Dual-SIM phones.

Mobile phones are ubiquitous so have become the dual SIM phones lately. There are many cheap, Chinese dual SIM phones in the market selling for rock bottom prices, with features which major phone manufacturers don't give on their phones, they are selling like hot cakes. This blog post is also about disadvantages of buying these Chinese fake phones and why dual SIM phones are popular, especially, in India and not that popular in other markets.

Many prefer dual-SIM phones so that they don't need to carry two phones for their work, with dual-SIM phones one can have both work and personal numbers on a same phone, which sounds more productive. In recent times even major mobile manufacturers have joined the dual-SIM band-wagon, they have realised the importance and demand, though lately, of dual SIM phones to give these Chinese ones a run for their money. On any day I would go for a dual SIM phone by a major, reputed manufacturer instead of buying these Chinese ones.

Semi-active and active Dual SIM phones: One should be careful with this, few dual SIM phones are semi-active means they can take two SIM cards but only one will be active at a time, you need to manually switch to make calls with the other SIM card. On the other hand you have proper dual SIM phones where both SIM cards are active at a time.

Fake and China-made dual SIM phones: Well they are in hands of everyone from a daily-wage worker to professionals. The have dual SIM(even three SIM cards support), touch screen/QWERTY, dual/three/four speakers some advertise they have built-in woofer, TV antenna, memory card support, Megapixel level camera and they can make calls, all for a bargain price, now what on earth will stop anyone buying it.

These phones have note-worthy drawbacks, they don't have IMEI number, no warranty, no manufacture support, bad quality components/accessories etc. Setting up GPRS on these phones is not simple and straight forward unlike phones from major manufacturers. All they can do is make and receive calls, with not so good call quality, output songs loudly through their woofer(a gimmick really) enabled speakers which aren't pleasant to ears. These phones are good, if not OK, for a normob but for people who like to use their phones more than for calling they are not capable, they simply don't follow any standards.

Dual SIM phones popularity: India and other Asian countries are the market for dual SIM phones. One reason is how service providers operate here, especially in India. In India you can buy a phone from Nokia/Samsung/LG or which ever manufacturer and get a prepaid/postpaid connection from Airtel/Vodafone/Aircel etc. You are not, in anyway, locked into a contract or constrained by a service provider or manufacturer. If you don't like one you can switch to another over-night. So buying a dual SIM phone you can have two connections from different network service provider and it's uber productive.

That's not the case in Europe, U.S.A and other countries, there the service providers are the ones who sell phones and they tie you up for a contract for atleast two years with them, charging a fee on a monthly basis for calls, messages and mobile internet for that two years period, while giving the phone free of cost. The actual phone cost is subsidised by the network providers. This sort of subsidised-contract-based phones won't work for dual SIM phones because a service provider can't give two connections for a contract or allow you to use the phone, bought from him, to work with another network provider in the country. This makes dual SIM phones a less feasible option for mobile network providers in developed countries.

Dual-SIM phones to consider buying: Micromax and Samsung have been dishing out dual-SIM phones in various price range, Micromax has dual-SIM functionality in all of their phones. Nokia recently launched two dual-SIM phones C2-00 and X1-01, just to clear things up Nokia C2-00 is a dual-SIM phone whereas C2-01 isn’t dual_SIM phone, be careful before you buy it. Nokia’s naming convention is a shambolic mess, well that’s a topic for another day. Currently X1-01 isn’t listed in Nokia-India website I’m sure both  will be available in the stores in few days.

I’ll give a short cover-up on Nokia C2-00 and X1-01 dual-SIM phones. Both are active dual-SIM phones.

My pick would be Nokia C2-00 for its design and features, good thing is you get a industry standard microUSB connector even on the low-end models which other manufacturers don’t give for the same price. C2-00 support memory cards(microSDHC) upto 32Gb, hot-swappable. One other unique feature of C2-00 is a hot-swappable SIM card slot located outside the phone, this comes handy when you want for a quick SIM card change without switching off the phone and pulling the battery out.

Nokia X1-01 is a budget music-centric phone with dual-SIM support. Nokia says X1-01 as the clearest and loudest speaker on phones Nokia has ever produced, so literally it is a pocket sized boom-box. X1-01 supports memory cards upto 16Gb and you get a standard 3.5mm headset jack where you can plug any standard headphones other than Nokia ones. There is no information about the pricing yet on the Nokia-India website.

Well I'll wind-up this post with that, If there is anything I've missed out about dual-SIM phones/functionality please comment about it. Thanks.