Optus Prepaid $2 Days SIM Card Validity period

Source: Optus Web

Due to business purposes, I end up travelling in the region and Australia is one of the country I visit every alternate month. One of the challenge is to keep a local number so it's easy to reach local friends. I've been using Optus for $2 days and I love it. At a fraction of cost, or may be at the cost of 1Day Bridge data roam plan or 5 min roaming call, I can enjoy 5 days of unlimited voice, sms and 2.5GB data. By the way it's LTE ready too :)

So one of the interesting thing I found out is the SIM card validity vs. Amount validity. Optus says the validity of the card is based on the top-up (normally I do $10 for 5 days) and it lasts for 10 days to 100 days. However this is only for the "VALUE" and the SIM card is valid for longer periods with zero value in it.

For example, this is what I observed. I bought a SIM with $10 value on 1st Feb 2014. So the "validity" shown by Optus in SMS/internet is up to 11th Feb. But when you try to recharge the card or do a status check (with a SMS 1 to 9999) the return message shows that the SIM card is valid till 1st Sep 2014 which is great. I don't have to queue up at the airport or try to find a optus store. All I need to do is to top-up online right before I get on the flight :)

The number continues and I am using the same number for over an year, and yeah love the convenience and peace of mind it brings. It works great for voice, and atleast on Android it supports Hotspot. So no more roaming charges, or Boingo kind of WiFi charges, frantic "free ad based" wifi at airports.

Samsung Galaxy Y Duos - S6102: 3G or UMTS not working

I've blogged about a new Dual-SIM phone an year and half ago (here). It served me well, and saved from roaming costs as I tend to buy local SIM when I travel and use this as a hotspot + voice device.

But recently I've updated the firmware (Samsung pushed a new one) and that's where the problems started.  Now the phone couldnt stay on 3G network for a min. It connects when it starts afresh but immediately goes in to "no network". I've tried by resetting it and at first thought SIM card issue so changed the SIM but finally realized it's something to do with the phone itself. Irony is it works great on GSM :(

Currently the updated version is DDMF4. Old one was DDLJ1. I tried to fallback (odin+stock firmware from XDA) but somehow both my laptops couldn't detect it in recovery mode. Unfortunately there is no heimdall version. Seems like I need to cook my own.

Android Version: 2.3.6
Baseband Version: S6102DDMF4
Kernel Version: 2.6.35.7
Version: DDMF4 (auto update from samsung)

Samsung Dual-SIM UMTS Smart Phone

Just purchased this Dual SIM phone after I lost my previous Karboon phone. Bought it online from Flipkart here

@SGD240 this phone is a mid range device & the best part is it's all the features for a 'smart phone'. i.e.

* 3G/HSDPA/HSUPA
* Wi-Fi/Bluetooth
* Android 2.3
* Touch screen &Other regular stuff..
Ofcourse don't expect a wonderful performance like the high end items.

There is another local brand (Micromax) but I'm not quite sure about the 'support'. So I choose the 'samsung' and paid around SGD50 though this is a tad lower spec compared to Micromax.

Here is the comparison sheet from Flipkart.

Well, I can't do a good review but here is a good review from Martin

http://mobilesociety.typepad.com/mobile_life/2012/05/the-samsung-galaxy-y-duos-6102-dual-sim-and-android-part-2-internet-connectivity.html

http://mobilesociety.typepad.com/mobile_life/2012/05/dual-sim-android.html

Dual SIM Phones, Triple SIM Phones.

While I was in India, one great thing I observed is the proliferation of mobile phones. In year 1999, when I first introduced to a mobile phone, there were three or four models available in Pune. Now I bet there are thousands of models available.
The best part is the Dual-SIM or Triple-SIM phones made by LG, Samsung, Micromax, Motorola, Videocon & some other vendors.

There are various combinations in the multiple SIMs but typically Dual-SIM phones are made to work in GSM-GSM mode or GSM-CDMA, where as the Triple-SIM phones are made to work as in GSM-GSM-WCDMA or GSM-GSM-CDMA which is really useful.

India is a pre-paid market and getting a SIM card is pretty easy. I purchased a dual-SIM phone with GSM-WCDMA to have a first hand experience. It's a Samsung manufactured and model is Samsung Star Duos. My SIM1 is from Bharti Airtel and it's 3G. SIM2 is from Vodafone and only 2G. I'm quite impressed with the performance and the phone did the job pretty well. I can do Video calls, 3G PDP using SIM1 and 2G voice calls & EDGE using SIM2. The configuration is seamless and now I brought the phone to Singapore. Though the IDA didn't approved this phone to be used in Singapore, I am trying to see how it performs.

SIM1: SingTel USIM (3G) (3G only)
SIM2: StarHub SIM - Prepaid (2G).

I've enabled Call forwarding from both. i.e. If SIM1 is not reachable then it calls SIM2 and vice versa. Also I've enabled the SMS Plus feature in SingTel and forwarding the SMS to StarHub SIM.

This is quite similar to what Apple is trying to do with the soft-sim concept. The SIM first registers in one operator network and with a backup configuration of competitors network.So during outages or problems the soft sim registers with the available network. Pretty good idea I guess.