I’ve been using the iPhone for the longest time and Android devices have ruled the roost when it came to supporting multiple sims. My wife’s Note 5 had support for 2 SIM cards, 3 years before Apple decided to announce that the XS will have the same privilege.
The XS would be making its official Malaysian debut on the 26th of October, but the Malaysian version would be the one supporting one Nano-Sim and one eSIM. I myself have been using the X and I’ve a 5S with a company SIM card. This is hardly an ideal arrangement and not knowing whether Malaysian telecos would be releasing eSIMs (Maxis’ seems to only run on a Huawei watch), I decided to get an XS Max from Hong Kong.
What’s so special about the mainland China/Hong Kong/Macau XS Max? It has support for two physical SIMs. The SIM tray supports one SIM on either side, making it a cinch to finally get some form of feature parity with Android phones and at the same time ask the pertinent question of “Why haven’t they thought of this earlier?”
So what can you do with Dual SIMs? A fair bit apparently. You get to set which gets to be the default voice line, which gets to be the data line, and which gets to be the the iMessages/Facetime line. Under your Contacts, you get to set from which line they’ll be called from (otherwise, it would be from the default voice line.
In so far, both the Digi and Maxis SIMs have been playing nice in a single device. I must say that Maxis has a lot better coverage and has been doing the data duties especially in the Golden Triangle area in KL.
My impressions on the XS Max? The performance and battery life has been outstanding; the phone still had a fair bit of juice despite normal usage which would have drained the X. The larger screen estate is well appreciated and the big phone “feel” is there after going missing during the transition from the iPhone 7 Plus to the iPhone X.
