We got new phones for the house last year, since we started using caller id, and I picked up a dual-handset (two phones, one home base, one recharging station) from Uniden fairly cheap. One still works, but a few months back we noticed that one of the phones seemed to not be transmitting sound when you talked, so people would call, we could hear them, and the could not hear us, they’d get frustrated and hang up. (It was actually sort of amusing… “Hello? Hello? Ok, I’m hanging up now!”)
I eventually opened up the broken one and found the microphone had come loose, and since it did not seem like a fun soldering job, it was time for new phones. (I don’t want to knock Uniden, as the phones did take a good deal of abuse in the form of falling, dropping, etc. and our old Uniden phone is like 10 years old and it still works ok.)
Nonetheless, I had heard good things about Panasonic phones, and picked up the aptly named Panasonic KX-TG2344B. Again a dual-handset model, but this time, it’s got neat features like intercom between the handsets and the base station, speakerphone, (easy to use) phonebook, and I’m sure other stuff…
Let’s hope these last a while…