The Verizon Hub is more than just a home phone, it lives up to its name. (Image Courtesy: Verizon)

The Verizon Hub does something that I haven’t seen in a home phone before, it makes me want one.  Its execution is wonderful, it does everything that I’d want in a home phone and more.

At first glance, the Hub’s touchscreen and handset looks sleek.  Looking at it again and again over the last few weeks, my first impressions haven’t changed.

The setup is truly an amazingly easy thing to do, even if you have a wireless network that’s normally hidden.  I was able to target my network, input the password and start talking quickly after that.

The touchscreen provides your gateway to everything you need to do.  On its home screen are four native widgets: time, weather, calling features and messages.

The widgets are feature rich.  The time widget can be expanded to show you the calendar.  Clicking into the calendar takes you to your event list.  Events can be titled and dated, then on top of that the Hub will send you and specified recipients a reminder when the event is supposed to take place.  You can set the reminder to warn in intervals of time from 5 minutes to two weeks.  Your recipients can be selected from your contacts.  The calendar is definitely not what I’d expect out of an ordinary home phone, but the Hub is anything but ordinary.

The weather widget gives you everything that a ‘normal’ person would want, that is to say the temperature, the expected high and low, and the chance of precipitation.  It also supplies what Storm Team 8 would like, your dew point, humidity percentage and the direction and speed of the wind.  The weather widget can be expanded to a five day forecast.  It also supports multiple locations.  You can set your home location, which is the one that will come up with the Hub is in screensaver mode.

The message module lists your missed calls, voicemails and text messages.  That’s right, this home phone does text messaging.  When you want to send a message (to Verizon customers only at this point, bummer) it brings up a list of prewritten quick texts, or you can type out your own and the touchscreen turns into a QWERTY keyboard.  You can also send attachments (pictures you’ve added to the hub, which I’ll get to in a moment).

The calling features widget is pretty nice as well.  There are two quick buttons to set the Hub to Do Not Disturb or Call Forwarding modes.  In Do Not Disturb mode, it’s pretty self-explanatory, except you can also set up numbers that the Hub will still allow through.  Additionally, you can manage a Do Not Disturb schedule and set recurring or one-time events.  So if you don’t want your phone to ring after 9:00pm until you get up in the morning at 7:00am, then you can do that.  Or if you’re having guests over for the entire day, go ahead and set it for 8 hours.  You’ll be notified if you missed anything when your guests leave.  Call Forwarding is also pretty nice, in that you can set up multiple numbers on your forward list and then change which one you want it sent to.  Unfortunately, there’s no schedule for Call Forwarding, that’d be nice.  I’d also love if the Hub could recognize your cell phone, and automatically forward calls when it senses your phone isn’t in the house, but I don’t think we’re there yet.

The home screen also has a Wi-Fi rating on it, letting you know the strength of your signal.  My signal was 100% when the Hub was sitting next to the router, but less than 100% when upstairs.  The call strength was not noticeably affected by a less than 100% signal, though I would presume that if you had it quite a ways a way you could see some degredation.

You can set your home screen to have different background images as well, but I was okay with the stock palm tree sunset landscape because it made me feel warmer.

So the home screen is pretty busy, but you want to know if it’s still a phone.  Yeah, and a pretty good one. Call quality is superb, and because it’s connected through Wi-Fi your calls are digital.  Plus, like I said before, the Hub isn’t going to tax your internet connection.

You can add handsets to the Hub that it auto recognizes when you drop the handset into the cradle.   The handsets can be set on their respective charging docks anywhere in the house; they act just like you’d expect a cordless phone to act.  Except the handsets talk with the Hub (as an intercom, but there’s more).  Any call you make on the Hub, or a handset, registers with the other one.  The Hub also remembers your calls, so if you dialed a number on the upstairs phone and you just can’t remember it of the top of your head, pull it up on the recently dialed list.  You can access it on the Hub or on any of the Handsets.  You can delete all your calls and start with a fresh slate, but you have to separately delete them on the Hub and any handsets you wish.

The contacts list does more than I’ve seen on my current cell phone.  You can sort by group, with the defaults being Family, Friends, Other and Work.  Of course, you can modify any of those or create new ones altogether.  Sorting by contacts shows you only the list you want to see, or you set it back to all.

Inside the features section of the phone you can also setup additional calling features.  You can block calls, choose ‘all anonymous calls’ or block specific numbers.  You can manage the block list too, and delete numbers if you dropped the restraining order.

My favorite calling feature was the Simultaneous Ring option.  It lets you set up to receive 3 numbers at the same time, in addition to the Hub, when you get a call.  Definitely a nice feature if you’re away from the home, but one that could have been expanded upon.  There’s no calendar integration, so you can’t tell it to ring your cell phone at specific times, you can only turn it on and off.

The Hub also has a backup number that it will call if there’s a service interruption.  So if your power goes out, and your broadband connection along with it, no worries you can assign a backup number.  If you don’t, all the calls will go to voicemail.  You can also block caller ID (meaning people you call won’t know it’s your number) and block international calls from being made.  There’s also your traditional call waiting.

Being connected to the internet also has its advantages for the home phone when wanting to find a particular place.  The Hub’s directory kind of wowed me.  You start with browsing by category.  I chose restaurants because everyone loves to eat.  It gives you options from sandwiches and pizza, to Mexican, Italian and Chinese restaurants.  I wasn’t hungry for dinner, so I went with another option and selected bars (Oberon did just get released on the 30th).  I had previously punched in my home address, so the Hub spits out all of the bar listings in the area.  It even recognized the brewery that’s right across the street from me, though I’ve never been there.  I chose a spot in Grand Rapids, the Hopcat.  Now, if I’d never been to the bar before, I could have the Hub send turn by turn directions to my cell phone (provided I had the Verizon Navigator, which I don’t so it’s good I chose a bar I knew).

The directory also works for works for entertainment, stores, travel, medical, services and automotive.  Essentially if you want to find something the Hub will be able to help you out.

It’s particularly helpful if you want to go to the movies too.  If you select the movies option from the menu, the Hub gives you a list of what’s playing now, what’s opening this week and what’s coming soon.  Select a movie and it will give you some info, let you check out show times or even play the trailers from the movie.  That’s right, the Hub will play the movie trailer directly on the device.  For reference, there were four Watchmen trailers.  The showtimes populate based on your zip code, but you can modify it if you’re going to the movies somewhere else.

On top of playing movie trailers, the Hub also has V Cast.  You can select from News & Sports, Entertainment, Food & Dining and Lifestyle.  I selected Sports and had dozens of ESPN and Fox Sports video clips to choose from.  In the News category, there’s ABC, NBC, Time.com, the Today Show and CNN (sadly, no 24 Hour News 8).  The video lists are pretty encompassing for the day’s events.

If you’re in a major metroplitan area, the Hub will even fill you in with a Traffic Report.  Sadly, Grand Rapids is not major enough.  However, I was able to get updates on Detroit and Chicago that let me know about major delays and construction.  A pretty neat feature, even if not immediately applicable for the metro Grand Rapids area.

One of the coolest features is suited for parents and is Verizon only.  It’s called Chaperone.  Through Chaperone you can ‘easily locate a family member’s cell phone in real time, any time.’  All that you have to do is log in with the parent cell phone number and password and it gives you access to where the connected devices are.  While it may seem a bit over the top to some, I can definitely see how as a parent it’d be nice to know when a child is not where they’ve said they’re going to be.  Additionally, the Chaperone will let you know when your kids arrive and leave a designated ‘Child Zone.’  You have to add the service though, and it costs $10 a month, but interesting nonetheless.

There’s also the Verizon Relay option available.  I didn’t get a chance to use it much, but essentially it acts as a message board.  You can add Verizon wireless phones to it, receive text, picture and video messages that will be shown on the Hub.  A nice feature, but again, one for Verizon customers only.

The Hub comes with a stylus that sits atop the main unit, but I didn’t really use it because my fingers were able to hit everything with nary a problem.

The Hub will never turn off as long as its connected to the wall outlet.  That goes for the screen too.  The screen has a screensaver that you can set to 5, 10 or 30 minutes.  You can also have it automatically dim, but it will never turn off completely.  That’s kind of nice because you don’t have to touch it to see the time or the weather (which is what’s on the screensaver).  Settings are fairly straightforward.  You can set ring, system, media and speakerphone volume.  You can also change the ringer, and seeing as they’re basic .mp3 files, I’m pretty sure that means you could have it use one of the .mp3s you already have.

The Hub also has a pair of USB ports, one on the back and one on the front.  I found them useful for plugging my mobile phone into to charge.

Has my praise of the Hub been exhaustive enough?  I like to think so.  I honestly wish I didn’t have to give this thing back, because it’s changed the way I’ve thought of the home phone.

To me, the home phone was something I disconnected before going to college and haven’t missed.  Now, it’s something completely different.  Using the Hub makes me want one, but there are some caveats.

Number one, I haven’t used a home phone in so long I had to force myself to use it, instead of my cell phone.  Number two, the Hub plays nice with competing wireless carriers but is definitely intended to be used with its ilk. Number three, its monthly price is competitive ($34.99/mo for the Hub with Digital Voice), but its buy-in price is $200 (after rebate with a 2-year contract).

The Hub is an amazing device, you can try one out in Verizon wireless stores if you’re interested.

For questions, hit the comments section, message me on Twitter or shoot me an email at matt(dot)schuler(at)woodtv(dot)com.