Review of the Yealink T48G Skype for Business Edition

The Yealink T48G is the flagship phone for Skype for Business from Yealink.  I have had one sitting on my desk now for a couple of weeks and wanted to give my honest review of what I like and what I don't like about this phone.

The interface of the phone is similar but not quite the same as their advertising slick above.  When mine arrived it had their default sip firmware on it, not the firmware for Skype for Business.  It was simple enough to download and flash.  The main issue I experienced is one that is almost a deal breaker for the phone.  It requires a license file from Yealink which requires you to fill out a pdf form and email it to them for each phone.  The license is tied to the mac address.  This would be a giant pain if I were installing 500 of these, or didn't keep a few spaces already licensed as replacements in a typical deployment.

My screens look like this.

As you can see they are not the rounded type of icons from the company advertising slick, but still have a Lync/Skype for Business feel.  

The web interface

The web interface for admin is outstanding, it is one of the best I have ever used.  Yealink also allows for config file provisioning which offers them the ability to scale nicely, minus the license hurdle.  In 2 weeks of use I had only 1 call issue where the phone put a call on hold and was not able to resume it, so out of hundreds of calls I didn't think too much of it.  The most troubling issue I have with the phone, is it seems to unregister itself each night and I either have to use BTOE to sign back into it, or the web interface to do the same.

Summary

Pros

• Large screen
• Nice weight
• Decent buttons and handset
• Touch screen
• Great web interface
• On screen keyboard
• Reliable call handling
• BTOE that uses IP rather than hardware connection
• Sounds good to both parties in a call

Cons

• Requires license file which took 48 hours to get
• Seems to unregister frequently in my environment
• BTOE doesn't seem to work as a windows audio device like the old CX600
• Interface is not the same as advertised
• Conference calls could show participants or some usable data
• No calendar view
• No prompt to join meeting
• 3 steps to dial contact from group

Overall I would rate the Yealink T48G with Skype for Business firmware a 2.5/5.0 stars.  Hopefully the firmware will continue to improve and check off some of the items on my cons list.

Doug Routledge, C# Lync, Skype for Business, SQL, Exchange, UC Developer  BridgeOC Twitter - @droutledge @ndbridge