More than this it would have to become std across the range — otherwise you’ll just get a cheap/basic business phone, but yearn for a top-end personal phone anyway… and again have 2 devices.

In summary, not convinced this is really going to work.

Having used a dual-sim phone here in the UK for the last 3 years now, i can only sing praises for how valuable the feature is. I am talking dual-sim as in concurrently operational, transfer-calls-from-one-to-the-other functionality, conference-one-with-the-other functionality..

Here’s what i’ve found good and bad about the handsets i’ve encountered:

Good:
Size & Weight – they’re no bigger than most phones – maybe slightly as in max 3mm more to accommodate the bigger battery needed to power two radios at the same time/more power-hungry chips
Convenience – Unmatchable – once you can carry and use one phone instead of two, a lot of things become easier for you. Depending on how certain features are implemented, it can be very fun to have this key feature
Cost to Buy/Run- Very important, and i can happily say it makes life cheaper in this department too! The most expensive dual-sim phone i’ve owned cost £180 delivered sim-free, and can still fetch £120 used on the market, and i’ve had it a year! Since i can carry two sims around, i can more easily manage my costs for calling etc as i don’t have to be restrained to the calling rates of one network

Bad:
Network features – Most dual-sim phones still coming out may have one 3G-capable radio and then the second won’t be, so you’re restrained in that regard. We need to see dual-sim phones matching the radio capabilities of the latest standard phones if this is going to be overcome.
Contact management – i have to say this can be a pain when you’re thinking of backup/upgrade etc, unless you’ve been saving everything to the SIM, which limits how much info you can have per contact. I’ve been a power user all my life with mobile phones, and i regularly have 3/4 numbers and other little details under each contact name, so this info needs to be retained for contacts when i upgrade
Slow phone OS – this is something that is more manufacturer-related, as some dual-sim phones seem to work quicker than others. Samsung needs to fix up here – it’s the first time i’ve dropped a specific name into my comments, but they really do. They have great-working devices, they just need to get the software on the phone to work as quickly as it does for single-sim phones.
Battery life – This depends on the networks you use more than anything from my experience, but designing the phones with this in mind will hopefully mean 1400mAh+ batteries as a minimum when talking dual-sim. Nothing like running out of battery and BOTH your phones go off-line! ***I have to commend Samsung for allowing one of the SIMs to be switched off while the other is active (on the fly too!) – this allows the phone to operate on one radio, saving precious battery life when it is low.

Summary – They’ve got a long way to go, and i’m excited by the prospect of players like Nokia wading in, and other rumours of other manufacturers going android on this feature

Let’s see if they can improve the experience -it’s no longer a gimmick and i feel a decent dual-sim phone is on the horizon for me, and it’ll make all the difference!

It would have to be a phone that was unlocked so that it would allow a user to have different providers SIM – which the networks and manufature won’t like.

Personally I don’t want high end, but there are those that will so having something that the business might by but lets you put your own personal sim in probably won’t do someone that craves that high end device.

Still I think that it’s worthwhile, just might need some thought as to how this is going to work and who the target market is.