Dual sim mobile needed

[Chief Tiff]

Hi guys, I currently have to use two mobiles; one for home and another when I'm at work as I can only get Telstra Rural there. I originally bought a Telstra T100 phone which I have come to loathe with a passion that cannot be easily imagined. For the past 15 years or so I've always had Nokias.

So what I need is a dual SIM mobile that works on Telstra's next g blue tick thingy rural network.

What I don't need is any form of internet access, built in library, music connectivity or anything else regarded as "essential" by a twelve year old. In fact, if it can come with a big rotating numerical dial on the front even better. I only use mobiles to talk to people and send the odd text message; extra buttons and functions only confuse me

So....what is out there? I know Nokia don't make what I want and all of the walk-in mobile phone shops aren't much help as they are staffed by spotty teenagers who know how to connect to Headbook and tlk n txt spk (lol!) but go cross-eyed when asked to explain the differences between GSM networks.

[SAISAY]

Nokia C1-00
I have one. I bought it from Harvey Norman.
Nokia C1-00 - Full phone specifications

You can only select one sim card at a time but can switch between them.
Cheers
Wolffie

[Chief Tiff]

Isn't the Telstra rural system 850mghz? This phone only does 900 & 1800 mghz. It's the rural network I need access to when at work, at home I use Virgin (optus). I've tried normal Telstra next G and that didn't work at all.

[dabbler]

Take a look at the Sony Xperia Tipo that Woolies and DSE (and probably others by now) have at $148. According to the DSE website it handles 850/1900 UTMS. But according to Sony it handles a larger range of frequencies. It just depends whether they are selling a US model or not. Also, I recently bought a Huawei Ascend from DSE and the specs quoted on the website and in-store were wrong (it could handle far more freqs) so it might pay to actually look at the box and literature.

Back to the Sony. If I've read the Whirlpool FAQ on mobile freqs correctly then 850 is Telstra regional 3G and 1900 is Optus 2G, so even at the basic level it may work for you.

However - do you want an active dual sim phone ? (The Tipo is not.) Weigh up whether you want only one sim to operate at the one time with one or other always in "busy" mode - vs - active dual sim where both sims can potentially recieve calls at the same time (subject to your location obviously).

If you go the smart phone route - consider when, where and what plan does the updating. Or get one with WiFi and make sure you can turn off data roaming when away from WiFi.

It also might pay to explore the info on Whirlpool forums.

[Chief Tiff]

I'm trying to avoid the "smart phone" route, mainly because the damn things are physically too big. Plus, as stated I only use a mobile for calls and texting, I can cope without having access to Facebook indefinately. It doesn't matter if it automatically changes SIM or not as I only give the Telstra number out to VERY few people and once I'm at home that mobile gets switched off for two weeks anyway. Music, GPS, any form of intenet access....nah, not interested; all the phones I've had over the last few years or so had all those. My partner has one and you need to use a bloody stylus on it, plus what she spends on data plans for it is nearly what I pay for my home service giving me connectivity for two laptops, a desktop and an I-pad.

The main reason I need a new phone is that my Nokia...er...something ancient is starting to misbehave a little bit. The Telstra phone is a Telstra T100 that I absolutely cannot stand; I'm used to the way Nokia's work. The text functions on the telstra drive me absolutely bananas; I hate predictive text and trying to capitalise and punctuate a message the way I bloody want it to is a nightmare. Unfortunately 99.9% of that particular phone usage is texting; I've never even bothered setting up a message bank as anyone important enough to know that number knows I probably won't be in a position to answer and can get hold of me another way. If I can find a replacement for both of them I can retire the Nokia and destroy the tesltra with a hammer, burn it, use the ashes to fertilise a small tree, allow it to grow to maturity and chop it down with a very blunt axe. Before burning that too.

I've never heard of this Whirlpool forum, when I get some time tomorrow I'll investigate further, so thanks for the tip Dabbler.

[dabbler]

I finally went down the smart phone path when my aging and very basic Nokia just stopped talking to cell towers. It was a replacement for my previous highly featured very expensive but non-smart Nokia turned out to be non-swimmer too (told you it was a non-smart phone). Like you I have no real need for anything above the basics either but by the time I factored in dedicated car chargers and possibly hands-free etc then even the cheapest voice and text only options were close to the price of low-end androids. I have plenty of USB charging options so that became a non-issue. It's not that big surprisingly - wider but thinner than the "candy bar" phones.

Whirlpool started out as a love-hate bigpond website. Nowadays it's a bit of everyone and everything comms related. Navigation is hard to fathom when you only drop in now and again but its FAQs, wikis and general knowledge base are good starting points. I usually jump in through a google search that includes "whirlpool". Some of the spotty teenagers from your first post are probably members so threads can waffle off topic too.

[SAISAY]

I have the Nokia "so called smart phone' as well as the above dual sim card one.
Where I live I cannot get any signal at all on the smart phone but the "el cheapo" dual sim has no problems picking up the signal.
Cheers
SAISAY