
(STAR) By Manny de los Reyes - Picture this: You’re a cellphone manufacturer and you want to create a product that will garner an inordinately high amount of attention. What exactly will you put in that product?
Looking at the latest phones from the established brands, one will be hard-pressed to think of a new feature or design element that hasn’t been employed yet. It just seems impossible to think of something that hasn’t been done yet. Or is it?
Last month, Solid Group, the company that originally brought the Sony and Samsung brands to the Philippines and which now owns and operates MyDestiny cable and Internet, launched MyPhone, its locally branded mobile phone line.
So what’s so special about this phone?
It’s the first dual active SIM mobile phone in the Philippines. But there has been a trickle of dual-SIM phones seen earlier in a few cellphone stores, right?
Not exactly. What makes the MyPhone T22 Duo model special is hinted at by the two words — “dual active.” This simply means that unlike earlier dual-SIM phones, the MyPhone T22 Duo allows both SIM cards, even from different networks, to remain active at the same time.
Simply put, you can make or receive calls and text/MMS messages from either of your two lines at any time without having to switch from one line to the other.
David Lim, president of Solid Group, pointed out that the T22 Duo was designed to eliminate the hassle of lugging two phones around or constantly SIM-swapping.
Aside from the breakthrough dual active SIM capability, the mono-block MyPhone T22 Duo is equipped with a 2-megapixel camera with MP4 video playing and recording function, a 2.4-inch touch-screen display, MP3-playing capability, two stereo speakers for surround sound quality, and a micro-SD memory card expansion slot.
The surprisingly affordable (P9,999) T22 Duo is actually the mid-range model of the MyPhone line introduced during the launch.
The entry-level MyPhone model is the P6,999 T11. This multimedia single-SIM handset comes with a 1.3-megapixel camera that can also be used as a webcam. It has a large 2.8-inch touch-screen and a micro-SD memory card slot for up to 2GB of memory.
The high-end launch model is the T33 Windows Mobile Pocket PC, which has a retail price below P20,000. While it does not have the dual active SIM feature of the T22, it does allow you to make a PowerPoint presentation or create an Excel file from your cellphone, thanks to its Windows Mobile operating system.
It can send and receive e-mails via MS Outlook and WAP, while its touch-screen display has handwriting recognition. The T33 also has a 2-MP camera and even a GPS-based Map Asia application to help you find landmarks while traveling.
It even has an IntelliGolf program that shows you your precise location on a golf course and even computes how much farther you are from the hole.
But despite the feature-rich T11 and the T33 Windows Mobile Pocket PC, Lim made it clear that the future of MyPhone lay in the further development of its dual- SIM line, stressing their thrust of “changing the game.”
He hinted at more innovations currently under works, like a Dual Active SIM Windows Mobile Pocket PC with Wi-Fi and GPS.