Sunday, January 20, 2008

Dual-SIM smartphone (but not from HTC)

The following looks pretty nice, although it's not enough to budge me from HTC. It sure would be nice if HTC would add dual-SIM to their bag of tricks!




Haier's dual SIM card phone

Haier's booth was way in the back of one of the halls at CES, but we wanted to swing by to see if (and when) the company would be bringing its cell phones to the United States. The PR rep wasn't exactly forthcoming, but we did get a brief tour of the models the company is hoping to bring here. The most interesting of the bunch was the HG-N99, and we can only hope that it actually arrives on our shores (Haier says it is in talks with U.S. carriers).

The Windows Mobile handset may look like your average smartphone, but it ups the ante in a big way by offering double SIM card, double standby functionality. That means you'll be able to put two SIM cards in the phone, which will enable you to use the HG-N99 for two phone numbers at the same time. No, you won't be able to place calls simultaneously, but you can receive calls to both numbers at any time. While such a concept is hardly original to the HG-N99, compatible phones are pretty rare in North America.

Other features on the GSM device include support for GPRS and EDGE, a 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, messaging, polyphonic ringtones, a mini-USB port, a WAP browser with Java support, and a microSD card slot.