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After saying so many good things about Android, Dual-SIM etc. in the previous posts let me get a bit critical for a moment here because there is something that is really bothering me and standing in the way of innovation: Multitasking capabilities on mobile devices are getting worse rather than better.

I know many of you out there think that Symbian is outdated etc. but when you look at it from an application execution point of view quite the contrary is the case. Let's take my Nokia N8 for example: It's multitasking perfectly and has no problem running my web browser, the podcast client, the file manager, my navigation system (Nokia maps), the email client, the gallery, the camera app, the ebook reading application and my messaging client all in memory at the same time. No they are not suspended, they are all running. The podcast player and email client work in the background while my navigation system in the foreground directs me to some place. Switching between the applications is seamless, they are all in memory, they are not suspended, they run all the time. I switch to the browser, it's instantly there, I switch back to the navigation system, it's immediately there, it was never gone. Do all that and then fire up the Youtube app and watch a video. Stop in the middle because somethning else comes up, go to the browser it's still there, go to the navigation system and its still there, go back to the Youtube video and it still waits for you at the position where it has been paused. It's perfect and by the way, it's all done in 256 MB of RAM!!!!

And now turn to Android. Here I have this super high priced tablet that almost has a gigabyte of RAM and I can't even switch between the web browser and my ebook reading app without the other closing. And that is really annoying because I like switching between the two apps to look something up while I am reading and then quickly return to the reader app. But each time I do this there is a delay because when I switch from the browser to the ebook reader, the ebook has to be reloaded again which takes a second or two  because the app was force-quit. When I switch from the reader to the browser again I have to wait a second or two because the web page that was previously shown has to be reloaded and re-rendered. Same with the Youtube app. You pause the video to go to another app for a second and then go back and the video starts from the beginning again. That's really annoying. And that with almost a gigabyte of RAM!?

Back to the N8 and there is zero lag time switching between the ebook reader and the web browser, with a dozen other applications also still running in the background and doing so without draining the battery by the way, which is often said to be the reason why apps are not allowed to fully run in the background on Android and other mobile operating systems. A second or two of delay, that's not too much now is it!? Actually it is, it's a serious usability defect!

Don't get me wrong I am not preaching the return of Symbian and the demise of Android and Co. What I am saying here is that it's time to beef up the multitasking experience on mobile devices because I am sure I am not the only one frequently hopping between applications and wanting to see that happen instantly rather than having to wait till an app is resurrected and has its data reloaded.

I can see tablets taking a bigger market share and replacing notebooks for a lot of things but for that to happen, at least for me, multitasking needs to be significantly improved before I would even remotely consider leaving my netbook at home because there's also the tablet. So please, Google, do something about it, there's living proof that things can be a lot better.

In part 1 and 2 of this review I've been taking a look at the dual-SIM capabilities of this device for voice and data and came away quite impressed. Part 3 now concentrates on the Android experience on this smartphone. Can it really be good for 138 Euros (SIM free) including taxes? The quick answer is: YES!

Four years ago, I reviewed the Nokia 500, a 90 Euro S40 phone that at the time had email capabilities and worked quite well for browsing the net with Opera Mini. But there was no multitasking, no 3G, no Wi-Fi. A couple of years down the road and for a bit more you get a full Android 2.3 smartphone which works surprisingly well.

General UI and Web Browsing Experience

Despite 'only' having 384 MB RAM the applications I use on my other phones on a regular basis work surprisingly well. The general user interface is quick to react, perhaps a tick slower than on those high end Android based smartphones, and scrolling through the screens is fast and absolutely smooth. The stock Android browser works well for smaller web pages but becomes a bit slow on desktop geared pages with lots of pictures and scripts. I also had it crash on me a couple of times on such pages. So I put Opera Mobile on the device and the experience was fast, even when zooming into a full page and having text reformatting active and I didn't get a single crash over several days. Obviously the screen resolution of 320 x 240 pixels makes web browsing far less enjoyable than on super high end phones but again, we are talking about an entry level smartphone here.

EMail

I didn't use either Google's or Samsung's email client on the device but went straight to K9 my preferred open source and independent email program on Android. Works great, fast and pretty much the same way as on any other Android phone. 100% usable

Youtube

Now video streaming must be a problem on such a cheap device, right!? Wrong, Youtube videos play smoothly without any issues over 3G, even when HQ mode is switched on. Very impressive!

Gaming

O.k. so you can't play games with such a cheap device!? Wrong again, Angry Birds plays just fine. It takes a while to load, but once there, animation is absolutely smooth. Even more impressive.

Other Apps and Text Input

I also tried a couple of other apps I'm used to on Android such as the '3G Watchdog" to keep track of my cellular data use and to have a cellular data on/off switch on the idle screen. Also, my favorite German train table lookup and punctuality notifier app (DB Navigator) works as designed. Obviously multi tasking is limited with 384 MB of RAM so changing from one app to another has a fraction a second or so of delay involved which would not be there if the app would have still been running in the background. But quite frankly, not even my Android pad with 1 GB of RAM can keep the web browser and e-book reader in memory simultaneously (something that needs to be investigated…).

Summary

There's of course much more to be discovered such as for example how good the GPS receiver is in combination with Google maps, how good pictures are that are taken with the built in 3 megapixel camera are, etc. etc. but I'll keep that for another time. In general, however, the direction is clear. The low-budget end of mobile is evolving as rapidly as the high end. 5 years ago, the same amount of money bought you much less than today, certainly not a full fledged smartphone experience as you can have with this device today.

Take the Nokia N95 for example, one of the most advanced devices 5 years ago. It included most of the functionalities of the Samunsg 6102 Duos, but it didn't have a touchscreen and the CPU and graphics unit were much slower.  Also, the N95 cost way more than the 139 Euro the Duos costs today. And the Single SIM variant of the device, the Samsung Galaxy Y costs even less than that. The only thing the N95 could probably do better was taking pictures…

In a previous post I reported on the growing number of SMS messages and mobile voice minutes in Germany in 2011 from the recent report of the German regulator. Another interesting number contained in the report is the reported growth of mobile data volume. Instead of the exponential growth often portrayed, growth is actually slowing (see page 87):

• In 2008, 11.47 million GB of data was transferred in mobile networks, followed by 33.29 million GB in 2009. That's a 3x increase
• In 2010, 65,41 million GB of data was transferred in mobile network in Germany, that's a 1x increase from the value a year earlier
• In 2011, 93 million GB of data was transferred in mobile networks in Germany, that is "only" 0.5x more than the year before.

In other words: While the growth is still phenomenal the year over year increase is slowing down while the number of users is rising, 28.6 million UMTS users in Germany in 2011 compared to 21.2 million a year earlier.

And another little number to ponder on before I close: 93 million GB of mobile data traffic in 2011, that's 0.093 billion GB. Compare that to the 3.7 billion GB of data that was exchanged over DSL and cable in Germany the same year. That's 40 times that number and it has increased by 500 million GB every year for the past few years! The addition in one year alone is 5x more than the total mobile Internet traffic of 2011. That's something to ponder upon…

In part one of of this review on the Samsung Galaxy Y Duos GT-6102, I've taken a look how simultaneous voice and SMS via two SIM cards in one phone works in practice. Equally important is how Internet access can be managed in the phone when both SIM cards are attached to a network simultaneously and how data use interacts with incoming voice calls and SMS messages. So here's part two that focuses on that.

Selecting the SIM card to be used for Internet Connectivity

Before using the data service for the first time it is necessary to configure whether SIM1 or SIM2 should be used for data. If the data service is used on a SIM card that is configured for the 2G-only transceiver chain, only GPRS or EDGE is available. If configured for the other SIM card, the 3G network is used if available. This can be changed at runtime and no reboot is required. The picture on the left shows how this is configured in the 'SIM card manager' option in the Android Settings. In the example, data service is currently configured for SIM1, while outgoing voice and SMS messages are configured for SIM2 as can be seen by the blue '2' logo in the status bar.

Roaming Blocker Settings for Internet Connectivity

Per default, the option to use the mobile network for data service while roaming is disabled in Android to prevent high data charges from accumulating unintentionally. As you can see in the picture above SIM2 is from a foreign network operator and thus this SIM roams in the country which is indicated by the little 'R' above the second signal strength indicator in the status bar. When switching data service over to SIM2 in this configuration, the data service remains inactive until I activate data roaming for SIM2 via the standard Android is enabled as shown in the second picture. As you can see there, data options are available for each SIM card separately so the roaming blocker can be used with one SIM card only, for both or for non of the two. Also, Access Point Names (APNs) can be configured separately for each SIM card. If you have two SIM cards of different countries in the device and want to use each for data service in the home country, the following settings are required:

1. Deactivate data roaming on both SIMs to ensure you don't use the data service accidentally while roaming. 
2. In the SIM card manager menu entry as shown in the first picture, simply switch data service from SIM1 to SIM2 or vice versa once you arrive in the other country
3. Toggle the "use only 2G networks" option shown in the second picture to assign the 2G/3G transiever to the SIM card that is used for the data service. It's a bit strange that this is not done together wtih step 2 but something one can live with.

Completely Deactivating Cellular Data Use

If the main use of the phone is for voice and SMS messaging while Internet connectivity should only be established over Wi-Fi, it's also possible to completely deactivate cellular data use for both SIM cards. This is done by either selecting SIM1 or SIM2 for data services and by then disabling the "use packet data" option in the network menu.

Incoming and Outgoing Calls During Data Use

So what happens to incoming our outgoing calls or SMS messages while you browse the web or you use other applications that require the cellular data service? Let's say you use SIM1 for the data service and are connected to a 3G UMTS network. In this case incoming and outgoing calls and SMS messages on SIM1 do not affect Internet connectivity, they run in paralell over the UMTS network. An incoming voice call on SIM2, however, interrupts the data session for the duration of the call as the mobile can only transmit in the uplink direction to one network at a time. While concurrent voice and data service over two independent SIMs would be nice it is at least good to see that incoming calls and SMS messages on SIM2 are not missed because the smartphone is busy transferring data via SIM1.

Wi-Fi Hotspot Functionality and Performance

An now comes the kicker: As this 139 Euro phone runs Android 2.3 it includes the Wi-Fi hotspot functionality to wirelessly tether notebooks and other Wi-Fi based devices via it's 3G cellular connectivity to the Internet. I gave it a try with my netbook and got flawless performance, round trip delay times of 100 ms and a downlink throughput of around 6 MBit/s, the maximum that can be reached with a HSDPA category 8 device. In the uplink direction, I only reached 384 kbit/s, so only R99 channels are available in the uplink. Not an issue at all as this speed is still good enough for most purposes and one can't really complain for that price.

Summary

In summary, voice and data service work well alongside each other on the Duos Y and it's very good to see that incoming voice calls on one SIM are not missed because data is transfered on the other. The data roaming blocker works and can be disabled if necessary for each SIM card separately and the 2G/3G transceiver chain can be switched from one SIM card to another via the settings menu without resetting the phone, something that comes in handy when moving from one country to another.

And this concludes part two of the dual-SIM review. One question now remains: How usable is Android on a sub-150 Euro device!? Stay tuned for part 3…

Dual-SIM phones have been around for many years and I first looked at the concept back in 2008. You can defend yourself against patchy network coverage with them, you can use them to evade high interconnect charges in some countries, and you can use them if you travel between different countries and need to be reachable with a national number to people in different countries. So far I've never picked one up though as they were either produced by small Asian companies of unknown origin or came with a very dumb phone operating system. But lately, Samsung for example has started offering Dual-SIM phones based on Android and now things have become even more interesting for me. Late in 2011, the Galaxy Y Duos (a.k.a. the GT-S6102) was announced and is now available on the market. Time to pick one up, even more so as it only cost €138 including the 19% sales tax!

To describe how dual-SIM works in practice with this device I've decided to split up the description in three parts. In the first post I'll focus on the dual-SIM capability for voice calls and SMS. The second part then deals with dual-SIM capability for Internet connectivity. In part 3 I'll then focus on how Android works on a sub-150 Euro phone.

Trying to figure out how dual-SIM works in practice from sources on the web proved to be difficult. There are a number of articles describing the feature but each misses some points that are important to me or even makes wrong statements. Also, the user manual that can be downloaded from Samsung's website doesn't give much insight. So I decided to cover the territory in more detail here.

Dual Standby – Two Transceiver Chains

On this particular model the two SIM card slots are below the battery. Good enough for my purposes as I have no need to exchange the SIM cards regularly. When powering-on the device the PIN code for both SIM cards are requested, one after another. Once entered, both SIM cards register in a network. Read carefully, the sentence says 'a' network, because each SIM card can register to a different network. This requires to independent transceiver chains because registering to two independent networks requires to listen to different signals on different frequencies simultaneously which can't be done with a single transceiver chain. One transceiver chain is 2G/3G (GSM/UMTS) capable while the second one is 2G (GSM) only.

Individual Network Settings for Each SIM Card

Which SIM card is used for which chain can be configured in the the "mobile networks" settings in the Android configuration menu. While standard Android phones have just one list of settings such as whether packet data is used in the home network, if packet data is allowed while roaming, which APN is used, which type of network to attach to and which network operator to use, this phone has two tabs in this menu as shown in the picture below which lets the user configure all these values for each SIM card independently.

Two SIMs, Two Different Networks, One Chain is 2G/3G

Selecting which SIM card is used for the 2G/3G chain and which one for the 2G-only chain is hidden behind the "Use only 2G network option". If activated for one SIM card the option is automatically deactivated in the options on the second tab for the other SIM card. In other words, it is not possible to set both transceiver chains to 2G-only mode. The 2G/3G chain always remains in this mode. Some reviews have come to the conclusion that this means that one transceiver chain is 2G-only while the other is 3G-only. This is not correct, however. If the network operator of the SIM card configured for the 2G/3G chain does not have a 3G network, both transceiver chains use a 2G network and it can be different ones. I tried it, it works fine so we can put that rumor to rest. Why the interface does not allow to configure both chains for 2G-only mode is a beyond me though.

Which chipset is actually used in the phone is a bit of a mystery. Samsung doesn't say but there are some sources on the web that point to Broadcom's 21553 System on a Chip (SoC) that includes baseband(s), CPU and GPU. Have a look at the data sheets here and here which point to that chip and some background info about the dual-SIM capability of the Soc here and some general information from Broadcom here which unfortunately doesn't mention the dual-SIM capability.

Outgoing Phone Calls and SMS

Once both chains have connected to a network, two independent signal strength indicators are shown in the Android status bar at the top of the screen. In the status pull down menu, the network name of each network is shown ('Telekom.de' and 'O2 – de' in the first picture above) and the user can select from which SIM card to originate phone calls and SMS messages. The number of the SIM card used for outgoing calls and SMS messages is then also shown in the status bar in a blue box ('1' or '2'). Also the background wallpaper can be set to change depending on which SIM card is selected for outgoing activity which gives another visual indication to the user. Neat! Selecting the SIM card via the status pull down menu is possible at any time even while an SMS message or phone number has already been typed in.

Some dual-SIM phones I have seen in the past offer two 'green' buttons in the phone application so the user can select which SIM to use for an outgoing call this way. On the Galaxy Y Duos, however, this is not the case, the SIM card selection for outgoing activity is only possible via the status pull down menu. While that looked like an unhappy implementation to me at first I came to the conclusion that this is actually a good implementation for a usage scenario in which outgoing communication usually uses the same SIM card. In the phone log and in the SMS application, Android has been modified to always show which phone call and which SMS used which SIM card by showing a small blue logo with '1' or '2' inside that looks the same as the blue logo in the status menu. That's neat so you can always find out later which SIM card you have used for what should you be in doubt.

Incoming Phone Calls and SMS

Incoming communication while no phone call is in progress works via both SIM cards. This shows that the device is really connected to both networks simultaneously. Calls for SIM card one are shown with a little blue '1' logo while the call is alerted and later on in the log. Calls for SIM card two are shown with a blue logo that has a '2' inside. During a call, calls or SMS messages arriving via the other SIM card are not delivered as the device does not react to the paging. After a few seconds the caller is either forwarded to the voice mail system or to an announcement that the user is currently not reachable. Note that this is different from a call forwarding or announcement because the user is busy. SMS messages are queued in the SMS service center and a periodic retry ensures their delivery once the call on the other SIM card has finished. This might not happen immediately though depending on the retry period of the SMS service center. For details see this post from last year on 'SMS Delivery After Loss of Signal'.

Network Selection

While each SIM card per default searches for the home network or a roaming network automatically, it is possible to perform a manual network search on a per SIM basis and select a different network when roaming. The function is not implemented correctly though, as after a reboot, automatic network selection is activated again. Something to improve in the next software version.

Summary

After a couple of days using the phone I am still impressed. The baseband stack and Android OS implementation is very stable and all test calls and SMS messages to both SIM cards were delivered. Except for the "2G only" setting described above which is a bit misleading the dual SIM card approach was nicely integrated into Android on the device. 5-thumbs up!

I'll finish for today although I'm sure you are interested in the Internet access side of things as well. Coming up soon here…

Two interesting numbers for discussions revolving around the future of SMS and traditional mobile voice telephony:

In 2011, 55 billion SMS messages were sent in Germany (population 82 million), up from 41 billion messages the year before. That's a stunning 30% increase! Not exactly a downward trend from a quantitative point of view, despite the growing competition from mobile instant messaging services.

Traditional mobile voice telephony is also not on the decline, despite the ever growing number of non-voice communication methods. In the course of 2011, 107 billion outgoing voice minutes were logged in Germany, up from 102 billion a year earlier. That compares to 191 billion outgoing voice minutes over fixed line networks (down from 195 billion minutes the year before).

For details have a look here and here (sorry, both sources in German)

Ever since the SMS service was launched back then in the mid 1990's, most users around the world only pay for SMS messages they are originating but not for SMS messages they receive. And that is a good thing as users don't have control over incoming SMS messages and whether they want to receive them or not. This has led to the interesting situation that when roaming to other countries, incoming SMS messages are still free, pretty much the only roaming service in GSM that is free.

I am sure some network operators over the years would have really liked to charge for incoming SMS messages to users while they are roaming in another country but perhaps they decided it was not worth the effort of then also providing users with the means to deactivate SMS reception while abroad. Incoming MMS messages are charged when roaming by the way but most if not all phones today have an option not to download incoming MMS messages while roaming.

While this is pretty much the status-quo around the world, North American carriers are a bit different as some (if not all?) have started charging for incoming SMS messages some years ago. In other words if you decide not to take an unlimited texting plan and you get spamed, you pay for it. And it seems that happens more and more often as suggested by this post over at Gigaom. In a part of the world where companies are sued for much less I wonder why that hasn't happened so far!?

Back in 2009 I was musing about a scheme in which the data of heavy users could be dynamically de-prioritized on the cell level if other users are present. This way the quality of experience, i.e. the data rates available to the the majority of users would not suffer as a result of a few users with intensive bandwidth requirements. On the other hand heavy users would still get high data rates while they were alone in the cell.

At the time I was made aware that Ericsson actually had a flavor of such a feature implemented already but even today, I haven't seen it in use so far. When I recently revisited the topic still thinking it was a good idea I noticed that I had perhaps missed a potential side effect of such an approach:

All cells in UMTS and LTE networks use the same channel and thus the signals of different cells interfere with each other. Heavy activity in one cell reduces the data rates available in neighboring cells as the activity in one cell is seen as noise by devices being served by neighboring cells. So in a scenario where a heavy user is pretty much alone in a cell and is thus allowed to transfer data as fast as possible, a user in a neighboring cell especially at the cell edge will have a much lower data rate available than if the heavy user in the other cell would simply be throttled to a much lower speed.

So to be fair to users in neighboring cells the approach would have to be extended to also take traffic in neighboring cells into account. In practice neighboring cells would have to exchange information about their current load. Not impossible to do, but not trivial to implement either.

Help might come from advanced receivers that include inter cell interference cancellation (ICIC) which would reduce the noise rise issue in the scenario describe above and hence make the exchange of load information between cells superfluous. So even while the "dynamically de-prioritzing heavy users on the cell level" scheme still waits for its use in a live network it remains an interesting "Gedankenexperiment" with a couple of new turns and twists added!

Automatic updates of apps and plugins is usually a good thing for most people to stay secure and up to date. However, the mechanism can also be misused to place a cuckoo's egg on your device before you know it. After it would have happened twice to me in recent months if I had not turned auto updates off I thought I'd write a post about it.

The first time it almost happened was when the author of "ReloadEvery", a Firefox plugin I use to reload some pages every couple of minutes so my login would not expire decided to monetize the plugin and included self installing ad-ware in a new version. Fortunately, I had automatic updates disabled and only found out when I wanted to install it on another computer and was warned by the comments on the plugin page of other users. Older versions were still available for download and I could easily adapt an older non-adware version to my current browser version.

The second time it would have happened just recently was with the ShowIP add-on that suddenly started sending out all IP addresses visited to an external service once the latest version got installed. This time I was warned by a Sophos security post. It caused quite a row and for the moment the download page has reverted back to version 1.0 of the add-on. Go grab the add-on and store it on your PC for later re-installation if you use it while you can because it seems the authors may not have understood the real issue people have with this and have announced "improvements" that still send off the ip addresses to an external server but this time using an encrypted connection.

Anyway, the learnings I take away from this are:

a) Only use auto-update for programs you trust (e.g. OS update, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc) but not for add-ons

b) Be very careful what kind of free apps and add-ons you install PCs and mobile devices

c) Disable auto updates of everything else as sometimes you don't really get what you want.

Good luck…

Last year I was by chance on one of those Lufthansa planes that had Internet via satellite connectivity when flying back from the US over Europe. Despite the long round trip times, the overall experience was quite breathtaking. The only thing that can be done to reduce the long round trip delay times is not to use a satellite based but a ground based system. This is a bit difficult over the Atlantic but when flying over land, such a system is quite feasible.

While there are perhaps already existing solutions for ground based Internet solutions for planes, another alternative has been trialled recently: LTE to planes. According to this post and an even more detailed post here (sorry, both in German), Airbus, Alcatel-Lucent and Deutsche Telekom "flew" a trial in November 2011to see how well data could be exchanged between a plane and LTE base stations on the ground, separated around 100 km from each other. The post says that standard LTE equipment was used with antennas only slightly modified to direct the signal towards the the sky instead of to the ground. Speeds of 30 Mbit/s were reached in one direction and 17 Mbit/s in the other. The post is a bit ambiguous in which direction which speed was received but nevertheless that is quite impressive and shows that a cell should have more than enough capacity for the few planes that are its coverage area. At such a distance, the article says, 600 base stations would be required to cover Europe. That is just a handful per country.

But don't get your hopes up to see this in planes anytime soon, though, as there is not even yet a frequency band dedicated for this service.

P.S.: And I really wonder where the antenna was installed on the plane? 🙂