Talk:SIM card/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about SIM card. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Non Attributed Images

I replaced the original image on this page (Image:SIM_card.jpg) with one I took myself and released under the GFDL, the original was both rubbish and unatributed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Salimfadhley (talk • contribs) 21:54, 21 September 2004

Update and expansion of this Page

This page is quite out of date now....

I am planning an update of this page to reflect:-

- A brief history of why a Smartcard is used in GSM
- The benefits of the USIM / SIM to an end user
- The benefits of a SIM / USIM card to the network operator.
- The different form factors (3 now available)
- The standardisation tree for the SIM card (ISO - ETSI - 3GPP)
- SIM Toolkit and Java JSR 118 / JSR 177
- Other applications designed for SIM cards / smartcards
- Advances in SIM Cards design
- Uses of SIM Card / Smartcard in other Telecommunication standards.

I am currently also reseaching all the links required for this page as well.

Bet No One 12:49, 14 November 2004 (UTC)

Could you also cover something about when the old 5 volt cards were replaced by the 3 volt ones? I've just bought a brand new phone that says it can only cope with 3v, and I don't know whether my existing thing is 5v or not. (And I can't find anything informative on the interweb about it.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.253.128.13 (talk • contribs) 23:54, 17 February 2005

Best I could find, from palmOne:

Do you have an old (5 volt) SIM card?

The Treo smartphone uses 3 volt SIM cards. If you have had your SIM for a long time (especially if it originally came in the credit card format), you may not be able to use it with Treo or other newer GSM phones. In fact, the 5 volt cards are not provided anymore, and there are not many left in current use.

There does not appear to be a fixed point when 5 volt cards ceased to be used across the industry; it appears to have been driven by new handset introduction.

Keith D. Tyler [flame] 00:18, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I found some more. Although there's no definite visible clue about the card's voltage:

http://www.esato.com/board/viewtopic.php?topic=25699

If you got your sim card recently, chances are it is a 3v. 3v sim cards usually have a smaller metal base for the chip (the shiny metallic part) and is usually rectangular or oval shaped.

Also, it seems that Orange UK stopped selling them in 1999 - various posts dated 2004 saying 'five years ago'.

The clincher for me was that some folks said 'I tried my SIM in my Treo, and it didn't work' but they didn't say 'and then the magic smoke came out', so I tried it and it worked. :)

Cheers, Tim. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.253.128.13 (talk • contribs) 12:05, 19 February 2005

Socio-Economic Background of SIM cards

Can somewhere add where SIM factories are located (e.g. China, Taiwan, etc?) and the social factors of those who work there--who are probably leading harsh work lives? Dpr 06:50, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sim toolkit

What about SIM application toolkit. 3GPP 11.14 and friends? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.165.253.198 (talk • contribs) 23:06, 21 December 2005

Poorly written

The article is poorly written in my opinion. How about adding more technical details about how SIM cards work? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.27.197.68 (talk • contribs) 21:43, 21 January 2006

ERROR

"A subscriber identity module (SIM) is a logical application running on a UICC smartcard. Although the terms UICC and SIM are often interchanged, UICC refers to the physical card, whereas SIM refers to a single application residing in the UICC that collects GSM user subscription information. " BUT , AS

3GPP TS 51.011 V4.12.0 (2004-06)

Technical Specification 3rd Generation Partnership Project;

Technical Specification Group Terminals; Specification of the Subscriber Identity Module - Mobile Equipment (SIM - ME) interface (Release 4)

SAY:

Two physical types of SIM are specified. These are the "ID 1 SIM" and the "Plug in SIM".

The physical characteristics of both types of SIM shall be in accordance with those specified for the UICC in TS 31.101 [55] --210.21.229.218 08:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 19:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm a Chinese, I read many english materials,but correctly writing english is difficult for me. --210.21.229.218 01:16, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't matter if the english is poor, somebody will come along after and fix it. It's more important to get the facts right than the english. 139.165.200.31 21:52, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

What is the number printed on a SIM card?

There is no mention of what this number is. Is it the IMSI? One of my SIMs has 15 digits, another 16 digits, and the photo in the article shows 20... --139.165.200.31 15:30, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

There are no standats on it. Typicaly It is a IMSI. But it may be an internal manufactor code..

• • Above statement is wrong** If the number starts with the digits "89" it is the ICCID. This is really 18 digits long, but often it's printed with a single Luhn check digit, and may be stored with a filler digit (0xf or 0). This is the card's hardware identifier. I think talk of an SSN (SIM Serial Number) is incorrect. See my comments on that below. If an IMSI was printed on the card, it would have a 3 digit MCC defined in ITU-T specification E.212. This is always 3 digits and is not the same as the telephony country code defined in E.164. DavidRCrowe (talk) 05:18, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Update required

... will be made available to every individual resident in Finland before the end of 2005 ...

Its already 2006. Please update this information. (Don't tell me its a wiki. I don't know what the updated information would be!)

Thank you --Agent007bond 19:32, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

And now it's 2009... 85.230.55.43 (talk) 14:43, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Pinouts

What do the pins do? — Omegatron 05:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The German wikipedia has a table with pin assignments. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 194.231.192.194 (talk) 16:24, August 21, 2007 (UTC)

How much memory do they have? — Omegatron 20:52, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Depends on card manufacturer. Cards may be 16k, 32k or 64k (and more I'm sure). Memory size refers to amount of EEPROM instead of RAM because currently most variables are persistant.Kenny D 22:13, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Surely the pinouts don't vary by manufacturer? — Omegatron 03:22, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think they do Kenny D 20:08, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

What type of memory is used on small 2-3KB Sim cards?

Can someone answer this? Is this flash memory, or some other type? SalvNaut 16:20, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

EEPROM. As in an almost any Smart Card. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.85.126.33 (talk • contribs) 07:42, 21 May 2007

Where do language paks reside - on the SIM or the phone itself?

I'm trying to use a Cingular phone purchased in the USA to SMS with a server that is configured to respond in the Thai language using unicode characters. Unfortunately my phone (Motorola C139) only has the English, French, Spanish language options, and I can find no way to change it to support Thai unicode characters. Today I spoke with a person who swears the language support of the phone is determined by the SIM card inserted, rather than actually residing on the phone itself. IOW, if you put a SIM from the Thai carrier AIS in the phone it will magically support Thai unicode characters. This does not seem correct to me. Can the language pack support aspect be added to this article? Digivid 02:18, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Spam

Spam links have been added to the external links section several times. I added a substituted NoMoreLinks template to the edit page.

Dmitrytorba 23:31, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

What does a SIM card actually hold?

I think the front page should expand on what data is commonly held on a SIM card in addition to basic authentication identifiers. For example: phone books, SMS messages, PXT photos? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.80.48.19 (talk • contribs) 00:34, 7 August 2007

How to identify a particular model SIM card?

According to [this page], SIM card hardware is identified by 3 fields: A 5 digit SKU number, a single-letter manufacturer code, and a 4-digit Vendor/Version number. I'd like to know what these things mean. -jc —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.89.88.195 (talk) 01:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

BIG picture

The picture of the sim card in the beginning is rather large. i'm kinda new to wikipedia, but is there some way to shrink it down? significantly. soldierx40k 02:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

SIM Image Comments

I think it would be more useful to show an image of the card with the contacts showing, rather than a notched chunk of plastic with a logo printed on it. It's nearly unidentifiable as a physical artifact at all. Perhaps (Fair use image removed by ImageBacklogBot due to placement in non-article space.) could be used instead? I could take a shot myself if necessary, but I really think this image could be improved a great deal.

--Ktims 21:52, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Great idea Towel401 (talk) 23:26, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Does USIM deserve its own article?

It is a near identical version of the regular GSM SIM card and can be used to connect to GSM networks. Towel401 (talk) 23:28, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

SSN versus ICCID

I think that the SIM_Serial_Number page is rubbish. The SSN description does not even add up to 19 or 20 digits. This is essentially a description of the IMSI. How could an HLR be identified by a hardware identifier when the HLR may change during the life of a SIM card? I believe that the SSN portion should be deleted. The ICCID portion is correct. I believe that this is the identifier for SIM (and R-UIM) cards. The page should therefore be the ICCID page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DavidRCrowe (talk • contribs) 23:25, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Java Programing

Please add a link to the source code of a java simcard/sim card app

Thanks Helpfulweasal (talk) 21:11, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

can i create sim card like long stick(like match stick)

please give information regarding i think your answer to my mail adress ([e-mail]) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.214.30.142 (talk) 11:32, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Jailbreaking is not Unlocking

The article reads "This has led to a popular hack called the "jail-break", which frees the iPhone from the partner network" but jailbreaking is freeing the firmware to install your own mod hacks etc. 207.236.93.201 (talk) 22:46, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The section about simlock/iphone/jaibreak is full or errors. The article sim lock explains much better what sim locking in general is about. The iPhone is not really special in this regard, is sim-locked only with some providers and jailbreaking it does not remove the simlock. Mentioning Steve Jobs is this context is IMHO trolling. Does anybody object to replacing the part about simlock with a short reference to the article "sim lock"? (62.80.17.84 (talk) 14:54, 14 January 2011 (UTC))

Micro SIM

A 3rd generation needs to be added for the micro SIM cards, including those used in the upcoming Apple iPad Source from PC magazine--Slxception (talk) 04:37, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• done Justin Ormont (talk) 19:52, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

the guts?

it would be nice to have some information about the physical "guts", the insides, of simcards --TiagoTiago (talk) 12:32, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

agree. I'll look into finding some free images. I have many non-free ones, and they'd be complex to make. Justin Ormont (talk) 19:54, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

<br\>I made an image (ABOVE) for the high level view of what's in a SIM card. In addition, I would like an image of the layout of the chip (eprom location, processor location, memory locations, etc); anyone want to make this? Also, this shows why trimming a min-sim to the size of a micro-sim does not harm the chip itself, as only plastic parts are beyond the metal contacts. -Justin Ormont (talk) 20:24, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

chip layout and size depends of the chip... you can find some gorgeous but non-free images of micro-chip (including smartcard chips) here, especially of one of the popular type SLE 4442. Also keep in mind that trimming a mini-sim to micro-sim size is possible only if the sim card does not include special functionnalities, as RF transmitter or GPS receiver : in theses cards, you will find more than one chip... Zeugma fr (talk) 12:16, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Micro SIM Image (which?)

A micro-SIM can come packaged in a break-away full sized card in two ways, either with, or without a breakaway for the the mini-SIM size. I'm speculating that dual-break-away designs may be dominate. Which image do you think is better for illustrating the differences in sizes, packaging, etc of micro-SIM? -Justin Ormont (talk) 20:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Option (1): Individually Illustration showing how Mini-SIM Cards and Micro-SIM Cards are normally supplied in a full-size break-away card carrier

or

Option (2): Dual-break-away design Illustration showing how Mini-SIM Cards and Micro-SIM Cards are normally supplied in a full-size break-away card carrier

IM(NS)HO the 2 commonly found species are : Mini-sim break-away only and dual mini- and micro-sim break-away... that would require a third option for illustration :) ! For the french WP article SIM card i choosed the first picture, as i was the first to remark these lovely schematics... Zeugma fr (talk) 18:25, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Do all phones have a SIM Card?

I am thinking about getting one of those lookalike retro Brick phones by Triband and basically you need a SIM Card to operate it. I also heard it's only AT&T and Nextel/ Cingular. What the Hell does this mean? If I had a SIM card shouldn't it just work with whatever network? I don't want to pay over 100 dollars for one of these if I can't use it. Daniel Christensen (talk) 04:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)