Quad Sim Quad Band phone now being sold

[bbob]

Bought one of these dual sim phone some time ago. Broke down just when visiting the USA. Did get my money back but the thing was really bad.

Battery life was good on standby for maximum 2 days. If making some calls down to 1 or 1.5 days. This reminded me of 15 years ago when batterlife was 20 hours and talking time 1 hour.

Never trust the specs for the battery. Even when they say 1000 mah most of the time this is false. Bigger battery, you will need space to stick it.

When 2 active sims are active 2 days, imagine 4 sims. I love the concept of dual sims but no chinees crap for me. Have a nokia e75 single sim but it has wifi so I can access my voip server when there is free wifi.

[rfranzq]

Wow! I am breathless. Please keep us updated.

Too bad analog TV is all but dead in the US. [I actually still get 3 stations. 2 are HSN.]

As things change quickly [WiFi/VOIP], perhaps this is an idea whose time will never come. If only it had been out
two or three years ago.

[meir]

Well I have 2 SIM cards phone for 2 years, still works fine. With original batteries stays stand by about 5-7 days.

BTW Ken, how much you paid for your Quad SIM monster?

[inquisitor]

I was really looking forward for the Nokia C2-00, a high quality dualSIM phone with one SIM slot supporting hot-swapping (i.e. changing the SIM without needing to switch the phone off), until I recently found out that it is dualband only. This is so 1990s!

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by meir

Well I have 2 SIM cards phone for 2 years, still works fine. With original batteries stays stand by about 5-7 days.

BTW Ken, how much you paid for your Quad SIM monster?

at aliexpress they are around 85$

[GadgetKen]

@meir, I paid about US$109 that included registered airmail to the US from an ebay dealer (with cash value of ebay points earned and redeemed, mypoints and airline points earned real price is probably closer to US$100). Took only 1 week to make it from Shinzhen, China to Connecticut on the US east coast, and there was online tracking.

I think my particular model was made for export to Russia and the Baltic Republics because the keyboard has both English and Cyrillic characters on it.

@rfranzq, analog tv tuner works on a local low power Spanish language station. Might be useful to me when traveling to countries where still analog or doing both analog and digital transmissions. It's a multi-standard tuner (NTSC/PAL/SECAM) that you switch standards by choosing the region then country from a menu. There is an automatic scanning tuner and manual channel selection. The extendable whip has to be the thinnest rod antenna I've ever seen on any device.

@bbob, battery capacity on 2 standard (Nokia BL-4U clones) packs they included was 1000 mah. Just ordered an 1800 mah battery over ebay yesterday, and that should be more than adequate for a days use. Don't mind putting it on a charger each day, but would prefer not to have to switch battery packs. Size of the battery pack appears to be the same from the pictures and the battery codes printed on it, think it will fit OK. Even if a few millimeters thicker, there's still enough room (I hope) under the battery cover. Think difference on higher capacity packs in this case is using higher capacity cells in the same size (or very close in size) case.

The phone does have a touch screen, but it's faster for me just to use the directional keys and keyboard rather than drag out a stylus.

Also an oddity is the sim1 position has a flip up style combination microsd card holder and sim card holder where you slide the cards into the flip up piece and then push it down and lock it. Sim2-Sim4 are more traditional flip up the sim card holder and place the sim directly on the PC board.

[MobileMan]

I like the idea of a Quad sim phone. I recently purchased a Chinese Dual Sim / Dual Standby, Quad Band, Windows Mobile 6.5 (HTC Touch Diamond 2 clone). It has built in GPS with a popular Sat Nav program and maps already installed, Wifi and 2 batteries. Battery runs for about 3 days (less when using Sat Nav). This is my second dual sim/dual standby phone, first one I bought 2 years ago is still going strong. Only downside is no 3G, just GPRS/Edge which is good enough for wap friendly pages using the Opera browser, I use Wifi when available. Happy with it so far.

[GadgetKen]

@MobileMan Your WinMo dual sim phone has more advanced capabilities than this phone. Doesn't have GPS, WinMo, Edge or Wifi in this handset, although I don't have a personal need for it. Does have Java, TV set, fm radio, etc.

Noticed battery life is *much* better today than yesterday...charge indicator is at full charge after 6 hours. Suspect it could either be the battery didn't take a full charge on the first couple of recharges or the ekit simplecalling sim might have run it down faster (occasionally get a repeated phantom reboot of some phones with the ekit sim; get it to disappear by just shutting off the phone fully and restarting it; don't have a clue why).

Still, I'll switch to the higher capacity battery when it comes in. Even if it's a bit heavier, I'd rather have a heavier duty battery pack in the phone.

[meir]

Thanks Ken for your kind reply. I guess I can get it for similar price. But the most important is the phone works. BTW I bought for friend of mine touch screen, dual SIM, DVB-T i-Phone clone phone and really loves it. HK and Shenzen rules on these gadgets.

[meir]

Originally Posted by dg7feq

at aliexpress they are around 85$

I can have it around $90 with shipping included.