M532 - SIM-card - why?

[newtablet]

M532 contains an UMTS-Chip and the possibility to insert a SIM.
Which kind of SIM, data or voice? Both kind of SIMs do not work in mine, Android does not even recognize the inserted SIM before login ("No SIM-Card").

Afaik, voice calls are not possible at all.
So, which kind of SIM do I need, and what can I do with it?

[sunnychan2012]

hi,
why not share your wifi from your phone or router? isn't that cheaper?

[mljhilton]

I bought the M532 through staff sales in August 2012. I took the SIM card out of my phone and stuck it into the M532, put in the APN parameters, and everything worked fine. The SIM card is for a British service provider called GiffGaff, and I got 2 of them in April 2010, one for myself and one for my wife. They both work perfectly in the M532.

Earlier this month I acquired another GiffGaff SIM card, with a view to having one dedicated to the M532 so that if I ever needed a 3G connection I would not have to take the SIM card out of my phone. It did not work. I got the message "No SIM card". I contacted GiffGaff to see if they had any advice. They had not come across a similar problem, but suggested that as the new SIM card has a sightly different size and shape of gold-plated connection, they would send me one that was similar to the ones that I have from 2010. The replacement SIM card looks identical to the 2010 ones. It did not work. "No SIM card".

I have read a number of M532 reviews. One of them stated that they had tried a number of different SIM cards in the device and it was unable to detect any of them.

There was an upgrade for the UK version of the M532, which I discovered on Saturday past. One of the items on the list of amendments was "Enable multiple SIM cards (T-Mobile/Vodafone)". This indicates that the development team knows that the device does not read all SIM cards. I applied the upgrade. No difference. "No SIM card".

As O2 is Fujitsu's mobile phone network partner (in the UK, at least) I took the SIM card out of my Fujitsu-standard-issue mobile phone and put it into the M532. Guess what? "No SIM card".

So I have a situation where I have 2 GiffGaff SIM cards from 2010 that work perfectly, but the device does not detect any of the other SIM cards that I have tried. What's going on?

Given all of the evidence above, the only plausable inference I can draw is that, because Fujitsu does not make mobile phones, there is not enough expertise in the company at the moment to design a SIM interface that reads all cards. I cannot imagine that anyone would take the trouble to design an interface that read only a limited number of card types. Any mobile phone will read any valid SIM card. Presumably a tablet SIM interface can be designed to do the same thing. I suspect that the development team had a few SIM cards to hand when they were testing, and it worked OK with them, so they assumed, incorrectly, that it would work OK with any card. If this were genuinely a design feature there would presumably be something in the user guide or other documentation to tell us what SIM cards are usable and what ones are not. I have not seen any such information.

My hope is that as time goes on the development team will get the interface sorted out and provide an upgrade to fix this defect.

In the meantime, I am probabably one of the few people who has a SIM card that works in the M532. For the sake of those who do not, and also for the sake of Fujitsu's reputation, I would like to think that the matter will be resolved soon.

Regards,
Matt Hilton.

[sabrex]

mljhilton is talking about this update
http://support.ts.fujitsu.com/content/UpdateM532emea.asp?Back=true
New features:

Support of additional layouts for external keyboards (RU-US/DE/NORD/GB/AR-GB/CZ-SK/HU/EE/BE/FR/PT/ES/IT/TR-Q/GR-US/CH)
Face unlock support
Ethernet support with the FTS USB-LAN adapter
new Power Management option to extend the battery life
Multi SIM support (T-Mobile/Vodafone)
several minor bug fixes and improvements

The STYLISTIC M532 supports both 6-pin and 8-pin SIM card.

*see
STYLISTIC M532: Mobile data connection does not work or SIM card is not recognized
http://support.ts.fujitsu.com/WDB/FAQContentstart.asp?ID=233452373&WDBStatID=&INFO=SA&quest=&Sprache=en&SprachID=&SecID=&lng=COM&Todo=FAQ
If the instruction is not followed here then after insertion of the SIM card, the device must be restarted so that the network settings are enabled otherwise = "No SIM card".

[mljhilton]

Thanks for adding that detail, Sabrex.

However, as you may have guessed, I've read that FAQ; all it does is tell you how to insert the SIM Card. It does not give you any guidance on what to do if you've followed the instruction to the letter but the device still does not detect the SIM card; but that is the problem.

Possibly the upgrade to Jellybean next week may include a fix for this.