[denton-scratch]

> phone manufacturers (even Apple)

Oh, that kind of phone. Apple doesn't make "phones"; they make mobile devices.

We were speaking of fixed-location phone services. You don't need a mobile device to do fixed-location telephony; my VOIP-phone is made by Gigaset. It doesn't do iMessage/Face-whatsit, but neither do I.

I'm usually at home; I wouldn't need a mobile device, except that some commercial and government services refuse to believe I exist unless I can spit out a mobile number. I don't carry my device with me; it lives on my desk at home.

In terms of standard voice telephony, my Gigaset phone works better (and is much cheaper to use) than my mobile device. And the battery never goes flat.

[Nextgrid]

The problem with a non-iMessage/FaceTime capable phone is that you sacrifice confidentiality and quality. Unless both sides are a good VoIP provider that interconnects with others over IP (which would ideally pass through RTP as-is and allow both sides to negotiate a good codec like Opus) - which is unlikely among the non-technical crowd - you're stuck with a fairly narrowband codec, where as FaceTime is something everyone has (and Android has its own options, including cross-platform ones).