One phone, two numbers, two service providers. New toy inbound from Hong Kong

I was on ebay browsing Chinese-made off-brand GSM phone devices this weekend. I skipped over a couple of spitting-image iPhone clones - they aren't compatible with iTunes of course but they come unlocked and are damn right well going to stay that way throughout their life. Some of them even have an apple logo on them!

They had an interesting feature! The phones support the simultaneous installation of two SIM cards. For you Verizon and Sprint subscribers this is a foreign concept, GSM phones have a removable plastic smartcard chip under the battery that contain the phone's number and in some cases your contacts. You can therefore change your phone depending on your mood or your environment.

Going to work? Take the full-featured heavier-weight PDA phone. Pop the chip out after work and put into your imported Samsung/Prada phone for a nice dinner out. Going out to a club after that? Pop the chip into that cheap Nokia that you won't shed a tear about if you lose it.

So the iPhone knockoff had the option to switch between the two chips but not have both operating simultaneously. There are hack-ish adaptors that will already do this for existing phones but you have to cut the SIM card to fit inside. You have the same limit with the iPhone knockoff - you're only on one network with one phone number active at a time. And oh by the way when you switch SIMs from one provider to another all your settings for GPRS, SMS and MMS all change too. Plan to carry a 3x5 card with that info and reprogram every time you switch. Um not so much.

But they had others that were far more interesting. Both SIMs active at once! Now this is a neat feature that should be on the market here. Many employers will issue their tech support folk phones but prohibit use of personal phones in the workplace. If your employer happens to be using T-Mobile or the Deathstar AND for personal use you have one of those carriers - you can tell your boss that oh yeah, its your phone service, "I just put it in this other phone." You don't mention there's another radio in the phone thats simultaneously online for your personal cell service. ;)

My application? Local SIM card for the country I'm visiting plus the T-mobile SIM so that if I choose to pay extortionate rates for roaming, I can. Oh and its just neat. I expect that the phone will have some surprise limitation or downside but it was just so neat that I had to have one.