Data, reception, battery, screen, CPU, weight, size. These are the mobile phone specs I’m concerned. Smaller SIM cards? Not so much. But Giesecke & Devrient, one of the original SIM manufactuers, thinks we need a nano-SIM that’s 30 per cent smaller. Great?
According to GigaOM, we could see could see this achievement in pointlessness as early as next year:
The nano-SIM is a third smaller than the micro-SIM, which can be found inside Apple’s iPhone 4 and 4S, and it is 60 per cent smaller than the SIM cards found inside many of today’s GSM handsets. It’s also 15 per cent thinner. The nano-SIM could find its way into the first mobile devices as early as next year.
The original SIM card was already small enough. The micro-SIM is almost too small. So why do we need a nano-SIM? Will it really allow mobile phones to be any slimmer? Will it perform more efficiently? Will it affect anyone in any meaningful way? I’m skeptical.
[Giesecke & Devrient via GigaOm via The Verge]
Pete
Saturday, November 12, 2011 at 12:03 PMSIM cards are the bane of my existence at the moment. Doing a swap out of hundreds phones to iPhones at work and having to swap sim cards for everyone is painful. Please don’t make me do it all again in a years time!!
Harrison
Saturday, November 12, 2011 at 12:10 PMI’ve had one in my iPhone for the past year and a bit…it performs just the same as a regular sim. And really, what is there to go wrong…it’s a piece of plastic?
Joel
Saturday, November 12, 2011 at 12:27 PMThe smaller they make these in the coming years, the better. Bigger cards are pointlessly taking up precious real estate in phones these days, which is why Apple made the jump to the micro-SIM.
Tom
Saturday, November 12, 2011 at 3:18 PMDon’t know much about phones, but why do we need SIM card? Surely a network code and a password keyed into some software on the phone could achieve a network connection?
mango
Saturday, November 12, 2011 at 11:01 PMthats how cdma works. blame telstra for killing it!
Angus
Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 9:21 AMApple proposed a SIM on chip solution some time ago but a number of telcos refused to play ball. They also put forward a design for a nano SIM which sounds very similar to this current solution.