[General Questions and Answers] midnightrider:
What dual sim Android phone for my needs?

Hi,

My background is mostly dumbphone use (late adopter) then a couple

BlackBerrys and a hacked Nokia 5800 for entertainment value. My needs were

pretty limited to good calling quality and a physical keyboard since I was working

as a consultant with a global team and had to be able to email all the time and

never miss a call or an email. The notifications and mail on BIS were great. Have not

gotten a newer model so I have no idea if they still work good or not

without BIS. Worked at home for a few years and put the Blackberry away and just

used the old landline.

Anyway....I have an office job once again and will be travelling on business a lot so my

phone needs are changing. As you all know even basic stuff like shopping

requires an Android phone. Since I'm going to mainly be in two locations I

want a dual sim phone with good LTE support for EU (specifically CZ). I have

been over tons of reviews and problem reports and I can't find any obvious

choices. The oneplus models get good reviews but I see owners complaining

bitterly they wish they would have gotten a straight Android phone and don't

believe they'll ever see Marshmellow. The Nexus 6P is a single sim as you

know but 6.0.1 of Android appears to have borked LTE which is critical for

me. Xiaomi models have gotten mixed reviews and complaints about the OS

also.

I have never owned or used an Android phone (heck I don't even use google anything)

and the idea of going out and buying a Galaxy S7 dual sim for around 950 bucks seems

crazy to me based on my historical 300 dollar BlackBerry budget and limited needs. But

the S7 is about the only phone I haven't seen people complaining about. I have no idea

but since I plan to use the phone just as a phone and to do shopping and travel stuff like

plane reservations, boarding passes, train and subway tickets etc. I can't imagine I need

a heavy duty phone with tons of memory and a 8 core CPU plus GPU! I am fine with

not having the latest Android version, I would actually prefer not to be bleeding edge. I

just want the security updates since obviously this is a big issue with Android.

Can anybody tell me what the good cheap choices are in dual sim phones that

will handle the bands I need and my usage patterns? This is basically

Vodafone CZ which is a superset of what I'll need in the other country I'll

be in. I don't have to have a status symbol phone or anything glamorous.

What's important to me aside from the bands and modes

2G capabilities GPRS, EDGE, GSM 900, GSM 1800
3G capabilities UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA+, (B1) 2100
4G capabilities LTE, LTE-A, (B20) 800, (B8) 900, (B3) 1800, (B1) 2100, (B7) 2600

is good build quality and long/reasonable battery life since I'll be travelling

with the phone. Maybe one with a removeable battery would be good but

it looks like that is going out of fashion.

Thanks a lot for any helpful ideas. I'm just totally lost. It's like going into a restaurant

with a 1,000 page menu. Even if you had some idea what you wanted when you came

in now that you look over what they have you can't find it.

Joe