Dual SIM Support Comes to Windows Phone 8 along with new OEM Partners

One of the long standing demand from Windows Phone 8 users has been the support for dual SIM for the platform. Although Windows Phone 8 is now available in almost all price ranges, these phones run on single SIM only. For countries like India where a large population uses dual SIM phones, the arrival of dual SIM on Windows phones will be a major boost to the sales.

If we take the Android phones which are releasing in India in the price range of Rs 20000 and below, you can see almost all of them are dual SIM phones and this is where the existing Windows Phone portfolio of devices (including Lumia 625, 720, 525, 520 and 620) were failing.

Img Credit: WMPowerUser

With the new dual SIM phone, users will have dual tiles for phone and messaging apps and also the ability to link messaging tiles. With this announcement we also expect to see more low end Windows Phones with dual SIM. Moreover, Microsoft has kept the minimum requirement for hardware on Windows Phone as 4GB and 512MB RAM, so this means prices are not going to increase.

Apart from this, there will be support for Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 and 400 series chipsets, with options that support all major cellular technologies, including LTE (TDD/FDD), HSPA+, EVDO and TD-SCMA. One nice benefit of these additions is that many hardware vendors will be able to use the same hardware for both Android and Windows Phone devices.

New OEM Partners:

Microsoft has announced new OEM partners which includes Foxconn, Gionee, JSR, Karbonn, Lava (Xolo), Lenovo,LG, Longcheer and ZTE along with existing ones HTC, Huawei, Nokia and Samsung. The new partners like Karbonn and Xolo means that we might see more of Windows Phone 8 devices in lower price ranges and with dual SIM support in India.

We are not sure about when these devices will be available, but expect it to happen towards mid 2014.