Galaxy S4 and dual sim adapter

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647 posts

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#144049 5-May-2014 21:50

I'm getting tired of carrying two phones around - a work iphone 4s and my personal S4

I'm thinking of getting a dual sim adapter and just carrying my S4. During work hours I'll have to phone switched to my work sim and after work I'll run my personal sim

I've gto both Facebook Messenger, Viber, and gmail installed on the phone and figure that they will still work regardless of which sim is in use. I'll have to tell most of my personal contacts to either viber or FB me if they need to get hold of me but suppose I could flick to my personal sim periodically during the day to check on any messages I've missed.

The bonus is that when I'm using my work sim I'll be using my work data allowance which is twice the size of my personal one. It's a better solution that hotspotting to my S4

Looking at the dual sim adaters, I can get a magicsim elite for around $50 or a cheap no-name adapter from ebay for around $9

1. Has anyone used one of these dual sim adapters?

2. Is there much of a difference between the no nmae $9 one and the expensive $50 one?

johnr

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#1037398 5-May-2014 22:29

2) Yes difference is $41 and good luck with these they are nothing but trouble

nzgeek

618 posts

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#1038006 6-May-2014 23:05

I've been doing a bit of reading on these adapters, and John has summed then up in a nutshell. They can work, but are often more trouble than they're worth.

Possible issues include:

Having to cut down your SIM card to get it to fit into the adapter (for those that need it). You could damage the card in the process.
Adapters that fit under the existing SIM card are very thin any easy to break.
The back cover of the phone fits pretty close to the battery. The cover will bend and may even crack when the adapter is place.
Some people have reported that even when they buy one of the expensive models that's supposedly designed to work with their phone, it simply doesn't work at all.
Some phones don't like hot-swapping the SIM. You need to either reboot or toggle flight mode on and off.
You often can't send text messages after swapping SIM cards, because the SMS message centre isn't updated. Toggling flight mode on and off can sometimes fix this, otherwise you need to reboot.

I've read a few other things too, but these are the most commonly reported.

The only advice I can give is that if you want to try one of these things out, get a cheap one from eBay and see how it goes. If it doesn't work then at least you haven't spent much.

eXDee

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#1038586 7-May-2014 20:32

I would go as far as creating an elaborate SMS and VOIP based call forwarding setup before even considering something like this.

eg SIP to GSM gateway hooked to a voip server (eg freeswitch) then connect to it with a SIP application over mobile data. Not a clean setup but that's how much avoid these sorts of hacky things.

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Ultimate Geek

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#1038636 7-May-2014 21:41

eXDee: I would go as far as creating an elaborate SMS and VOIP based call forwarding setup before even considering something like this.

eg SIP to GSM gateway hooked to a voip server (eg freeswitch) then connect to it with a SIP application over mobile data. Not a clean setup but that's how much avoid these sorts of hacky things.

I use to forward all the calls from one phone number to another (I had plenty of minutes to use up) just using the forward call feature on the phone however....

- I can't remember if forwarded calls showed the correct caller id

- there's no option to forward an SMS

a quick look shows that there are a few SMS forwarding apps for android. Maybe I should look into one of those....

eXDee

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#1038697 7-May-2014 23:25

SIP can transmit text based messages. It can also choose what caller ID is shown for an incoming call. And by going over mobile data, its not costing minutes to do the forwarding.

But this is a theoretical setup, i dont know how difficult it would be to implement in practice or how feasible it would be. I considered doing this at one point as an experiment, but i found no need to look into it further.

I also wondered whether a mobile number can be ported to a SIP provider (eg 2talk), bypassing the DIY gateway setup. But again, i didnt find myself need for this anymore.