There are no museums that house the Glofiish DX900. There isn’t a major portion in any mainstream history of the evolution of cellphones, nor is there a display case for it at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. It mostly exists in the memory of a particular type of tech enthusiast: the person who, in 2008, kept a spreadsheet of mobile specifications arranged by chipset and connectivity band, read GSM Arena reviews and Pocket PC forum threads, and realized how truly unusual the combination of features inside this specific device from a Taiwanese manufacturer most people had never heard of was.
In late 2008, E-TEN debuted the DX900, a year after the iPhone had completely changed the way most people thot about what a smartphone should be. It was not the best time to draw attention. A Windows Mobile 6.1 device with a resistive stylus screen was already out of step with the industry’s shift toward capacitive touchscreens and app ecosystems. According to those who systematically cataloged mobile technology, the DX900 was the first device to combine 3.5G HSDPA connectivity with true dual-SIM simultaneous standby in a pocket-sized smartphone form factor. This was what made the device worth looking at both then and now.
It may not seem important, but the difference between dual-SIM standby modes is crucial. Prior to the DX900, earlier dual-SIM phones—simpler feature phones that had been available for a number of years in some markets, especially in Asia and parts of Africa—usually required the user to designate one SIM card as active while the other went inactive. You might have two numbers, but you couldn’t answer calls on both at the same time. Both SIMs were kept active simultaneously by the DX900’s configuration: SIM 2 maintained a GSM/EDGE connection for a secondary line, while SIM 1 handled 3G data and primary voice. Without having to switch cards or manage an active/standby toggle, a business traveler with a corporate number and a local roaming SIM might be reached on both.
This addressed a significant issue for the particular group of customers that E-TEN was aiming at: executives and road warriors overseeing numerous carrier connections during international travel. Along with having Wi-Fi, GPS, and a VGA-resolution touchscreen, the device was truly competing with the best-equipped Windows Mobile phones of the time on every specification axis that mattered to its intended buyer. It also added the dual-SIM capability that no comparable device offered. The desire for hardware was genuine.
The hardware ambition was limited by the 533MHz Samsung processor. A high-resolution display, GPS, and the entire Windows Mobile 6.1 software stack were combined with dual-SIM simultaneous standby to create a handset that functioned but wasn’t always flawless. When users pushed the gadget to its limits—navigating while managing conversations on both lines, running Pocket Outlook in the background—they discovered that the CPU faltered in ways that undermined the experience that the specification sheet had promised. In the history of ambitious mobile hardware, there has been a recurring pattern: the engineering team knows what the product should be able to accomplish, but the available silicon doesn’t exactly enable doing all of it at once.
By the middle of the 2010s, dual-SIM was a common Android feature. In 2018, ten years after the DX900 was released, it finally made its way into the iPhone with the XS. Better processors, improved software integration, and eventually eSIM technology—which completely eliminated the need for a physical second slot—all contributed to the widespread use. E-TEN was no longer an independent business; it had been absorbed by Acer in 2008, the year the DX900 was introduced, and the name had quietly vanished. As a result, none of those subsequent implementations gave credit to E-TEN.
