[Closed] Dual SIM

Bump

If the phone doesn't support dual SIM natively then it's a no go surely ?

If you can't get a dual sim, bin one of the phones. Life is so much easier now I only have one. Use different ringtones etc to filter business calls if you need to.

I've used one in the past, more trouble than it's worth IMHO. A small cheap phone is a far better solution.

Thanks for the replies. Really, no good then? Maybe I'll just have two sims and just swap as needed - I won't actually use the work one to make calls very often (at least not international ones).

Same boat here. I have a work iPhone (very useful toy outside work hours) and a Nokia personal (had the number for 10+ years, so don't really want to change it).

Are duels really that bad?

The dual sim solutions I've seen in the past involve switching the phone off entirely to switch between active ones which would be a pain. There are proper dual sim phones (which keep both going), not a big market for them here but they're very popular in Asia.

Personally, as I need to be contactable but don't make many calls for work I just forward my work mobile number to my personal one and carry the one phone. Work number doesn't get any texts (which don't forward) so works OK for me. Work bill will include costs for each forwarded call but there aren't many of them and more than covered by the inclusive minutes on that contract.

Yeah, I suppose that forwarding the work number to my personal is one option and then just keep the sim for the occasions when I do need to make calls with the work one.

ref switching on/off, I found this which seems to work without that though obviously only one sim is active at any time. Not particularly cheap but if I was using my own phone then work would pay for that as it's cheaper than a handset.

http://www.simore.eu/en/index.php (check the video at top left)

The one I had was a replacement back cover and ribbon cable for a Nokia 6510 (which was basically an 8310 that hadn't been designed in the dark). It had a physical switch to swap between the two SIMs and, as far as it went, it worked. No power-off necessary.

However, it does mean the the two SIMs are mutually exclusive. That is to say, one "phone" will always be off at any given moment. Thinking I was being clever, I set my personal number to forward calls to my works number, so I could take incoming calls from either and make outgoing calls on the work phone. And it worked fine, till I got my bill and discovered that I'd been charged for all the calls my phone number had forwarded. As I was on a staggered tariff at the time (something like 40p/min peak and 2p/min off peak) as I only used my phone at evenings and weekends, the bill was monumental.

Added to that, it was a cheap piece of far-Eastern flakey crap manufactured for about three pence, so it used to lose contact with either the phone or one or the other SIM for fun, and the switch had a habit of catching and switching inside my pocket.

In the end, I saw my arse over the whole thing and defenestrated it in a sulk one afternoon. Two phones, it's the future.