Comment by tecleandor
3 hours ago
An additional radio would raise the price of your phone for at least another 200 or 300 dollars. Try to enable VoLTE if available for your operator. That makes the phone use the LTE connection for voice and don't drop the Internet connection while you talk.
You can get an additional phone with a screen, 5g radio, ram and everything for $150. An additional radio should not raise the price for another 300.
I assume for something like a phone these things are non-linear. going from 2 PCIe lanes (nand, radios) to 3 (another radio) may cause an SOC to jump from entry-level to mid-level, larger PCB and increased layer count, more antenna for simultaneous use, etc. so its not just the cost of the chip but all the secondary effects.
Dual SIM Dual Active phones are under £100 in the UK, I imagine under $100 in the US.
Dual SIM Dual Standby (two or more SIMs, one radio) is cheaper, less battery, less space, and usually good enough. It's literally a few dollars, not 200-300.
Seems like I forgot to specify "5G" (those radios tend to be expensive) as the original poster was asking for an additional 4G/5G radio.
DSDA in 5G is rare, and I can't reliably find a phone that can do it in EU or US (I can find higher end chipsets that can do it, but phone vendors don't seem to follow through with it). Usually it's 4G+5G or 4G+4G.
The chips cost under $100 even for top tier modems from Qualcomm.