Quad Sim Quad Band phone now being sold

[GadgetKen]

Now at 40% battery capacity after 8 and a half hours. Made or received 4 calls for a total of 16 minutes, changed a few settings on the phone(changed to US date standard), and ran the TV set on an NTSC local channel for 5 minutes for the novelty factor. The bigger capacity battery I'm getting from Hong Kong should increase the amount of time the phone can run (ideally want 12 hours with light usage before need to recharge or swap packs).

Only glitch was the ekit sim caused a phantom reboot condition (not unique to this phone, have seen this happen in my MFU V200 dual sim phone). Just turned off phone, pulled and reinstalled battery, and restarted it. Working just fine right now. Not sure phone plays really well with dual IMSI and/or 3g sim chips. Might just keep the ekit chip out of the phone other than activity to keep the sim card current, or when traveling somewhere I need it (like on small US GSM providers my T-Mobile or AT&T mvno chips don't roam on, Canada, or an upcoming trip to Grand Cayman). Not a big deal to me, but anyone considering the purchase of this phone, should be aware of this potential issue.

[meir]

Thanks for update. Just hope the battery capacity will get better after first a few recharges.

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by meir

Just hope the battery capacity will get better after first a few recharges.

yeah, as the dual sim phones usually last a week nowadays it should be at least 2-3 days...

Chris

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by meir

I can have it around $90 with shipping included.

yep...
Wholesale quad band four sim mobile phone F160

$93.81

Chris

[GadgetKen]

And I found it even for less.

Buy Flying F160 - World's First Four SIM, Four Standby Mobile Phone at a great price!

It's $75 in choice of black or red. $5 less with online coupon by email list. Postage to US varies from $8 to $27 depending on carrier and service class; will vary for other countries. Never used this vendor before so you may want to do a quick background check.

[meir]

Buy F160 Quad Sim Quad Standby TV Java Phone with Qwerty Keyboard Black compare price at pandawill.com

Here is one and I have used this shop before.

There was one in focalprice.com as well, but cant find it now. Sorry here is link http://www.focalprice.com/MHH72B/FGF...ard_Black.html
This is very reliable shop. Use it almost every month.

Or when in HK go to SSP.

[GadgetKen]

A couple of usage comments on the phone now that I've played with it more.

Found out why the dual IMSI sim ekit card didn't work that well and an easy solution. The third and fourth sim slots are more for just plain 2g voice and sms cards. The first and second sim card slots support full USSD commands, gprs web and system selection. Just moving the sim cards around (ekit into slot 2 instead of 4) suddenly made the ekit card much more stable, and could also get balance check/expiration date USSD commands working on my Digicel card.

Now for the really neat thing..the phone runs full Java apps. Downloaded some free mobile games over my MacBook Pro and a Verizon/Millenicom key, transfered the files via bluetooth, installed them to the 4 gb microsd card rather than the phone memory (phone memory is very small but it will take microsd cards up to 16 gb). Both games I downloaded (a pinball game and an Alice in Wonderland game) run perfectly.

Also has a built in Microsoft Word program and an Excel type spreadsheet program.

Analog TV set does work. Got 3 different low power Spanish language network channels when I tested it briefly. Tuner is very sensitive but needs to be held just right to get a clear color picture.

[rfranzq]

Thanks for the update. Did it say anything in the instructions about which slots might be better for different uses? How good are the insturctions?

Originally Posted by GadgetKen

Analog TV set does work. Got 3 different low power Spanish language network channels when I tested it briefly. Tuner is very sensitive but needs to be held just right to get a clear color picture.

Low power analog TV stations are really low power. I suspect that if you drove 10 miles from where you test, results would be different. No stations or better reception.

[GadgetKen]

The instructions look like they were made for multiple phones, and they change them slightly for every model. Nothing about the sim slot uses. The sales materials on the web did say that it's not meant for 3g sim cards so I expected some minor issues.

Apparently putting the ekit sim card into slot 2 instead of slot 3 or 4 *greatly* increased battery life. Have full battery strength bars after 12 hours of standby and only a few minutes of calls. The choice of sim card location I think depends on whether the chip is more advanced and if you need bluetooth headset functionality (BT works best with slot 1). I put the AT&T/Jolt MVNO chip in slot 1, ekit in slot 2 (for phone stability and battery life), Digicel in slot 3 (more just to see if I have text messages in the US, voice is expensive off the Digicel regional network), and the T-Mobile/Tuyo in slot 4. When outside the US I probably would switch the Digicel chip to the first position so it has all the bells and whistles functionality.

On the low power analog, yeah it's working with just a scrap of a signal. I could attach it to a DTV box and/or a rooftop antenna for more channels, but then it would lose it's portability. Will see if analog broadcasts are still in Grand Cayman when I'm there the beginning of next year. Wonder if it will also pick up Cuba just to the north or Jamaica to the south (sometimes unusual signal skip in the Caribbean). Room will have over the air or cable tv, but curious what the tv tuner on the phone will pick up by itself.

[meir]

Ken thanks for update. Look much better than expected. Just ordering 2 phones.