I was at Fiamma the other night for the unveiling of a new technology company here in the Philippines. The invite was rather vague, announcing a new range of digital lifestyle products. I’ve never heard of Verzio before – and who would have – they’re rather new. They make laptops, cellphones, digital cameras, and pretty soon Pocket PCs which are due out next year.
Dual SIM in the Philippines
Their killer product is the new dual SIM phone. Yep, you’ve probably seen phone hacks on the Internet where guys cut up SIM cards into two in order to fit two SIMs in one slot. This however is different. Take a look at the photo below. You’ll notice that there are TWO operator logos running at the same time with TWO signal transmitters. Holy cow! The dual SIM phone is now legit. These phones are perfect for those people with two SIM cards which is rather common nowadays in the Filipino workspace. There are two models, the Duplii and the Twinn.
So how does it work? I managed to try the user interface and worked my way through the nicely skinned menu system resembling Nokia and Sony Ericsson design. What happens basically is that your SIM cards are assigned “1” and “2” accordingly and you can make calls and reply using SIM “1” or “2.” In the same way, messages are labeled as coming from either phone number. I must stress — both SIMs are active simultaneously.
Duplii SRP PHP 15,000.00
3G Tri-Band Dual SIM Phone
Candybar design
Simultaneous dual SIM standby
Bluetooth 2.0
Data transfer via USB
3G video conference and calls
FM Radio
2.0MP camera
microSD expandable memory
Available in metal black
Twinn SRP PHP 12,000.00
Triband EDGE Dual SIM Phone
EDGE connectivity
Slider design
Bluetooth
Touch screen with stylus
microSD expandable memory
1.3MP camera
Available in Racer Black
Funny how the low end model has a touch screen feature with stylus and the high end model doesn’t.
Amidst the crowd of people in the event, I saw a familiar face in Chris Uyco who happens to be the VP and General Manager of Stanmore, the company that’s bringing in Verzio to the consumer market. Chris is a very important figure in the technology retail industry. He’s the guy behind Haldane, the company that brings in Sony Ericsson products, the O2 XDA, and whatever became of BenQ-Siemens. I was glad to see Chris once again and was also rather excited to know that it would be his group that takes care of bringing in Verzio to the Philippines.
As mentioned, the phones are just the tip of the iceberg. The developers and engineers are formerly from Sony Ericsson and Nokia according to what I gathered. Other products include M700 7.1MP point and shoot camera series that’s sub P10,000 and the Core 2 Duo laptops under P40,000.00. I’ll be writing more about Verzio’s entry into the local market as they launch more things. This is definitely worth keeping tabs on.
I asked Chris how the big three telcos would receive this phone. He says that they are actually excited to have this over in the Philippines. I guess this means that telcos are resigned to the fact that Filipinos may have really, more than one SIM. Exclusivity is dead.
Check out more photos and additional thoughts at Cellphone9.
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