Dual sim phones, anyone?

[r4sh1d]

My wife and I are moving to the States in 2 months, we need to keep our international sim cards active, which is going to cost around $10 a month. We'll probably go with either a pre-paid or post paid service like T-mobile or something.

We have 2 options, either to stick the international sims in basic phones, and keep our smart phones, or get smartphones with dual sims, like the LG G3, or the ASUS zenfone 2. But I just hate carrying 2 phones.

My wife has an HTC One M7 that's acting up, purple hue when taking pictures & a bad battery so I'll probably have to get her something new. I have a OnePlus One 64GB that's going strong, I might give it to her and get myself a new toy

I travel alot and find that my phone's battery drains faster while roaming, does roaming really kill the battery? or is it cause I'm using my phone more while traveling? Google maps, taking pictures, using chrome for researching..etc. What happens if there're 2 sim in the phone? I googled a bit and it seems that when using 1 international sim that's roaming + a local sim for 4G and calls really drain the battery fast.

I have no problem with carrying an extra battery, or a small battery charger ( I have the anker 3000mAh one, love it). But my wife always forget to charge her phone and carrying a dual sim phone will just make things worse for her I guess.

Thoughts?

 

[paperwastage]

the international SIM will need to register on a provider in USA... do you know which provider? (most likely ATT or tmobile)

I'd look at the Xperia Z3 dual sim D6633... it has a lot of LTE/UMTS band support, should be good for different countries (should cover 3G for everywhere except some providers in japan that use UMTS bands 9/11/19)

http://dl-developer.sonymobile.com/...ria_Z3_D6603_D6633_D6643_D6653_D6616_WP_3.pdf

D6633
UMTS HSPA+ 850 (Band V), 900 (Band VIII), 1700 (Band IV),
1900 (Band II), 2100 (Band I) MHz
GSM GPRS/EDGE 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz
LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 17, 20)

only 1 sim can have data, but it seems like voice can be dual

http://forum.xda-developers.com/z3/general/sony-xperia-z3-dual-active-dual-sim-t2921862




one question: why do you want to keep both sims active? 2 active = you need 2 connections to network tower = more battery drain.... the z3 has pretty good battery life, so you may still be fine with it. roaming shouldn't kill the battery, unless the phone can't lock on a roaming provider and keeps searching forever

 

[holden j caufield]

If you need a US number also try google voice. It lets you have your international sim and google voice is decent at handling your domestic US number.

 

[r4sh1d]

I used this international sim last week actually when I was traveling between NY, RI, & PA and it connected to AT&T network, got a good price for 5GB of DATA while roaming for $30 through my service provider (Mobily). I used like 4GB in 2 weeks, wasn't crazy fast though. But when we come we'll use our current international sims for online banking ver. through SMS/ receive international calls for 10 cents a minute while the caller (family members) will be charged as if they're making a local call in Saudi Arabia, which is free since most of them use the same service provider as we do.

One thing I noticed while roaming using my oneplus one was that sometimes it'd search for a signal for minutes at a time, I have this problem with this phone over here too (Saudi Arabia) where if I use an elevator/go to a dead spot, then it'd take forever to find a signal for some reason. So it might be just the phone acting up.


We might sign up to T-mobile's unlimited family plan for $100/ ATT/ mvno..etc , that should cover us for data/local calls while in the US. I'll look into which phone has more bands that are supported though.

I'd rather go with a phone that's at least 5.5" & 32GB internal memory. The G3 has a removable battery which is a plus.

The google voice option is nice, but I'd need data plan as well.