Many people enjoy having two phone numbers in order to balance their personal and professional life. The old-fashioned way is to just own two phones, but some phones now have two SIM slots, allowing users to use two phone numbers on the same phone, simultaneously. While the iPhone doesn’t have this feature out-of-the-box, there’s now an add-on that lets you replicate it, sort of.
This add-on replaces the default SIM tray with a long connector that’s capable of connecting to two micro-SIM cards, as you can tell from the image above. Once the installation is finished and the phone is restarted, users should see able to select between three different settings: Switch, allowing users to seamlessly switch between different phone numbers; Autoswitch, which switches to the SIM they’re not currently using automatically; and Setup, which allows users to rotatively switch between cards in time periods that can go from 0 to 99 minutes.
Since neither iOS nor the iPhone support dual SIM cards, users won’t be reachable using both phone numbers at once, which can be a large disadvantage to using a genuine dual-SIM phone or just getting a second phone. Only the phone number respective to the card in use will be able to receive and make calls, access the web or perform any task that requires the cell network , although the rotative scheduling we mentioned above will certainly make the task easier.
Check out the video below to watch the product in action:
Dual-SIM support has been wished for by many in the iPhone community, although Apple has so far shown no signs of wanting to implement the feature. It took the company four years to come out with an unlocked iPhone, maybe we’ll see dual-SIM support in four years? Only time can tell, but in the meantime, this custom solution is the best things will get for a few more years.
According to its details page, this Dual-SIM add-on is only compatible with the iPhone 4 running firmware from 4.0 all the way up to 4.3.3. It hasn’t been officially tested on iOS 4.3.4 or on iOS 5 Beta as of yet.
This add-on can be purchased from the Italian e-commerce site VaValiero for €49.90 (or around $70), plus shipping. If you’re interested in this product, I’d advise you to purchase it quickly before Apple’s lawyers decide to take it down.
(via iSpazio) (video source iPhoneItalia YouTube)
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