Dual SIM Phones: Hot or Not?

Dual SIM phones: To Buy or Not to Buy?

The recent IPL tournament unleashed a flood of promotions for dual-SIM phones. We were getting information on brands we had never heard of before, brands like Karbonn, Maxx, Micromax and Lava. And nowadays it’s a rare instance when you don’t come across an advertisement for a “feature packed” dual-SIM phone in the daily paper.

Most of these phones seem to boast of features sported by more expensive phones. From task managers and schedulers to dedicated social networking apps, these phones claim to do it all and at unbelievably low prices. In this feature, I take a look at four such dual-SIM phones each from Intex, Karbonn, Mi-Phone and G-Fone and ascertain whether they match up to or exceed the quality and performance afforded by some of the better known brands.

Let me first introduce the phones:

1.    The Karbonn K10 is a candy-bar phone with a QWERTY keypad and more than a couple of pointers from the Blackberry school of design (MRP: Rs. 3,400).
2.    The G-Fone 588 is another QWERTY phone that is slightly wider than the Karbonn but is also slimmer (MRP: Rs. 4,800).
3.    The Mi- 415 is a slider phone with an alpha-numeric keypad and a look that seems inspired by the Motorola Razr series of phones (MRP: Rs. 4,200).
4.    The Intex IN 4470 sports a candy-bar design and has an alpha-numeric keypad (Rs. 3,200).

Design

Although all the above phones sport unique designs there is one thing that I found missing: innovation. While you would expect phones from the big players like Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson etc. to look different, these phones are designed to look like some of the phones we are familiar with.

For instance, the Karbonn K10 could be very easily mistaken for the Blackberry Curve 8320. It has similarly separated keys, a candy-bar design and the same number of hardware navigation keys upfront. Like the other phones, the Karbonn only relies on plastic for its build but the build itself is quite solid. The Karbonn’s QWERTY keyboard feels fine to type on although I would be lying if I didn’t say that the overall look and design felt sub-par.

The Kabonn K10 looks uncannily like the Blackberry Curve 8320.

The G-Fone 588 also borrows design elements from Blackberry phones although it isn’t as upfront about its influence as the Karbonn. In fact, the 588 looks quite good and feels like it has been manufactured using quality materials. Its keyboard too is very good and I would say it is better than the keyboard on the Samsung CorbyTXT and at par with the one on the Nokia E63. Overall, I would say that the G-Phone 588 is one of the better looking and designed phones in this price-range.

The G-Fone 588 has a very good QWERTY keypad.

The Mi-415 is also decently built but it does look and feel uncannily like a toy. In this era of phones with large touchscreens, it does look out of place with its terribly petite figure. The phone’s keyboard is a straight lift from the design sported by Motorola’s Razr line-up of phones. The Mi’s overall design also looks and feels cheap and the keypad isn’t great to use.

The Mi-415's keyboard looks exactly like the ones on Motorola's Razr phones.

The Intex is built with glossy plastic and it does not make a great first impression. A major problem with its keypad is that the keys lined up on the left and right edges can’t be pressed properly which is very irritating when you are trying to type out a quick message. The Intex sports a regular design that’s very similar to a bunch of phones that populated the market about 3-4 years back.

The Intex 4470 keypad is large but doesn't work satisfactorily.

Usability & Interface

The Intex and the Mi-415 sport similar interfaces, in that they resemble the simple easy to use interfaces that are common in the inexpensive Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia phones. The Mi’s interface, albeit constricted within a small 2 inch screen, is responsive and fast while the Intex has a sluggish interface.

The G-Fone and the Karbonn continue to be inspired by Blackberry for their interface. The Karbonn in fact completely copies the Blackberry 5.0 interface and even has the same sunset wallpaper as the default homepage embellishment. I am quite surprised they haven’t been slapped with a lawsuit since I’m pretty sure there are laws that prevent this sort of thing. The G-Fone also has an interface that was clearly inspired by Blackberry but the manufacturers have changed around a couple of icons and the color theme. Apart from the obvious utter lack of innovation, both phones have otherwise usable interfaces.

Multimedia & Others

In terms of imaging, I wasn’t expecting much from these phones and it didn’t look like the phones were trying too hard to exceed them either. Images were universally noisy and looked poor even when looking at them on the phone screen. None of the cameras were complimented by a flash although the Intex had a front camera. Videos recorded were even worse.

Music performance on the phones was much better and overall fair. The good part was that all the phones came with a 3.5mm headphones jack (except the G-Fone which had a 2.5mm jack). The loudspeakers on all the phones were also very loud but at high volumes the sound was also distorted.

Battery life across all the four phones varied from poor to average. The Intex had the best battery life of the lot but it maxed out at an average 4 hours 40 mins of continuous talktime. The G-Phone was just able to exceed the four hour mark while both the Karbonn and the Mi were just able to reach the three hour mark.

Dual-SIM & Call Quality

A common feature that all these phones shared was the dual-SIM functionality. This feature is unique to these phones and it is quite useful to have if you have more than one SIM and want to use two numbers but with only one handset. However you can only have one SIM receiving or making calls at any time. This feature worked without a hitch in all the phones and I was able to use both SIMs to receive and make calls.

The call quality, on the other hand, was pitiful. None of the phones worked well in this aspect. On the Intex, I could hear echoes on my side while on the other end my voice was sounding muffled. On the Karbonn, the voice at the other end sounded over sharp but at the complete loss of clarity. On the G-Fone, the voice at the other end was louder but still very unclear and metallic. The Mi-415 had the worst call quality of the lot and quite frankly, at times I was being forced to guess what the other person was saying.

Conclusion

Well, so at the end of the day the question still remains, would you want to buy an inexpensive heavily advertized dual-SIM phone or would you rather spend a little bit more and pick up a phone from a more established brand? In my opinion, even the low price-tags do not justify the sub-par performance, design and features that these phones are capable of. Irrespective of the feature-set, decent call quality and good battery life is something that you would expect from every phone. However, these phones failed at even that. Add to that their average multimedia performance and lack of innovation in terms of looks and interface, and you would be better off picking up a similarly priced phone from an established brand. Given the way good phones like the Nokia 5233, the Nokia E63 and the LG Cookie are sporting increasingly anorexic price-tags, wouldn’t you rather pick up one of those instead? The choice, as most wise men in the movies say, is yours. To see what good phones might be within your budget make sure you read our feature on the 10 Best Budget Phones in the market today.

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