The phone arrived just before mid-day as promised. The packaging was
excellent, the outer box being over twice the length of the display box
containing the gubbins. Not a dent or a crease to be seen, so kudos to
Sipgate and UPS. Just to knock the Teutonic efficiency a little bit
though - my phone number was displayed on the outer box for the benefit of
the courier, but it was in international format with a '49' country code.
("Nein, nein, zer iz no Herr Cybuerke at zis nummer".)

According to the manual, the battery should go on charge for 8 hours, but
inside the box was a Sipgate flyer forbidding me to use the phone until a 24
hour charge had been applied. Not a big problem in itself, but I'm
wondering whether the reports of the battery being rubbish might have
something to do with this? There is no charging cradle, just a usb lead
that plugs into a euro mains plug (that in turn plugs into a UK mains plug)
at one end, and a baby usb connector that goes into the phone itself. The
euro plug felt very hot after a few minutes, so I'll be checking on that.
I've parked a smoke detector and a dry powder extinguisher nearby just in
case. (Wotdya mean, paranoid?)

One more thing. I'm not yet ready to put in a SIM card, but I can't get
past the WAP configuration part of the menu, so until a sim is inserted, it
looks as though I won't be able to configure the voip part. I'll see if I
can scrounge one to try.