My wife and I love our G1s. The reception is great...except in our apartment. In Chicagoland, the apartment buildings are tall and close together, making it difficult to get a strong signal. Fortunately, we have a room with a window overlooking the courtyard. Reception there is great. But neither of us wanted to be stuck in that room, sitting by that window. So, now, our G1s sit by that window, charging, while we walk around with a standard handset anywhere in our apartment, with our cell phones being routed through to and from that handset. Here's how.

I'd done a lot of research on this before making my purchase. It seemed as if at this point in time, the bluetooth capabilities on the G1 were still limited to audio (for headsets and speakers only). However, we found a bluetooth cell phone dock by GE at OfficeMax on clearance. Usually $59.99, it was marked down to $39.99. We thought about it, deciding to test our phone usage as if we were cell phone only. A month later, we knew we were well within our plan limits and could drop our VOIP provider. We went back to the store and lo and behold, it was still there, still on clearance.

If you can find one of these, know that a G1 with all the latest updates as of August 13, 2009 will work with it and do so quite well.

The model is the 28127 Series DECT6.0 Cordless Handset Speakerphone. It is available from GE here fourth from the bottom as of this writing. Additionally, I have seen them on ebay used for $34.99 plus shipping.

There are other models I see GE sells that may also work, but this is the one we bought and is the one we know works. Here's the set up.

  1. Ensure that bluetooth is enabled and turned on on your G1.
  2. Press and hold the large connect button for either cell phone 1 or 2. At my home, I'm 1 and my wife is 2.
  3. When it flashes, release the button and check your bluetooth settings on your phone. A device called CELL FUSION should appear under devices you can connect to. Select this device.
  4. That's pretty much it. I didn't have to put in a PIN, but if you do, the User Guide will tell you what it is. In ours, it says it is 0000.


Now, you treat your handset like a cell phone. Dial the number, press CELL and your call will go through. If you have 2 phones paired with the fusion, after entering the number and pressing CELL, you'll be presented with a menu to select which phone you wish to use. The caller ID on the other person's phone (the one you're calling) will show your cell number. Think of the Fusion as a simple interface for your phone. Whatever you do with it will appear as though you did it with your G1 because in essence, you did. You just didn't use the touchscreen; you used a bluetooth connected keypad with a speaker and microphone.

Additionally, when a call comes in, not only will you get the Caller ID information, the display will also tell you which of the two cell phones it is for using the device name set in your bluetooth preferences when you paired. Trust me on this, change the name of your device before you pair them, otherwise if you have two, you'll have two "T-Mobile G1."

So far, everything else the User's Guide says we can do, we can do. This included routing our landline through it as well.

So, to all like me who asked the question of whether the bluetooth on the G1 supported a Fusion Cell Dock, the answer is yes...at least this model.

There's more you can do, but you'll find that out yourself when you get the device.

Hope this helps.