Thanks John.

quickymart:

 

Something I forgot to ask - I want to keep SMS's and contacts separate between the SIM cards. So all the SMS's/contacts on SIM1 should have nothing to do with SIM2. Same thing for the Google Photos (each phone has its own Google login so they're separate).

 

If it's a Samsung Galaxy I'm looking at getting, does this work, or do they all need to be combined into one massive thing? ie, all the contacts/SMS's/photos are mixed up together, or can they be separated?

 

google login is full control handset wide as soon as you use it in any google app with android. huge problem for people with shared gmail accounts or shared google drives that makes microsoft services a better option to use instead.

SMS is all in the one app - have to choose what to send thru but it seems to _mostly_ stick per conversation once you start one, contacts will be merged to one big list. Dual sim is not a solution for 2 independent groups of contacts, that still needs dual phones. Too easy to share with the wrong one IME.

Cheers Richard.

Question I just thought of - each handset currently has its own Google Drive account for backups separate to each device (ditto each one has its own Google Photos account). How would that work? Can you have two instances of Google Drive/Photos etc on the same device, or is this not possible?

quickymart: ... Can you have two instances of Google Drive/Photos etc on the same device, or is this not possible?

richms: google login is full control handset wide as soon as you use it in any google app with android. huge problem for people with shared gmail accounts or shared google drives that makes microsoft services a better option to use instead. ...

Emphasis mine

Ah crap, that won't work then :( oh well.

Your phone should allow you to choose which sim car to use for mobile data and phone calls by default. I usually hunt for sim car deals on cheapies for data usage.

Yes true :) but that's not the issue :(
Maybe with my Spark one I might look at moving the backup from being with Google Drive to Onedrive or something else - somewhere I can backup images, Whatsapp, etc.