Dual SIM Smartphones

Bristolian

Bristolian

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Howdy folks,

I'm after some advice and assistance if you don't mind. I've finally gotten fed up of carrying two phones - personal and business - so have begun thinking about going dual SIM as a solution. Now, I've never owned or known anyone that's owned one before so was wondering what the concensus of opintion/experience on here is.

The one I've been looking at is available on Amazon here - http://SPAM/pmawms9 - and it gets a good score of 4+/5 but there are some negative reviews. I guess being a pessimist (and Land Rover owner) I give more weight to the bad reports than the good ones.

Does anyone have any experience of dual SIM phones or comments/suggestions/recommendations that I might find useful in making my decision? Paying £300-400 for a phone is a non-starter by the way :nono:
 
I'll leave to others to comment on the technical points, but I'd be pretty concerned about the very poor reports on the Amazon page. OK, there are a lot of positive ones, but 18 out of 130 gave the device one or two stars, which is a significant percentage; and the complaints about receiving a different product from the one advertised, short battery life and failures would worry me.

Perhaps it's just me, and my innate suspicion that I'd get a duff one if a fair number of them are bad out of the box!
 
Can you forward one to the other instead? I used to use a dual sim adapter but you still have to switch between them so it's more of a faff than 2 phones a lot of the time.

Some mobile providers offer dual numbers I think. That's worth looking into.
 
MartynK said:
I'll leave to others to comment on the technical points, but I'd be pretty concerned about the very poor reports on the Amazon page. OK, there are a lot of positive ones, but 18 out of 130 gave the device one or two stars, which is a significant percentage; and the complaints about receiving a different product from the one advertised, short battery life and failures would worry me.

Perhaps it's just me, and my innate suspicion that I'd get a duff one if a fair number of them are bad out of the box!
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Your comments echo my thoughts/doubts. Are we being overly cautious?
 
srichards said:
Can you forward one to the other instead? I used to use a dual sim adapter but you still have to switch between them so it's more of a faff than 2 phones a lot of the time.

Some mobile providers offer dual numbers I think. That's worth looking into.
Click to expand...

I'm currently forwarding my personal calls to the business phone but my accountant is unhappy that this may lead to troubles with HMRC if they think I'm being less than truthful about which calls are personal and which are business.

I wasn't aware of this but I've just spoken to my telcom provider (Virgin Media) and they can only do this if I have two new numbers, which I don't really want to do as too many people already have my existing ones and I'd have to get business cards and stationary re-printed.

Thanks for the input :)
 
My dad bought a samsung galaxy s duos and he is happy with it. You get call from both and you decide which sim you want to use to make a call.

Not a bad phone for the price.
 
TBH, I would give the people who you want to be able to contact you during work time your work mobile and make the rest wait for you to be able to return their call. If you feel the need, leave the private phone in the van so you can check it more often. Not an ideal solution but should keep HMR&C and your accountant happy.
 
Hope you're aware that on some of these phones only one sim supports 3G the other is usually 2G only

srichards said:
I used to use a dual sim adapter but you still have to switch between them so it's more of a faff than 2 phones a lot of the time.
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The whole point of dual sim phones is you don't need to switch between the sims - both sims are active at the same time and you can take calls on both lines at the same time. It's a completely different thing to dual sim adaptors.
 
My mate bought one of these duel sim phones from Amazon, had a lot of trouble language wise because although you can choose English as your chosen language the apps were in Chinese.
 
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sep9001 said:
My dad bought a samsung galaxy s duos and he is happy with it. You get call from both and you decide which sim you want to use to make a call.

Not a bad phone for the price.
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Yeah, I've been looking at that phone and think it's a bit under-specified for the £150 price tag. Not ruled it out yet though :)
 
Steep said:
No-name Chinese phones...run away..run...
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The Chinese are more than capable of making small electronic devices - ask Nikon and Canon - and have established quite a "tradition" of reverse engineering. Just because something's made in China doesn't make it intrinsically bad.

Some alternatives http://www.phonearena.com/news/The-best-new-dual-SIM-Android-phones_id43343
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Thanks for the link. Some interesting stuff on there ... mostly well beyond what I'm prepared to pay :thumbs:
 
Darkroom said:
Hope you're aware that on some of these phones only one sim supports 3G the other is usually 2G only
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Yes mate, I've seen that. As the work stuff will be purely phone calls and texts 2G will be good enough. I think the existing business phone is only 2G anyway - it's getting on a bit :eek:
 
The Greek said:
My mate bought one of these duel sim phones from Amazon, had a lot of trouble language wise because although you can choose English as your chosen language the apps were in Chinese.
Click to expand...

That would be a bit awkward :gag:
 
Darkroom said:
Hope you're aware that on some of these phones only one sim supports 3G the other is usually 2G only



The whole point of dual sim phones is you don't need to switch between the sims - both sims are active at the same time and you can take calls on both lines at the same time. It's a completely different thing to dual sim adaptors.
Click to expand...


The OP said they didn't have several hundred to spend so I assumed the dual sim phones would be out of their budget... but looks like they aren't if you can get one for £150 ish :thumbs:
 
srichards said:
The OP said they didn't have several hundred to spend so I assumed the dual sim phones would be out of their budget... but looks like they aren't if you can get one for £150 ish :thumbs:
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Dual sim is what I'm really after. Guess I should have said in my op that the most I want to spend is £150.
 
Bristolian said:
The Chinese are more than capable of making small electronic devices - ask Nikon and Canon - and have established quite a "tradition" of reverse engineering. Just because something's made in China doesn't make it intrinsically bad.
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True but - from experience with a dual sim phone - just because they are capable of making a good product doesn't mean they do, especially with non branded kit. Poor quality control during the build process and the Chinese habit of faking things like memory/pixel count/software versions/battery specs mean the final product can fall far short of expectations. Not to mention all the non removable Chinese bloatware that you will find, if you're lucky you will get a phone that someone else has already hacked and you can load up a different rom.
 
An alternative suggestion.
Get a VOIP phone at home and set up your mobile as an extension. Divert calls to it, when your home phone gets a call you'll get a frr diversion to your mobile and yourobile will show your home phone as the source.
Foolproof and very cheap
 
Garry Edwards said:
An alternative suggestion.
Get a VOIP phone at home and set up your mobile as an extension. Divert calls to it, when your home phone gets a call you'll get a frr diversion to your mobile and yourobile will show your home phone as the source.
Foolproof and very cheap
Click to expand...

Check on how much you are charged for the calls picked up on the mobile though as some of the VOIP providers will charge if you picked up the call from the mobile as it is technically forwarded but not if you pick it up on the landline.

It would cost you 25p for every single call you'd get via vonage as they've hiked their charges to ridiculous levels recently.
 
i think your accountant is being overly cautious personally.

at work we get an itemised bill for our company phones every month and we have to mark which are the personal calls and submit them to our accounts dept. never had any bother in the nearly 8 years ive been here.
 
srichards said:
Check on how much you are charged for the calls picked up on the mobile though as some of the VOIP providers will charge if you picked up the call from the mobile as it is technically forwarded but not if you pick it up on the landline.

It would cost you 25p for every single call you'd get via vonage as they've hiked their charges to ridiculous levels recently.
Click to expand...
With ours, 8p per minute if it's diverted to the mobile, nothing if the mobile is set up as an extension.
 
Garry Edwards said:
With ours, 8p per minute if it's diverted to the mobile, nothing if the mobile is set up as an extension.
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Which one are you with?

I'm thinking of switching from vonage if I can take my number with me.
 
Garry Edwards said:
An alternative suggestion.
Get a VOIP phone at home and set up your mobile as an extension. Divert calls to it, when your home phone gets a call you'll get a frr diversion to your mobile and yourobile will show your home phone as the source.
Foolproof and very cheap
Click to expand...

Hmm, interesting idea. I'll have to give that some thought although it would mean giving all my contacts a new phone number.
 
Bristolian said:
Hmm, interesting idea. I'll have to give that some thought although it would mean giving all my contacts a new phone number.
Click to expand...

If the home phone is always shown as the source then it makes it tricky to call someone back if they don't leave their number... ideally you'd only want a divert system which had some kind of pass through of the CLI. I'm sure the old orange everyphone divert system used to do that.
 
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