Gadgetory

hi this is Steve skarlatos with pocketnow.com we're going to take a hardware tour of the verizon hub on the front you've got the 7-inch touch panel we've got a mute button then a volume up and down the cradle for the wireless handset and on the right-hand side of the unit we have a speaker on the top of the unit we've got a little area to place the stylus for the touch screen and in the back of the unit that's where we plug in the stand it's a little big for the size of the unit and it makes a little awkward to place on a desk just a lot of width that I think was unnecessary in the design on the side you've got the headset jack and then a USB connection which I couldn't find any information in the manual about there's actually another USB connection on the back of the unit same no information in the manual then we've got the ethernet jack and the power supply but I'm going to use it as a wireless unit since wireless is built into to the verizon hub on the handset it's just your typical wireless handset it's got a headphone jack on the side or a headset jack i should say and volume controls up and down powered on right now it's out of range because the base is not plugged in but we're going to go ahead and plug in the base and go through the initialization process now I've cut down on the time of the initialization process just to give you a brief overview but it's a wizard that essentially walks you through you get the pic whether you want a wired or Wireless a connection I picked wireless and then it searches for the wireless access points that are near I pick up the one closest to me and then mine is secured so I put in the key but we'll skip that and once it connects to the wireless access point or to the network it checks and does an update once it's updated then you go through the reboot process so this is the initial startup and this takes about 15 minutes to complete the boot process is a little slow it takes about two to three minutes to boot the unit up from a cold start so the first time you boot up the unit you get a message about 911 service this uses a 911 which is different than regular 911 since it uses a relay Center to get the information over to the 911 there's also a backup number feature so that if your broadband connection or the voice over IP system goes down all calls are automatically routed to the backup number which should usually be your cell phone once the unit is booted it always comes up to the home screen the home screen has your time which is automatically synchronized the weather which you select the city you want to go to and you have the option of having multiple cities so you can scroll through then your message indicators which show you if you have any voicemails or calls that you didn't answer as well as access to the phone's functionality whether you want do not disturb another functionality will dig into all this functionality in some future videos that I'm going to do regarding all the software available on the verizon hub and figure out how this unit integrates with verizon's wireless phones