Quote:
Originally Posted by rfranzq
Well, if you had not started this interesting thread you [and we]
would not have found out this important bit of info---and have prevented much sim-swapping.
Could this be seen as a battery-saving feature?
'It's a feature and not a bug.'
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The fact that only one radio module supports UMTS definitely saves battery life as UMTS - despite significantly lower transmission power levels (max. 0.25W vs. 1-2 for GSM) - requires a lot of CPU power for the spreading codes calculations which results in higher power consumption by the baseband processor. Besides impairing standby performance a second UMTS radio module would also increase hardware complexity and - most importantly - production and royality expenses. Further to that simultaneous UMTS support for the second SIM would also be quite pointless to most users as the most relevant advantage of UMTS is its higher data bandwidth but establishing a simultaneous second data session is useless. Instead most users will use the second SIM only for voice and SMS for which GSM still works fine as long as GSM and UMTS coverage are overlapping. However since there are UMTS-only networks without overlapping GSM coverage as a fallback option and since more and more operators are reducing GSM capacity by refarming former GSM spectrum in favour of UMTS or LTE deployments UMTS support for the second SIM is becoming a necessity.
Has anybody actually seen any dual SIM device with dual UMTS support yet?