We’ve previously talked about the Verzio Duplii and Twinn, one of the more elegant dual SIM solutions to come out in Asia. At CES 2008, we are seeing dual SIM smartphones – like this one from Haier. Although there is already a big advantage in using dual SIM cards for regular phones, having two SIM cards for smartphones offer an additional value – you see, not all mobile phone plans are made the same. Having dual SIMs allows you to choose which number to use for data and for calls. By competence, some carriers usually offer better data plans than free calls and SMS while the other half offer the exact opposite.

Should telcos take this new development into account in the future of brand planning? Telcos have always built their brand around lock in exclusivity which actually get circumvented with unlocking software. I’m not sure how common this was in the US before the proliferation of the iPhone, but in Asia, it was pretty much an open secret. I think telcos should start bending down towards non-exclusive post paid line deals.

Post from: Cellphone9

Some consumers are the perfect target for things like this. Nokia sent over an email a few days ago exposing how owners of NOKLA phones are sending them to NOKIA service centers for repairs. Because of the inferior design quality, these phones tend to break. The problem with consumers is that they tend to mistake the NOKLA brand for real Nokia phones because of the way the “L” looks like an “i.” So that I don’t confuse you, I’m putting the NOKLA brand in all caps.

Here are three ways to tell if your NOKIA phone is legitimate:

Warranty
Nokia mobile phones bought in the Nokia Store or from its authorized dealers have a blue 12-month limited warranty sticker from Nokia Care slapped on the top or side parts of the phone’s box.

A Nokia Care Tamper Proof warranty sticker is also found in the mobile phone’s accessories such as the charger, battery, memory card, or data cable.

Stamp of Approval
All Nokia phones bought from the Nokia Store or any of its authorized dealers have a Tamper Proof Type label at the back of each mobile phone along with the NTC logo and the Type acceptance number as part of one sticker. Also found in the back of the mobile phone is the Nokia tamper proof Warranty Seal.

Battery
To see if your battery is the real thing, you have to make sure the hologram label reflects the Nokia Connecting Hands at one angle and the Original Enhancements logo at another angle. When you angle the hologram on the left, right, down and upsides of the logo, you should see 1, 2, 3 and 4 dots on each side respectively.

Post from: Cellphone9

I love shows that do audience participation. Especially in the form of SMS voting for talent shows like American Idol. Well, we have our own franchise back here called Philippine Idol. And as a fan of these talent shows that, I’ve become a little disturbed with some developments in blatant SMS padding of votes. For instance, applications such as SMSPal exist that turns your phone into an SMS Machine gun spitfiring the same SMS to the same number multiply times.

But that’s fine really as you will come to realize that these SMS voting campaigns really have some form of business model behind it for carriers to make more money. Just don’t be too obvious I guess. I’ve heard of a special prepaid SIM card that allegedly exists that allows the person to send the entire preloaded amount to one number — made exclusively for SMS voting.

Now isn’t that too over the top? I can fire up this SIM card onto my phone and send 10 dollars worth of text to vote for my favorite candidate. If the entire town does this, you’ll have thousands of people “text padding” their millions of votes. I’d really love to know if this technology does exist in one form or the other. A special SIM for this purpose implies that the technology is made by the telco and not by some third party hacker. Are these true? Would love to hear from you guys.

Post from: Cellphone9

The Verzio Duplii is one of two phones (the other one is the Twinn) launched in the Philippines. It is the first “looks good like it ain’t hacked” phone that holds two SIM card slots active simultaneously.

Real estate shows off a fantastic phone design as the Duplii was engineered by former Sony Ericsson and Nokia engineers. You will notice similarities to both trademark designs with the menu screen and UI. Added eye candy to the menu is a GUI button that is animated with a tail as it moves about the grid navigation. Though it may be annoying at first, the two “i” and “c” buttons which return you to the menu and cancels actions respectively are a bit misplaced as they can accidentally pressed when making calls or navigating using the two menu buttons.

One thing to note is the odd keypad layout with the 0, pound and asterisk keys forced over to the right side of the phone. Thus instead of a 3×4 grid for the keypad, you’re presented with a 4×3 grid. Now is this convenient? Amazingly, as far as my opinion goes, yes it is. It makes texting with two hands easier as the 0 key serves as the space bar. The pound key does the symbols while the asterisk cycles through the possible dictionaries available (T9 included). With predictive texting turned on, the directional pad serves to cycle through the possible word combinations.

The two SIM slots are labeled as SIM 1 and SIM 2 with the primary SIM card being chosen through the Settings menu. This is usually the default number that will be used to send messages. Although when sending messages, the phone allows you to select which SIM to use to send out your SMS. Thus, let’s say you’re using a prepaid line on one end and a post paid on the other, you can use your prepaid line to receive SMS and reply using the other line seamlessly.

As for multimedia, the Duplii’s 2MP camera is nothing write home about as it doesn’t have an auto focus feature. Yes, this makes shooting fast without delay but good luck to getting nearby objects into focus. The camera is a look back into 2001. Here are some samples at QVGA quality. Maximum image size is 1600 x 1200.

Pros
Dual SIM done right
Very affordable at around less than USD $300
Bundled with two batteries

Cons
Backward camera (no auto focus)
Keypad layout needs to be relearned

Bottomline

Okay, here goes. In 2008 we will be seeing an influx of these dual and yes – even tri-SIM phones from Verzio. We will be seeing Windows Mobile devices with dual SIMs as well from what I hear. The Duplii and Twinn will be marketed as the entry level phones for the workforce as many people in Asia, especially the Philippines have two SIMs – one for SMS in the office (SUN Cellular) and their personal like (Globe or SMART). The Duplii gets the dual SIM concept right. There are a few things you may need to relearn like the keypad – SMS response can be a bit slow, but this is by far the easiest – and might I add, elegant dual SIM solution out there.

Post from: Cellphone9

What happened? Had no one gotten the text messages? Were the two biggest telecom providers, Smart Communications and Globe, experiencing an SMS outage? Had the government blocked the messages from being delivered?

None of the above. The people leading the coup last month seemed to have made a big mistake: they did it during working hours.

One note though – the article mentions that the coup failed due to the time of SMS sending – rush hour. Actually it wasn’t really that. With the holidays approaching plus the fact that the coup plotters chose Thursday – which was the first day of the long weekend holiday for most of us – we had better things to do.

Post from: Cellphone9

Nowadays, a touch screen phone like the LG Viewty would necessitate certain features like wireless Internet. Unfortunately the nice big screen of this Viewty KU990 model is laid to waste as it doesn’t support WiFi.

Oh no. Did I just put the phone down in the first paragraph? Well, in fairness to aesthetics, LG has always been innovative with its real estate design, as seen with the LG Chocolate. The LG Viewty is supposed to be a phone that does not compete with such models like the iPhone or Nokia N series. It seems to be a fashion phone, primarily, with some neat features like photo editing and YouTube video viewing. It also has a nice 5MP camera. Xenon flash seems to be the new trend with camera phones as this is the same thing equipped on the Nokia N82. It’s so good, CNET has this to say:

Many camera phones take good pictures but don’t look that great themselves — fortunately the LG KU990 Viewty is not an ugly camera phone. In fact, we can go so far as to say it’s one of the best-looking camera phones we’ve seen so far. [CNET Review]

From the reviews online, the Viewty seems to be a good camera phone – if that’s all you’re looking for. I really suggest they improve on this model further by adding other productivity features such as wireless Internet and BlackBerry email. That would kill.

Photo courtesy of CNET.

Post from: Cellphone9

Here’s what you can do:

List the phone models down in the comments section. You can list as many phones as you want, but more importantly include a short line on why these phones were crappy. Be it the hardware, software or after sales support, list it all down.

I’ll update the blog post into some sort of poll after a few days so keep the lists coming!

As for my crap phone experiences? Well, let me save my list for later on. Heh.

1. The Smart PDA says the Nokia 6708 was the worst phone he used

[Photo courtesy of webtvwire]

Post from: Cellphone9

“Early next year Barclaycard will run a trial of the technology on the back of its new ‘OnePulse’ contactless card, which was launched in September. OnePulse cards are combined credit cards and Oyster cards, and also allow small purchases (under £10) to be made without entering a Pin.

About 1,000 retailers in the capital are already equipped with the contactless terminals for OnePulse, so putting the technology into mobile phones will not require them to install yet more expensive kit. Several hundred Barclaycard customers will be issued with compatible phones supplied by Nokia, which has been pushing the technology for several years. [Textually]

Honestly, I feel that this is a neat concept that is highly dependent on the culture of the society. For instance, although online purchases are quite common nowadays, there is a certain charm to lining up for Black Friday sales. Nonetheless, the adoption of mobile phones as pay methods is not new. However, there has to be a mindset change on the fact that if you lose, your cellphone, you lose more than your address book. Risky, ain’t it?

Post from: Cellphone9

I had the chance to play around with the new Nokia N82. Now I know where the hype is headed towards. Here are my tidbits in bullets:

• The N82 comes with an ultra strong flash that makes it a versatile camera phone at night. It comes with a 5MP Carl Zeiss lens but what seems to be overlooked is the very powerful Xenon flash. The lens has an opening that ranges from f 2.8 / 5.6.
• To the right of the joystick is a protruding button that, when pressed, gives you access to the second menu option that was highlighted during Nokia’s Go Play event. The new user interface subdivides the menu functions to your contacts, multimedia, N-Gage, GPS and maps, and connectivity. This brings forth a new way of presenting all the features of the new line of Nokia phones. I assume that this UI will be a standard that is going to be adopted pretty soon, doing away with the old grid / list UI.
• The phone has a built in gyroscope that tilts the screen from portrait to landscape mode depending on how you hold it. The phone can only tilt in two directions though – where landscape mode is limited in the direction where the keypad is on the right side and the screen on the left.
• Video recording is decent. It is not N90, but the recording quality is good enough to make fluid home movies
• The microSD card slot is located on the long part of the phone. The card can be a bit hard to remove.

Post from: Cellphone9

While I was in Indonesia last week, our guide had a Nokia E90 with him. It was preinstalled with several hits from the 70’s, but all in minus one format. This was his portable karaoke in case he would be asked to sing.

Ah, technology.

Post from: Cellphone9