Dual SIM 3G phones in India

Indians fancy dual SIM mobile phones. There is no denying this. The only manufacturers who realize this are Indian manufacturers. Spice and Micromax had a home run with the dual SIM category. The deluge of dual SIM’s so far has been with 2G+2G and GSM+CDMA. With the 3G services launched, the appetite for a 2G+3G phones is just beginning. 2G+3G phones will be a gold rush.

So many 3G phones are released and yet there are handful of 3G+2G phones in the market. I wonder why. Would this be another miss by the global majors? Would Indian vendors make the maximum out of this opportunity too? Looks like it.

photo © 2006 Windell Oskay | more info (via: Wylio)

Spice QT95 is the first Dual SIM (2G+3G) phone to be released. I was under the impression that it is the only phone in the market. I was so wrong. 2 new phones have arrived right under my nose. Spice G6565 and Samsung Star Duos B7722 are the two phones. Yes folks. Samsung. Samsung is playing all kinds of games. Hardware games, software games, touch screen games, dual SIM games and operating system games. It is the only player in the ecosystem which has hands in all the departments.

Samsung Star Duos B7722

Let me say this out loud : This will be a phone to watch and probably is a star already. This phone is a killer phone.

Star Duos delivers punches from which you cannot possibly recover. It’s is a dual SIM phone (3G+2G) and you can plug in two 2G SIM’s if you so wish. Dual SIM isn’t its best feature. It has a 5 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom and LED flash. Star Duos has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It can record videos up to 30 fps, can play almost all the video formats and yes it has your FM radio too.

Star Duos has a 3.2 inch touch screen powered by TouchWiz 2.0 for seamless navigation. It can read memory cards up to 8GB. Now for the grand finale, Duos boasts of a 12 hours 50 mins of talk time and 17.5 days of standby time. There is no mention whether this talk time is on a 2G network or a 3G network. Even if it is on a 2G network then it is mighty impressive and should find a place on our top 10 marathon phones list. Flipkart price : Rs. 11399.

Spice QT95

A dual SIM phone with 2G+3G (GSM), QT95 comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera and rear-facing secondary camera for video calling. A music player, FM radio and FM recorder are on-board. In addition to 3G, USB and Bluetooth are other forms of connectivity. It has a dual memory slot with each slot reading up to 2GB cards. That’s dual SIM, dual camera and dual memory slot. Before I forget, for all you touch screen haters, this is a QWERTY phone. Retail price is Rs.5500. Flipkart doesn’t yet list this phone.

Spice G6565

A dual SIM phone with 2G+3G (GSM), G6565 comes with a 2 megapixel camera and rear-facing secondary camera for video calling. A music player, FM radio and FM recorder are on-board. In addition to 3G, USB and Bluetooth are other forms of connectivity. Retail price on this is Rs. 10999 from Spice website. This phone doesn’t have any extra features and QT95 looks like a better bargain. Was this launched before QT95? Flipkart doesn’t list this phone.

3G+2G is a category which is bound to explode. We already have a touch screen phone and a QWERTY phone. That leaves us with Android and Nokia. I can almost see Micromax launching a phone in this category. Would it be touch screen or would it be Android powered? Would Nokia miss this boat too?