two SIM at once Quadband phone!

[bbob]

schuster, have you tried this phone allready, if so what is your first impression. The reviews on the site seem ok and the price is also good.

[schuster]

Originally Posted by bbob

schuster, have you tried this phone allready, if so what is your first impression. The reviews on the site seem ok and the price is also good.

I have only had time to do the basics so far. I am charging both batteries and doing rundown tests as there are reports of defective batteries being shipped. Dual SIM function works fine; I have cards from 2 different carriers inside and they both register and receive calls separately. It also seems to work OK with my TravelSIM using callback function; even the STK menus work without a hitch. Placing calls using the second SIM is a little tricky as you have to use the left soft-key as a surrogate "SEND" button. RF is very good; full scale in my basement where even some Nokias have trouble. Ringer and speakerphone LOUD; earpiece volume is acceptable but could be a touch louder. Fit and finish are fine, especially for a cheap Chinese phone. User interface is a copy of Nokia menu functionality; good because the manual is useless. Spent some time turning off all the "cutesy" things like playing songs on poer-up and down; etc. Uploaded ringtones using USB cable without a hitch; the phone asks you what type of device you want it to emulate and then does it; will also charge from computer. So far it seems well worth the $100. By the way, there is a similar model with FM on some websites - YEPO K630i - but it's more expensive and there is at least some doubt that certain shipments are actually quad band. It seems to use the same battery and I wonder if YEPO and ZOHO are manufactured by the same company.

[bbob]

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

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by bbob

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

[schuster]

Originally Posted by bbob

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

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.

[Bossman]

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?

[schuster]

Originally Posted by Bossman

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.

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by Bossman

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?

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

Chris

[bbob]

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.

[schuster]

Originally Posted by bbob

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.