Pocketmate Brings Triple SIM Support to iPhones

If you need to have three SIM cards – to juggle different calling plans, or separate businesses; or perhaps two mistresses on the side – then your phone is probably some shoddy shanzhai phone. But now a new Chinese-made gadget called Pocketmate is bringing triple SIM support to iPhone users who have jailbroken their devices. The Pocketmate – itself a bit smaller than the iPhone screen – houses a fairly large battery and two SIM cards slots, and does its magic over Bluetooth.

The makers of the Pocketmate have not revealed a price, but they’re cautioning that it currently only supports one extra SIM for the moment. So one of its slots will have to remain out of action until a future update. That will come via the jailbreak-only app (pictured bottom) that buyers of the gizmo can get for free from the company’s own repository within Cydia.

Managing your two extra SIMs within the Pocketmate settings. (Click to enlarge)

Then, with Bluetooth picking up your extra SIM(s), the Pocketmate app is the place from which you can configure everything, switch which SIM you’re using (pictured right), and even import any contacts from those cards into your iPhone’s Contacts app. After that, all the usual calling and sending SMS and MMS are done in the normal way on your phone.

We’ve not had the opportunity to test this out, but the Leiphone blog says that call quality via the Pocketmate app is not as good as it normally is on your iPhone. Other bugs include the omission of names when calls or messages come though a SIM that’s in Pocketmate. The little gadget has a 900mAh li-ion battery inside, so it’s debatable how much calling action it can withstand before running out of juice. Nonetheless, I get the feeling this’ll prove popular with an overseas audience as well, who’ll be hoping to find this in the gadget malls of Hong Kong and Shenzhen pretty soon.

There are three more images of the Pocketmate below, or see the full collection at the source link:

[Source: Leiphone – article in Chinese]