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Apple Proposes Smaller SIM Card Design
An anonymous reader writes with word that Apple, as reported by Reuters, has proposed a smaller SIM card standard. Says the Orange executive quoted, "We were quite happy to see last week that Apple has submitted a new requirement to (European telecoms standards body) ETSI for a smaller SIM form factor -- smaller than the one that goes in iPhone 4 and iPad." Hard to believe that any phone designed for the human hand could be much limited by the size of the current micro-SIMs, but this is one race to the bottom I'm pleased with.
as seen on Futurama....
I wonder if they'll sport the "As Seen On TV" on them?
That is the justification for the need for smaller sim cards. Frankly, the sim card is thin enough (I'm sure it could be thinner, but it is still much thinner than the device). And all that is used is a bunch of contacts from the sim. I fail to see how a smaller sim card would do away with much of the thickness.
This has less to do with practical concerns about footprint and more about making sim-swapping even harder. Are they really saying a ~1cm^2 SIM is too big, even in an iPad?
Karma be damned, Apple only need that bulky SIM holder because there isn't a user-replaceable battery and its associated cover. I've had enough other brand phones to see that there are better (i.e. smaller) ways to hold a SIM.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
The real issue is not the 2D dimensions, but rather the thickness of the card. You can only make a set of pressure contacts so thin. At some point, I suspect we'll see SIM cards that are thicker, but have their contacts running down the edge of the card instead of across the face, thus reducing the plausible device thickness from about a quarter inch to about a millimeter (if you ignore all the other components that are thicker than a SIM card tray...).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Seems the new CDMA iPhone got Apple thinking about a Sim-less design. Imagine all the goodies that could fit in that .1 cm^3 saved.
There is already extra space in most phones today. There is a point with phones where they are getting too small; I actually expect the desire for smarter phones bring phone sizes bigger actually
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
what do you gain from having a smaller package ?
incompatibility with other phones and thats about it...
the package size does not impact significantly on phone design at all this is simply a case of laziness.. design around it
operators simply have no say it seems any more...
have fun and watch your bottom line disappear operators...
regards
John Jones
I remember something like this in the past.
We have sim cards which work with pretty much everything, EXCEPT the iPhone. So the solution was either to buy a smaller sim or just grab a pair of scissors and remove some of the plastic yourself, while the career that had exclusivity was heavily advertising that it has these new high-tech simcards.
I'm sure its not because we're running out of space. At all. Its for exclusivity.
So we can make more money off of it.
To me that kinda sounds like they're just pushing for a new SIM form factor so they can have a say in designing the internals of the new card. The first thing I thought was "hey brilliant now we can store user location data on an encrypted part of the SIM card that no user has access to". I'd also think they would probably introduce some kind of proprietary technology or design dogma that no other manufacturer can live up to or integrate without actually asking Apple for permission or license (think ultra-flat SIM holder). Creating in turn an Apple specific type of SIM-card to further lock down market segments. Maybe I'm just paranoid but then again that is why I don't own any of their products.
Think about what you would have if you used the standard SIM, a regular (full size) SD card slot (or, for that matter, Compact Flash), removable batteries in a AA form factor, a mini (not micro) USB connector, and you designed a phone.
You would have Junk.
Of course, the right solution is to do away with SIM itself, but the carriers are too scared of that.
Please. A SIM card is not a major investment. Your provider will give you a replacement your SIM (in any form factor they support) for a nominal fee. That's not lock-in. Lock-in is what Apple originally did with iTunes DRM. They made a proprietary format that could only be played with Apple hardware and software. as a result, people could not switch to another manufacturer's portable media player without having to repurchase all of their music. Hence, they were locked in.
but this is one race to the bottom I'm pleased with.
More SIM card designs = more times you will have to replace your SIM card = more money spent.
Smaller SIM cards are also easier to lose, hard to keep a handle on, when you use your SIM with multiple phones
Personally, I think the existence of a separate SIM card tech is a bug. SIM cards should be replaced with SD and MMC memory technology, with a standard format, subscriber data protected by the DRM feature of the cards, and digitally signed with the subscriber block and SD card serial number.
I bought one of these for travel. Works great. You can have either (or both) SIM card(s) active so you can make and receive calls on both lines.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
maybe your "shaving" is a SEAsia thing because here in the US, I took the SIM from my US Blackberry (same carrier) and put it in my 1st gen iphone w/o shaving anything, then I jailbroke it and put another SIM from another carrier to test the jailbreak... again - didn't shave anything.
I assume your not trying to call the standardized MicroSIM an evil plot by Apple. Sometimes I wonder why some folks can't just be happy criticizing Apple for all the real crap they do and must instead make up absurd new conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact.
They're not thinking about this for what we're currently call a "phone". They're looking at very small form factor devices which keep their data in the cloud, are configured by another (arbitrary) device which talks to the same cloud, and which make either sporadic or continual data connections with whatever available networks they find, to keep up to date. Imagine very small devices (wristwatches, eyeglasses, earplugs) with 802.11/UMTS/WiMAX radios (which use a mini-sim to identify themselves to whichever network they encounter). And they're thinking about these things as universal identifiers and payment tokens.
Right now you go running with an iPod. Instead you'll have a iPlug, a pair of little in-ear headphones, but with no cable and nothing strapped to your arm. You set up your music program on a tablet, and it seamlessly syncs. You run further than you'd expected, so the iPlug connects to the network and downloads more music. Miles from home your knee gives out. You touch the iPlug and say "taxi". A taxi comes (sent by Apple to the location the iPlug knew; Apple gets a dollar from the taxi fare, which you pay using the iPlug).
You have a iSim unit in your iWatch. You're thirsty, so you touch the watch and say "coffee shop". The watch face shows an arrow to a nearby one, and the distance, and walks you there. Apple gets a dollar. You buy a drink with the iSIM as a payment token (Apple gets 30 cents) and sit down at a table. The table's surface is an active display; it talks to your iWatch and opens a connection to your account in the iCloud. Your personal news appears, your emails, your documents. You do some work, browse some stuff, and when you're done you stand up and the table blinks off. Things will be as you left them when you next peer with an active display - at home, in the car, on the train, at the office, on the beach.
All of this stuff has been done, in various disconnected ways, already. You can pay for stuff with your phone, in some places. Most Europeans (well, Brits at least) have smart cards in their credit cards. You could hotdesk 10 years ago with a Sunray (kinda). You can unlock doors with a Dallas button token. Having super-cheap super-light totally ubiquitous networking makes the whole thing join up into a compelling, powerful, system.
You'll never be alone again.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
Strictly speaking, it's a lock-out strategy. Whenever I travel abroad, I have to talk the local cell provider into selling me a standard SIM, which I then have to cut down to fit in the tiny slot in my giant iPad (most providers claim to sell Micro-SIMs, but they never seem to have them in stock). Whereas I can put a standard SIM in my Nexus S. Guess why I bought a Nexus S instead of an iPhone 4? (Well, okay, partly it was because it was unlocked, but the non-hassle-factor is pretty major too.) If Apple comes up with a SIM that can't even be cut down, that'll be a *really* strong reason not to buy whatever device depends on it.
Honestly, "too large" hasn't been a factor in my cell phone purchases in a *long* time. I don't want a screen the size of my thumbnail anyway. Sometimes standard is more important than small.
I think he means "when the iPhone 4 originally came out," not "when the original iPhone came out." As you say, the original iPhone takes a standard SIM.
you can buy a non ATT micoSIM for a j/b 4 or ipad
http://www.amazon.com/T-Mobile-stick-together-Micro-SIM-pre-paid/dp/B003PQHMEI
Because that would also lock in Apple.
The idea is to lock in the customer, not the corporation.
A sim card is currently about the size of a fingernail, isn't it? Does anyone buy the line that they want to make it smaller so they can make smaller handsets?
You are welcome on my lawn.
No, they want it smaller so they can add some other chip/feature/part to the phone in the space its taking up now.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
The current two sizes are identical in wiring.
... DRM and I don't know what else
If Apple can force a new format, they can implement new features, maybe good (ie flash memory, multiple sims in one) or bad
A sim card is currently about the size of a fingernail, isn't it? Does anyone buy the line that they want to make it smaller so they can make smaller handsets?
Have you ever considered that the same company that makes their iDevices smaller/thinner every year, won't want to make the SIM card smaller?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
sure apple. i lol'd.
The HTC Desire HD is almost a little too big. But yes, you are quite right: it's very nice having such a big screen on a PDA phone. :)
Maybe apple is designing devices that need a smaller surface area for the card. Like a phone in a stylus that captures conversations with a microphone array, handwriting with a gyroscope and document content with a stereo camera and projected infrared grid.
IPen anyone?
but this is one race to the bottom I'm pleased with.
:/
Bad: Well, I'm not. It disturbingly seems they want to get to the SIM being integrated into the board, so you buy the phone/device with the contract and not the SIM, and you won't be able to change SIMs in a phone/device.
Neutral: Well, they might want to put more SIMs in a device (not just phone), but come on, most of the devices that would accomodate and be useful for such application are large enough to host multiple current size SIMs as well.
Thinking about it, I still don't really want to buy an iPad or an iPhone, so maybe I don't even care
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Doesn't have to be a jailbreaked iPhone 4, just unlocked.
I use that T-Mobile microSIM in my decidedly non-jailbreaked iPhone 4 all the time when I'm in the US. Only get EDGE data speed of course but that's quite adequate for a bit of email while travelling.
Though, I already find the microSIMs too small to comfortably handle and manipulate. How much smaller do we want them? >
Zero would be the smallest possible size.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
... probably for the iphone 6 they'll propose a completely new idea of burning the SIM data directly into the phone, saving the space for the card reader alltogether, and at the same time allowing for an even better carrier-lock-in than the current solution has. Which of course means the carriers will love it. No more sim/netlock breaking possible anymore.
Hm ... Wait ... wasn't there a wireless network that already did that? ;)
Uhh, not in SE Asia - microSIMs are rare, and when the iPhone 4 came out they were non-existent. Same thing in China at the time of their release - a lot of people cutting down regular units to try to make them work.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Dear Apple,
If your hardware designers are too dumb or lazy to be able to accommodate the already-small size of either a standard or micro-SIM card, please go play somewhere else and stop interfering with the mobile phone market. There is a reason why SIM's are a standard size, even the micro-SIM was a stupid idea mainly pushed on us by you.
Thanks
- - -
I have multiple phones, and switch SIM cards between them. I can also go to any kiosk or corner store and buy pre-paid SIM cards. This is commonplace in Europe, where SIM cards have been used far longer than the US, we've had them in mobile phones in Finland since the early 90's. Making SIM cards smaller makes them incompatible by design with existing phones and creates a false demand for replacing perfectly good, working phones with new ones. I suppose this is part of Apple's strategy anyway, to force people to upgrade their phones yet again to support a new "standard" they create. This is nothing more than planned obsolescence.
the iphone 4 simcard is a problem already. Suppose you broke your phone screen and find it ridiculous to pay 700 $ or euros to get a new one.
Then you want to switch back to your old iphone 3GS before the iphone 5 comes out and your current contract ends.
Or you want to put the sim card in your company's blackberry for a while.
But it won't work because of the sim card. I know some operators will sell you a replacement sim card, but still you get the idea.
Also, when I buy a new phone, and want to have the possibility to hand the older iphone to a family member. And that's not possible ecause they don't have the right sim, even if they're with the right operator.
Frankly, I don't care at all about the few cubic milimeters that can be spared with smaller sims
I see this with a different SIM card size as a way to lock the customer to a specific brand, not to improve the experience for the customer. If I will be locked to only use Apple phones with my SIM card then I can't change to another brand with standard SIM card size.
And I can't see a benefit of a phone much thinner than the phone I have today, it will just be more sensitive to damage.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
You haven't understood the real reason behind the use of SIM cards - the ability to swap phone at your leisure without the need to mess with the telecom operator. At least this is possible in many locations throughout the world - like in Europe. And maybe you want to have a cheap rugged phone when you are out on a hike and a cool flashy when you are at work.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Surf stick?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
A sim card is currently about the size of a fingernail, isn't it? Does anyone buy the line that they want to make it smaller so they can make smaller handsets?
On the other hand, it's twice as large as a microSD card which holds several orders of magnitude more data. If you take into account the housing and the circuitry needed to read the SIM card, it's no longer as ridiculous as you think.
May the source be with you.
Strictly speaking, it's a lock-out strategy. Whenever I travel abroad, I have to talk the local cell provider into selling me a standard SIM, which I then have to cut down to fit in the tiny slot in my giant iPad (most providers claim to sell Micro-SIMs, but they never seem to have them in stock). Whereas I can put a standard SIM in my Nexus S.
Yeah, right. A "standard" SIM card is the size of a credit card - you mean mini-SIM. Same fucking deal with cutting down and "lock-out" many years ago, you n00b. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Telia_micro_SIM_with_brackets.jpg
This isn't an issue of Apple locking people, its simply an issue of providers not wanting to spend a cent on changing millions of prefabed SIM cards. It's quite telling that people attack Apple for adopting a standard 6 years after it was agreed upon as too soon - agreed upon by the same providers that now still can't deliver what is only a tighter cut of the same fucking chip.
Fandroids hate facts.
ETSI project Smart Card Platform (EP SCP) at their recent plenary meeting agreed to the introduction of a new smart card, which is half the size of the existing Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card.
Market forces are behind the decision; there are already many data-only GSM terminals on the market, many of them using the familiar PC-card form factor. However, with the development of even smaller terminals, the point may soon be reached where the plug-in card occupies too much volume in the terminal, especially in those devices whose secondary purpose will be to communicate, such as digital cameras or watches.
The work item for the so-called Third Form Factor, "3FF", was agreed, after intensive discussions, at the SCP meeting held last week in London. Historically, there are already two form factors, the full credit card-sized card and the postage stamp-sized plug-in card. The latter is the norm for GSM terminals, a market that has now seen more than 2 billion smart cards deployed.
December 8, 2003.
Fandroids hate facts.
Clarify please. Is there a specific bottom that you're pleased with[1] and there's a race to it? Or are you entranced by some aspect of the competition to arrive in Assville?
[1] This is Apple, after all.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You'll stop laughing when you can make phone calls with your iPod Nano and a headset.
This isn't really about making the SIM card smaller, it's about dropping compatibility with the ancient (early nineties!) chip on old SIM cards, with the slow interface and the small memory. Not to mention the limited security.
Fandroids hate facts.
Um, not everything that plays badly for Apple is an Apple bash. In this case, *nobody else is using* the MicroSIM, because *nobody else cares.* Apple wants cell phone providers to stock an extra product just so that their customers can use their product. Providers gamely try to do this, but it's hard to get the stock quantities right. So there are always more of the standard ones than the small ones available.
BTW, by "standard" here I mean "the one everyone uses," not "one that is described in a standards document."
Um, not everything that plays badly for Apple is an Apple bash. In this case, *nobody else is using* the MicroSIM, because *nobody else cares.* Apple wants cell phone providers to stock an extra product just so that their customers can use their product. Providers gamely try to do this, but it's hard to get the stock quantities right. So there are always more of the standard ones than the small ones available.
BTW, by "standard" here I mean "the one everyone uses," not "one that is described in a standards document."
Every provider that has used up their prefabed SIM cards with no micro-SIM cutouts now has prefabed SIM cards with mini- and micro-SIM cutouts. It's as simple as that. As for your insistence what is standard and what isn't - I'd rather an actual standard body decides on that instead of some loser on the intarweb who has a beef with Apple. And that body decided the micro-SIM is a standard long before you got your first phone, whippersnapper.
Fandroids hate facts.
Please.... if you propose a new standard make it better... not just smaller.
I would love to see a single physical SIM card that is actually 2 in 1.
Then in the future, I wouldn't have to carry around my personal smartphone and my company flip phone.
So what sort of future product would cause a problem with current products having replaceable batteries?
It's not a single product that would be hurt by those things - it's that they are anathema to Apple's design principles.
The guiding set of principles at Apple are a constant movement towards Dieter Rams' ideals of "good design".
Good design means eliminating parts that the user interacts with (the battery cover, physical controls, etc).
Good design requires reducing parts count where practical - the battery cover, the battery connectors, the casing a replaceable battery must have, for example. I have a first generation iPhone in my pocket which is still on its original battery, so I'm not too worried about the difficulty of replacing it. I'd rather have a physically smaller phone or a better camera in the same-size phone than a replaceable battery.
Any time a designer adds yet another button, or another removable part, they're moving away from that ideal of "good design".
Now, wether you agree with that philosophy or not is up to you and there are a wide range of products on the market if you don't - you aren't required to buy Apple products to fulfill your needs or wants. The idea that Apple can lock down the entire market is a fallacy often professed by anti-Apple trolls in these discussions.
Of course, Jonathan Ives is just copying the old Braun products
, but that's not such a bad set of products to copy.
Putting moderation advice in your
Absolutely. My first phone took a mini-SIM but there's a full-SIM handset at my house. I remember them well, and when I got my first mini-SIM I thought how clever it was that they were backwards compatible. You know, IPv6 has been a standard for ages and it's got low adoption. Why? Because the people that could choose to do it are lazy, however they're more likely to do a simple change like this as it doesn't block backwards compat.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Maybe because those are things that people handle everyday and making them smaller will make them impractical? And what is the grand design? All you see behind everything is "Apple is evil" and that there are no practical reasons.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If I want to register the same IMEI and SIM on a different network, I should be able to do that too. But because of the security implications, the SIM needs to be unique and hardware based.
Oh, boy ! That would help so much people in Europe ! Here every country has its own separate service providers, and whenever you travel to another country, you're roaming, even if both service provider somewhat belong to the same corporation.
People who travel a lot between countries (for example when living near the border) end up either having several SIMs and swapping them constantly, or even having to own several phones.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
But no way to reduce the physical, internal footprint of the SIM card itself, short of eliminating all the plastic and soldering it in entirely or redesigning the packaging (which is mostly plastic and huge contacts.)
Yeah, but what's the point of it ? (Beside alienating the user and making it more difficult to swap SIM, which could seem desirable, except not from the point of view of end-users).
We're speaking about phones here, not 3/4G USB dongles.
At the end of the days, it's still a device which has to fit into the hand of its user. And a hand is only so small.
Most of the latest generation phones are already small enough, although some still use regular SIM cards.
Unless they're dreaming to launch some new "iPhone Nano Shuffle" serie of devices. Like phones in "Lt. Uhura" ear-piece form factor, or in watches.
Although these could still accommodate the current Micro-SIM size. You'd probably need a Jewerly form factor to need diminutive SIM cards...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This might be a dumb question, but why do we need SIM cards anyway?
I'd like to be able to sign up for accounts with different network providers and be able to choose which I want to use, when I want to use them.
And why are people complaining about handling these SIM cards? The average user may really only handle their phone twice - the first time to install it after buying the phone, and second to remove it for their new phone. Are people really handling it like a daily use item like the microSD cards?
Welcome in Europe, man. Where every single country has its very own set of separate service providers. And even if lots of them belong to the same few mega-corps behind the scene, it's still considered roaming when you move from one country to another.
If you move a little bit around, or if you study abroad, or whatever, you end up owning several SIM cards and often swapping them around.
The ordinary SIM card is easy enough to swap, while at the same time being small enough to fit into any form factor design for a human hand. Just no fucking need to move to a smaller form factor.
It only alienates the users of any land whose territory is smaller than the USA and who need to switch SIMs when moving around. And doesn't serve any really useful purpose...
It's a difficult problem because it requires reinitializing the telephony stack - not easy.
Well, I can change SIMs on my Palm without switching it off. It's not designed for, but battery doesn't block access to the SIM and restarting the OS is all it takes to switch the SIM even on a phone not designed for it.
Probably won't be that difficult to make the stack and corresponding service restart each the time a phone is switched to/from airplane mode.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]