Review on Vtech I5871 Expandable Digital Answering by Emily Myers

Many (most!) of the complaints in these reviews are related to the endless "database not found" loop and "sudden static/dropped calls". Turns out it has to do with dead batteries. Replace the battery, charge it overnight and these problems will go away! I don't know if they were actually crappy batteries, or if it was bad charging circuitry, or if they just didn't show up as dead in the OSD. Anyway, I decided not to buy the VTech replacement (permanently "unavailable" on their website, I wonder why?) and settled on the equivalent, the Energizer ER-P507. (They're both 3.6V, 800mAh, NiMH. At the time of writing, the Energizer was 20% more expensive.) They worked great on 2 out of 5 of my phones, which were starting to come off as described in these reviews. I have no opinion as to whether they live longer or die with more dignity, but I doubt it. Heck, they're probably all made in the same factory. Here's a test to run if you've bought a second phone (or more) for the base and one of them dies: Change the batteries. Voila, a "good" phone will suddenly show symptoms after a few uses, while a "bad" phone will work just fine. (I bet I know which phone you use more often.) True, the phone display really should show you % "new" charge, and a battery that's almost completely empty should never show 100%. People who wrote 1 star reviews and had almost new phones should get a free replacement. But the person who said they used the phone for 18 months and then started behaving strangely - but didn't want to buy new batteries for fear they would go to waste - just shot himself. Sole. After a year or two, it makes sense to buy a new battery. It's a shame the low-voltage symptoms are the same as transmission glitches, and it's a shame VTech didn't include better battery diagnostics. (Worse, they're ashamed that they don't have decent tech support people.) But these phones are slick enough to play around with these red herrings from time to time - if it weren't for the VTech 5808/5871, they would have I did it to spend $1,200 on Bang & Olufsen Beocom 2!