thanks for the info I have ordered one. At the moment I always carry 2 phone. I standard prepaid phone to initiate my own callback and than a phone using a um+ card to receive my own callback and to make calls.

Having 1 phone with dual sim will make things a lot easier for me.

when surfing around today i did notice some chineese phone, most were triband and some had the dual sim. But this one seemed to have a good value.

I wonder how long battery lasts. On I site it said:

Talk time :80-160 minutes

Standby time :80-160 hours

80 minutes seems very short, on the other hand there are 2 phones/sims active on 1 battery. So I am interested in baterry life

I have a chinese dual sim phone as well. It lasts for 3-5 days depending on the usage (mostly i only send SMS). The hardware inside is mostly the same, only the casing and software GUI are a bit different...

Chris

Funny - that's the calling strategy I plan to use when we travel overseas in early September: use a standard SIM to dial out and trigger the callback to my TravelSIM.

Can't really comment about stated run times, except to observe that various specs on this type of product tend to be wildly inflated (e.g. the camera resolution and mAH capacity of the batteries). I won't be doing a real talk time test until I go on the trip that this phone was really purchased for. My battery rundown test after 24h standby shows the slim battery at 3/4 bars and the fat battery still full scale - both without a real conditioning pass.

I should mention also that the setup menu lets you turn off either SIM instead of using both. The phone kinda "soft reboots" after you make such a change, so I assume the power consumption will be less as the radio circuits aren't working as much.

After another day playing with this phone I agree with the reviews on DealExtreme. It (and probably the very similar YEPO K630i) are very good performers for an almost-giveaway price. Build quality and quality control also surprisingly good. I'm sooooo glad that I didn't fork over the huge sum that GT was asking for their 2 SIM phone a couple of years back. This does more, at a fraction of the price.

I will assume that for outgoing calls on these dual-sim phones, you will actually have to choose which sim to use first. Or at least the prompt will popup once a call is initiated. Can someone that has one of these phones shed some light on how it handles outgoing calls?

If depends which SEND button you press to make the call.

If you press the green SEND button, it calls using SIM A.

If you press the left soft-key (above the SEND button) which also has a small "off-hook" symbol, it calls using SIM B.

Most phones simply have 2 dial buttons.
And when writing SMS it asks you "Send SIM1" and "Send SIM2"
veeery easy.

Chris

Received the phone yesterday from china. Dealextreme seems to work very well.

2 sims work but there are some small issues.

Choosing the network manual only seems to work for sim a and not sim b.
The keys are a bit on the small side.

Checking battery life the next days.

FM radio is nice but will i really use it ?
Camera and video and not worth mentioning, they suck.
Came with a build in 256 mb memory card for mp3's.
Just hook the phone to and pc usb port and it will start charing and become a modem, webcam, or storage devide.

Would like to modify the contact by software on pc but don't know how to do it.

But for the money the thing is good value.

Next step would be to have a smartphone which has callback software on it. This would allow you to set a number that triggers the callback and would answer the phone when called back and dial the number that you just typed into the phone.

Yes, my experience with DealExtreme has been consistently positive. It was
only the fact that a reliable dealer sold this phone that I took the
chance of ordering one in the first place.

Interesting observation on manual network selection. Sounds like a bug in
the firmware - assuming you only need manual network selection on one SIM
most of the time, I suppose you could work around it by choosing which SIM
to install as "A".

Ran into another weird bug with my TravelSIM. While callback works fine, I
used a USSD code to activate voice mail. The phone responded with the
expected "VOICE MAIL ACTIVATED" message, but then went into a "please
wait" hourglass screen that would not go away until I turned off the
power.

As you observe; the multimedia, FM radio, camera etc are really extras.
If someone is looking for an inexpensive, relatively solid phone that
really implements dual SIM technology, this one is a good choice.

battery life with the high cap battery.

Made a full charge overnight. Display shows 4 bars for full power. After 24 hours 2 bars are gone, 36 hours still 2 bars. In that time hardly any calls, max 20 minutes.
So I am wondering how long the battery will hold.

I still think the battery life is not too bad. Considering that it's doing double duty while in standby. Of course, I am assuming you have 2 sim cards in it and both sim cards are active.

I wonder what happens if one is talking on one sim, and another call comes in on the other sim. Probably just have to click on the other answer button, and that will probably hang up the other active call.

If you're not using Bluetooth, turn it off.

I will have to check what happens when a call comes in while talking on the other line.

As for battery life, for now it really sucks. Yesterday evening, which was around 40 hours after a full load the battery only showed 1 bar.

The battery said 4300 mAh which is a lot more than in a normal phone. Standby time of a normal phone without to much talking is around 6-8 days or more on some models.
So 3-4 days should be normal even on this phone.
I just put in the other battery so I will see what happens next.

Can you set the network search speed? On most Motorola phones setting it to anything higher than SLOW drains the battery within 24 hours.

no there is no such thing as network search speed. (in this phone)

Selection mode can be set manual / automatic.

The last days I was at home and both networks gave full signal, which means less battery consumption. So this should not be the problem. Bluetooth was turned off days ago.

i will check the next days, weeks as I will also be traveling the next 2 weeks.

That should only matter if you're in really borderline coverage. My RAZR battery life is really good normally, despite being on "continuous" network search speed, but if I'm out of coverage, it will drain in only a few hours. It's great when you're only briefly out of coverage, though, because it reacquires the network very fast.

A strategy I use when travelling is to carry a fully charged extra battery as insurance when I will be away from power sources. Since the V90+ comes with two batteries, it's a natural move.

Since getting into more esoteric phones for which nobody has made a standalone battery-only charger, I've used those little universal wall chargers with spring-loaded adjustable contacts that can adapt to almost any phone or PDA battery. There are lots of them on eBay for about 5 USD.

I think that's how they calculate the time, using 2 extra batteries will give you 4-5 days of standby time and using only 1 sim this will probably double so that's how they explain 8-10 days standy time.

I will be away the next 2 weeks so I will take the second battery and see how thing go.

I did notice now when chaning batteries that the call log, received, missed and so on was deleted when the battery was changed.

Many of the specs for these phones are wildly inflated. This is not limited to Chinese phones.
My Nokia E50 could only achieve the rated standby time when running in airplane mode :-)

Bought one of these (the SOHO V90+ on dealextreme) for my dad. He is always carrying 2 -3 phones, so thought this will come in handy. I will be taking it to him next month when I travel. In the mean time I am testing it out. Not a bad phone at all. It actually does have lots of features for it's price. Callback works well with yackie, UM+, and maxroam. No problems whatsoever.

Just came back from a 2 week trip from greece using this phone.

On the island signal was not always strong and battery life was limited to less than 2 days. When making calls 45 minutes, batterylife was down to 1 day.
Yes you have an extra battery you can use but all call logs are erased as soon as the battery is replaced/taken out.
The second problem was that on sim a I can select the network manually but on sim b this is not possible. In this cae I did want to change the network as signal was to bad for the automatically selected network.

The other problem was that I can sellect silent mode and go back to normal mode. It looked like when doing this on sim B silent mode still seemed to be active as the phone would not ring when a call came in.

After having used it now my conclusion it that for the price it offer some nice features but it does have some bigger problems and one can see that the software has not truely been developed and tested.

The most negative point although is battery life. This is just very poor. And when making calls for 1 or 2 hours the phone needs to be recharged every day. This makes me think about 10 years ago when stanbytime was 24 hours and calltime 1-2 hours.

Having 1 phone with 2 sims is very nice and handy but I am considering chaning back to carrying 2 phones and standby time is a lot longer.

Does the v90 use real Symbian? What about Nokia accessories? Will they work with this Nokia inspired phone?

Have never used a symbian phone, so I am not sure. I have a 3120 (S40 I think) and the interface is similar to it. Again, I am not sure if other nokia accesories will work. The charger is definitely not the same as my 3120s.

There are several threads (mostly questions actually) related to the phone forum here:

http://www.dealextreme.com/forums/Forums.dx/Forum.13014

No. The OS is no doubt proprietary and simply mimics the Nokia menu structure. The hardware too is proprietary; nothing that directly plugs into a Nokia phone will work on this (or most Chinese) models.

I just returned from a 10-day international trip with the V90+. It has performed very well. The only additional negative that I discovered is that the microphone has poor ambient noise immunity. Our first call was from the arrivals area of the airport and it was so noisy it was impossible for the person I was calling to distinguish my voice.

It's kinda cool watching two roaming different SIM cards (Mobal, TravelSIM) determine which carrier to use simultaneously. Sometimes they used the same one, sometimes not. The TravelSIM always chose the bargain carrier whose coverage in remote areas was not great. The Mobal (O2 UK) SIM always chose O2 or Vodafone and had great signal everywhere.

schuster was battery life did you get during your trip

I am currently using this phone in Nigeria with my yackie and UM+ sims in it. I am quite satisfied too. Same experience...sometimes they both show the same network and sometimes not. The battery life is quite good too. So far 2 - 3 days before it drops to 2 bars. It's for moderate use, since I also have a local sim in another phone for local calls.

thank for the info bossman, mine drops to 2 bars after 24 hours, this is consistent. When in remote area it's a bit less otherwise a bit more, but after 2 to 2.5 days, battery is dead.

This happened to both battries so they must be poor quality. I mailed dealextreme several times with a complaint but till today no response. Which is really sad.

The phone wasn't on all the time, so I'm just estimating based on the assumption that the battery meter is approximately linear.
I'd say about 4 days using the fat battery.

I just got my very own "Zoho" v90. My observations are based on just a couple of hours use. First, I don't love the sound of the speaker on the phone. I'm going to try it with a Bluetooth headset and see if that improves things.

Second, charging this thing up is interesting. The USB cable will plug upside very easily. Second, I'm not getting an indication that the battery is charging. I accidentally plugged the cable in upside down and fear that I may have screwed something up.

I think this isn't a bad phone, but whoever made it cut a couple of corners. A slightly better speaker and mike, couple with a slightly smaller/thinner size would be more impressive than a touch screen.

The other thing I noticed is that the clock does not automatically update from the SIMs

It is lacking somewhat in volume (paradoxical considering how deafeningly loud it can play music through the rear speakers) but nowhere nearly as bad as, say, my Nokia E61i. Certainly corners have been cut to make this cheap (notice the fake camera lens on the front?). I think the thickness is to accommodate the battery.

In plugging the USB cable you have to match the metal surfaces - the plug goes in so the shielded side mates with the shielded part of the socket on the phone. If you force it in backwards, you might mess up the tiny contacts inside. If it is charging you should see a huge batteyr gauge on the screen with a flashing lightning bolt indicating charging.

Then I screwed it up, but force is not a fair term for what I did. I'll play with seeing if there is an easy way to charge the spare battery, otherwise, I screwed up big time.

With respect to the rear speaker, I powered it for the first time in an office and it disturbed half the office. I suggest taking it home and reconfiguring your profiles there. It has the loudest powerup that I've ever heard.

Go to eBay and order one of those universal wall chargers with moveable contact arms.
They cost less than USD$10 and can charge the battery outside of the phone.

I have been using the phone now whith only 1 sim activated and the other one switched off.

Theoretically this should increase battery life as 1 sender/receiver is not working. In reallity it looks like it does not make a difference. After 2 days battery is dead.

Phone died while I was in the USA. I still had an old nokia phone with me.

Could not charge anymore and it would not go back on. Will try to sent it back to dealextrme and see what they say or if they give any guarentee at all.

Read an ominous message on UseNet which referenced a Vodafone (UK?) support board. Seems that some no-name Chinese dual-SIM phones have stopped working after a couple of weeks, due to the network barring them. The issue is that many of these phones have indecipherable IMEI numbers (or worse, numbers stolen from or mimicking other manufacturers models). Vodafone, in their wisdom, has chosen to mark these phones as "stolen" and, in their support board, simply and categorically state that they do not support this type of hardware - period. Don't know how widespread this has become, or whether it represents a permanent situation.

It's known longer than today... And why wouldn't Vodafone (or any other operator) not deny service to these devices?

If these IMEI numbers are indeed stolen, or used over and over again, how do you think their logfiles would look like? Just try to track down problems when numerous phones with the same number logon to you system.

I had some chinees phones too, and when I tried to add 2 cards from the same operator to it (but with a different plan), the first card that tried to register was successfull, the other wasn't. Never found the reason for 100% sure, but this was probable a comparable situation.

Yves

Yeah that is something that had me wondering how them phones with two transceivers & two SIMs in them work. I would expect them to have two IMEIs as they are technically two phones in one, unlike the ones have have only more than one SIM but can use only one at a time.

Have been using an MFU V200 dual sim quad band phone I picked up on ebay from a Hong Kong dealer for US$53 including registered airmail. Decent audio quality. It's a sturdy, if somewhat basic, phone. It's a dual active sim and a bluetooth headset can run off either sim card.
In US, I use an AT&T/Jolt prepaid and a T-Mobile/Tuyo prepaid sim card in it.
When I go to Nevis at the end of February probably will use my Digicel Bermuda card, and will likely use up the last of my airtime on my MaxRoam card as the second sim (probably in St. Marteen en route to Nevis).
It's nice having two active cards in case I'm nearer to a network tower for one carrier than another, or the rate is cheaper on one sim card than another. Also can access the directories on either sim card to dial a number.
One glitch I've found is if the second sim card defaults to the same carrier as the first sim, and a call is rejected on the second sim (no roaming agreement other than emergency calls), then the first sim will not be able to make calls until the phone is turned off and back on again. Happens when I use the T-Mo/Tuyo card in rural areas only covered by AT&T. Easiest way to avoid this is just to not dial with the sim that says "emergency only" instead of a network carrier name.