you have alexa on your mobile as you are able to make call from contacts list and also you get caller id on received calls

that facility alone makes a huge difference

[mrrobotxyz]

I received the non Alexa version as well. Would have been good to get the Alexa model with the added features. Can you purchase these as I am after an additional handset for upstairs. 

Thanks

[sammyh25]

Yes you can, as that was exactly what I did.

@imjolly Just to confirm you can import your contacts into your Smart Hub 2.  Each handset accesses the centrally stored contacts when you use the phonebook to look up a number.  I just exported all my contacts from Google Contacts and imported the VCF file into the Smart Hub 2 and we were done..