Weird issue with BT Advanced Phone with Alexa

[PeteL71]

Digital Voice has been great for us so far but we had a weird issue on Sunday with our Advanced Phone with Alexa.  

Phone rang (we have two handsets, one downstairs and one upstairs.)  My wife went to answer the phone downstairs as the caller ID said it was her mum.  As soon as she pressed the green button the phone turned itself off (power symbol displayed on the screen, restarted, screen said "registering with hub") and the phone upstairs carried on ringing.  A message was left, so we pressed the green voicemail button, the phone started to dial the voicemail number, and after the first couple of beeps of the number being dialled the phone restarted again.  It did this every time we tried to access the voicemail.  The phone had been standing in its cradle all day and the battery was fully charged.

Went upstairs to try the other handset.  Pressed the green voicemail button and that one also rebooted, same behaviour, so it wasn't an issue with the handset downstairs such as faulty batteries.  As a test, I factory reset the handset from downstairs and as it was pairing with the hub again it displayed a message saying the battery was low and turned itself off.  Again, the handset had been in its cradle all day, and they're only a few months old, so I doubt it's a battery issue especially as both exhibited the same rebooting behaviour.

I did manage to listen to the message but could only play it by putting the phone into the cradle and pressing the voicemail button while the phone was standing up.  If it wasn't in the cradle the handset restarted.

Anyone else had this?  Messages we've received in the past haven't caused this, so hopefully it was a one off.

[jac_95]

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[Keith_Beddoe]

@PeteL71 

Based on other similar reports, it appears that the batteries supplied with those phones are no good, and replacing them with good quality replacements seems to be the only option. The indication of full charge does not show that they are capable of providing the current required.

You can prove this by temporarily swapping the batteries to ordinary alkaline ones, but do not put it on the charger base.

If the phone works with alkaline batteries, then it proves the rechargeable ones are no good, and need replacing.

[rbz5416]

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[PeteL71]

Hi Keith.  Seemed odd that both of the phones started rebooting when we tried playing the message though - I could understand it if one of them had an issue, but for both of them to do the same thing seemed a bit weird.  I'll get some better rechargeable batteries later in the week and see if they fare better.  Thanks.

[Keith_Beddoe]

The batteries seem incapable of providing the extra current needed while playing a message.

I would try alkaline batteries first, to prove whether that is the issue.

Also, I don`t think the charging base is correctly managing the batteries, possibly overcharging them, which would reduce their life.

[SRB]

Interesting, in that this was also a problem on some of the handsets supplied with the original Hub 2. Handsets looked fully charged and good to go, yet died very quickly, if say, you hit the loud speaker button. Replacing the supplied batteries solved the issue.

[Keith_Beddoe]

@SRB 

Agreed, I had quite a few of those, and the batteries were useless. Would not be surprised if the internal hardware is the same or very similar. If anyone still had one of these old Hub Phones, I wonder if they would work with the SH2?

[Les-Gibson]

Check the manufacturing date stamped on the batteries, I got my phone in 2021 and the batteries were stamped 2007. Yes you read that right, the batteries were 14 years old

[Keith_Beddoe]

Probably left over from the old hub phones.