Dual SIM work and personal - experiences please

I would never combine my work and personal phones. 

edit. I can put my work iPhone 11 in my desk drawer at the end of the day and not see it again until the next morning.
I can have my personal iPhone 15 Pro with me whenever I need.
I can have a sensible multi-digit passcode for my iPhone. I have to have a mixed alphanumeric passcode for my work iPhone with no repetition of passcodes. Painful.  Plus VPN profiles and other security profiles. Just no. 

I find it irritating mainly due to my own incompetence. I have accidentally sent messages to a supplier on the wrong SIM who then messages back on that number. We are also expected to have teams etc on the phone which I wasn't going to do on my own device. I have gone back to 2 devices which I am now finding irritating due to having 2 phones.

I use an e-sim for work in my personal phone. Makes sense for me, as I hated carrying two phones around.

Ive set it up to prompt me which sim i want to use when making a call, data and texts are all defaulting to personal.

It means I can run a seperate worl WhatsApp account as well, which has been useful.

I did it for a while when the work phone (iPhone) was better than mine. Didn’t have any issues. You can turn off the work line so no calls/texts. I used to sign out of teams, and turn off my work email account which pulled all the emails off when I was on holiday. Weekends I’d occasionally find myself checking up on things but generally I was able to ignore the work stuff.

Sadly as I am now the da boss, I tend to need to be contactable out of hours....so that reason is gone.

It's more the practicality of choosing the right SIM to call/text/WhatsApp, or where family or worm images are stored etc.

So first thing is do you just mean dual SIM or work apps on personal phone with multiple profiles?

I used to have my work and personal SIM in my phone as I hated carrying around two phones, also handy for data if you were in a dead spot for one SIM.

I didn't have work apps on my phone. With android you can set specific contacts to use a specific SIM and/or have it ask you everytime. Same applies for texts. Didn't have WhatsApp on my work number so can't help with that side, sorry

Any security-conscious employer will want work-related devices to conform to a central security policy.  Ie, you want to use (say) Teams and it will ask you to hand over management before allowing you to sign in.

Of course, most employers aren't that diligent...

Posted by: matt_outandabout

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It's more the practicality of choosing the right SIM to call/text/WhatsApp, or where family or worm images are stored etc.

iPhone or android? The former won’t let you have two WhatsApp accounts though you can use WhatsApp and WhatsApp business together. iPhone also lets you specify which line to use for calling individual contacts that are saved plus a default (which you can change when needed) for outbound calls. I never had much of a problem with managing that.

Android I believe you can set up specific work profiles that you can use for all the work side of things. Not sure exactly how that works though.

I have two phones, 

Some folk in our company duel SIM their own phones, some folk only use their personal phone for work. 

I keep both as it means I can turn off from work. In a precious job I used to get subbies calling me at all hours asking what work was coming up. 

Our work phones are accessible by it. The duel simmed and personal phones aren't (but still have access to teams SharePoint etc) 

My team and selected others all have my own phone number. 

We have an on call manager that rotates weekly so they all get a chance to be paid more for the occasional inconvenience of someone calling and waking them up. 

I’ve been doing this for about 8 years now. On my Samsung phone (which is supplied by work) I choose which sim I want to but the primary sim for called, texts and data. On calls, I can also long-press on the contact, and it prompts me to choose each time which sim I use. Although it took me a while to get used to it, I now rarely make mistakes about which sim I use. But tbh, I do still make mistakes and call friends from my French sim.

Thats the good. The bad is that you can’t really switch off from work. Again, tbh, I never could, so im not sure a dual sim has changed this. As the boss, I also felt the need to stay available and connected.

I really couldn’t be bothered juggling two phones. But if you want the ability to put your work phone into a drawer and leave it for the weekend, then dual sims is a bad idea.

Works for me - I've done it with various Android phones over the last 6 years or so.  I've just changed phones to one with only 1 physical SIM slot, got my personal one on an eSIM now.  Easy to use, a bit of "training" involved so it remembers which SIM to use for each contact but easy enough to manage.  I hated carrying two phones which I'd done for the 10 years or so previously - I didn't ever stick my work phone in a drawer to be fair.  

I'm away at a festival this weekend so I'll divert all calls to my work number to the answer service and turn off notifications from Outlook, job done.

I just have 2 phones.....

For no other reason than I can turn it off - but you don't have that option by the sound of it.

I've also had a colleague give a client my personal mobile number (before I had a company phone) - that didn't go down too well when they called me at 9 o'clock one evening....

I did think about the dual sim route, but decided I wanted to keep work/personal completely separate.

I use dual sims ( one physical, one e sim) but not for work, it’s easier to just switch off a phone than have the farf.

Don’t forget some firms can do the thing that can wipe the phone.

I use single phone with 2 sims. I have WhatsApp biz and Outlook for work. All work apps in a separate folder so i don't see them unless I want. All work apps go silent in eve and weekend. I turn off work sim when away.

Don’t forget some firms can do the thing that can wipe the phone.

Yeah, I made sure I logged out of all my work apps and deleted them from my personal phone just before I handed my notice. Just in case anyone was feeling vindictive 😄