At the recent ITEXPO West 2011 in Austin, Texas, TMC’s Erik Linask (News - Alert) had the opportunity to speak with Grandstream Networks’ Luis Grados, the Senior VoIP Surveillance Engineer.

He brought along their new phone, the GXV3175, a snazzy-looking touchscreen phone this reporter wouldn’t mind having. It has multiple screens, like other Grandstream products, and comes with the company’s usual commitment to quality. Unfortunately it does allow multiple screens, including Facebook (News - Alert), which would cut into the productivity around here.

During the demonstration the phone displayed the temperature in Austin -- a balmy 103 degrees. We hear Austin’s a lovely city, but we’ll visit in the spring.

Grandstream is featuring the integration of phones with video cameras these days as well. Grados explained that with the two-way audio “it’s just like dialing another extension,” and makes it much easier to monitor remote business operations.

Linask mentioned that there are those who say the desk phone is on its way out of the office today. Grados replied that well, “look around. Everything is media now. Everybody wants Twitter (News - Alert), everybody wants Facebook, and you can have it on your phone. It will be another screen you have, with your PC and tablet.”

In fact, Grados said, it’s the sort of thing, a multimedia desk phone, you don’t realize how convenient and useful it is until you have one. You can see people who are at the door of your building using the phone, he said, adding a layer of security, or use it to check the parking garage before you go down to your car. “It’s going to be around,” Grados said.

A recent review of the GXV3175 called it “an ambitious piece of hardware,” according to OnSip, “because it sort of has to be.”

According to the reviewer, the IP multimedia phone is “paving the way for new products built on the idea that multimedia will become a bigger part of the business communications, that video calling will become the norm and not just a novelty, that touch screen user interfaces will become the next big thing in the workplace, and that easier, seamless access to social media networks will soon become a requested feature for business hardware solutions.”