Phone's & cradles, advice please

[Aoraki]

I have recently swapped my W203 for a W204, both with telephone pre wire and cradle for Sony Ericsson K750i. I am also due an upgrade of my phone from Orange.

My question is this, "W204 has Bluetooth as standard, should I just use a new phone (SAP Bluetooth), or do I go for one that I can get a cradle for?"

Benefits of cradle obviously is being able to charge the phone, but I would be limited in phone choice.

Then there is the "Bluetooth SLR" cradle, am I correct in thinking this would be pointless as I already have Bluetooth built in?

A duplicate SIM would be a good option as I would be able to leave the K750i permanently in the car and have whatever phone I liked for use away from the car, BUT, Orange tell me they don't do them, (some providers do apparently).

Your thoughts and advice would be much welcomed.

[richard]

Hi
The W204 COMAND does what the bluetooth HFP cradles does, i.e acts as a headset to a phone, and allows dialing (etc), and on many but not all phones downloads the phonebook for you to see.

It is not SAP, and therefore the phone battery runs down when making calls, and the aerial on the phone is used, not the car's aerial.

If you get a phone that supports SAP (i.e a Nokia one), then you could get the SAP cradle, this will then use the car's antenna and use less of the phone's battery (as its not being used to actually make the call).

If your car has the reflective IR glass option, then bluetooth HFP phones don't work well in the car (because glass has metal in it), but the SAP system does.

If you are on '3' then the SAP cradle doesnt work as the SAP cradle is actually the phone, and it only supports GSM900/1800 not 3G/GPRS

Vodafone does the duplicate sim thing,

Does that help

Richard

[plug - cheapest place to buy the SAP cradle is www.comandonline.co.uk]

[Aoraki]

Thanks Richard, more than enough info for me to contemplate :)

[melv]

Hi

Orange do offer a dual/twin sim option, my Dad uses it in his BMW 7 Series, works really well – from memory I think Orange call it TwinSim although I can't be sure, I do know Orange only offer it to business customers/accounts for some reason. Have a look on the Orange business section of their website.

I was also under the understanding that the W204 standard Bluetooth was SAP compatible, I'm sure the price list stated this, although I don't have it to hand to check.

Melv

[Aoraki]

Thanks Melv
Still trying to get to the bottom of Orange and two/twin sim saga. I am a business customer but no one at thier end have a clue about this.
Yes the W204 is bluetooth but not SAP. SAP only seems to be available on Nokia's though and we use Sony.

[melv]

Found it!

It's actually called 'Single Number':

http://www.business.orange.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Business&c=OUKPage&cid=1135953583381