Dual sim phone, more complicated than I thought, anyone help?

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easy
easy Posts: 2,516 Forumite
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Need someone who is a bit techy to help with this please.
I have a personal phone contract with Tesco, had it for years, love it.
I have a PAYG Sim from Three, which is used so that I can work from home/ have flexible office hours. It is a number which can be given to my company's customers, so they can call me. I don't use any data on it, and very rarely call/text out, as I have plenty of capacity to do that on my personal contract if necessary - or I call them when I am back in the office. I chose Three because any money we put on the sim doesn't expire after a month, AND because they have WiFi calling (Three in Touch), useful cos mobile reception in my house can be a bit dodgy.

So for the last few months I've been carrying 2 phones about with me, a pain in the bum. I've treated myself to a shiny new Moto g5 which takes 2 sims. my intention was that my tesco sim would be my Primary sim - all outgoing calls/texts and data would use that sim, and the Three sim would be secondary, simply there to receive calls.

BUT .... the Three sim won't work as the secondary sim. After a lot of faffing about and chats with three support over twitter, I find that this is because whichever sim is set as the secondary sim only uses 2g - and Three no longer uses 2g - so I can't make this work as I'd like to.

So .. techy experts out there - do you know if any of the networks still support 2g, and have wifi calling (is that even technically possible)? If they also have PAYG which doesn't expire that would be icing on the cake - but I think I'm pushing the boundaries too far with that .

I feel like a right chump at the moment, cos the dual sim phone was a right waste of money :o
I try not to get too stressed out on the forum. I won't argue, i'll just leave a thread if you don't like what I say. :)
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  • ballyblack
    ballyblack Posts: 5,065 Forumite
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    i think most of them do EXCEPT 3, clue is in the name
  • easy
    easy Posts: 2,516 Forumite
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    ballyblack wrote: »
    i think most of them do EXCEPT 3, clue is in the name

    Do you know, I never thought about why Three are called Three. Stupid really, as they now support 4g

    However, not all providers support WiFi calling, do they?
    I try not to get too stressed out on the forum. I won't argue, i'll just leave a thread if you don't like what I say. :)
  • unforeseen
    unforeseen Posts: 7,281 Forumite
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    Unless they have changed something with the G5 then Three are lying

    I have a G4 and with a three PAYG as second sim I can make and receive calls and texts using it
  • bubieyehyeh
    bubieyehyeh Posts: 587 Forumite
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    Most dual sim phones used to only support 3G/4G on one sim, and 2G on the other. The three sim won't work on 2G.

    Moto G4 was the first I found that could support 3G on both sims at same time.

    Perhaps Moto G5 has reverted to cheaper hardware which doesn't support dual 3g.
  • unforeseen
    unforeseen Posts: 7,281 Forumite
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    According to the specs at http://gadgets.ndtv.com/lg-g5-3308 it is the same as the G4 as far as sim 1/2 capability is concerned
  • ballyblack
    ballyblack Posts: 5,065 Forumite
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    Different phone an LG G5 is not a Moto G5 , easily confused

    For whats its worth Moto G4 is Micro Sim, Moto G5 Nano Sim but that should make no difference
  • Frozen_up_north
    Frozen_up_north Posts: 2,420 Forumite
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    edited 19 April 2017 at 10:16PM
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    On a dual SIM phone, you can pick which SIM/slot to use when making an outgoing call. A temporary SIM swap would soon determine if the Three SIM was OK in that particular phone, although I appreciate you might want to use the other SIM for data.

    A friend has a Samsung dual SIM phone, but only uses WiFi data, and doesn't use a Three SIM. On that phone, I think the slots can be renamed from the default of "1" and "2".

    To be fair to Three and needing a 3G or 4G phone, 2G is so last century. I read somewhere that the other networks would soon be turning off their 2G, although when/if is another matter. See:
    https://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/news/mobile/2g-and-3g-could-be-switched-off-by-2020-00394
  • Kernel_Sanders
    Kernel_Sanders Posts: 3,617 Forumite
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    Can you designate either SIM to be the one that pulls in the internet when not on wi-fi?
  • Frozen_up_north
    Frozen_up_north Posts: 2,420 Forumite
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    Kernel_Sanders wrote: »
    Can you designate either SIM to be the one that pulls in the internet when not on wi-fi?

    Unlikely, if it works in a similar manner to my friends Samsung, one slot is 2G only, so the other one is the data/internet one.
  • unforeseen
    unforeseen Posts: 7,281 Forumite
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    On a G4 you can select which SIM for data, both slots do 4G.
    For calls and text you can have it sim1,sim2 or choose on a per call/text basis. Each can be set independently.

    If you want you can have something like sim1 for calls, choose for text and sim2 for data
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