Nowadays, the SIM of smart phones is getting smaller and smaller, and there are even the latest technology solutions of virtual SIM cards, which will directly eliminate the physical SIM card. But, just in the use of entities in the current CARDS, many people would have a confused, when the last use only thumb-nail a little big piece, but from the communication company get card to be big, from the inside the small break down and put to use, after the rest of the card also became a waste.
In fact, the mobile phone SIM card and Pr phone cards so big has its historical origin, after the mobile phone from analog era into the digital era, mobile phone number is no longer like analog era was "burn" on the phone in directly, but can be recorded by the digital universal integrated circuit card and to determine the cellular phone number information and authentication between operators and functions, That's where the SIM card came in. Instead of telling you what kind of phone you buy, operators started selling SIM cards directly. After you buy a SIM card, you plug it into your phone.
At that time, due to the limitations of the production technology, the SIM card used the same standard as all IC cards, that is, the phone card, access card, bank card and so on before the similar size. And at that time, the SIM card was made into such a large piece of integrity. As a result, early mobile phones had to reserve that much space for the SIM card to be inserted.
Soon, digital phones began to move toward smaller sizes, and the first step was to drastically reduce the size of the SIM card. In fact, the actual SIM card contained only a small portion of the integrated circuit. As a result, the most familiar SIM card was suddenly reduced to the size of the smallest postage stamp, known as the Mini SIM card. In order to distinguish the positive and negative, a corner of the rectangle was cut off.
This standard persisted for many years, until Apple's revolutionary iPhone4, which amazed the world with its slim body thanks to its careful management of the phone's interior space. The iPhone4 also features a smaller Micro SIM card for the first time, nearly doubling the size of the previous Mini SIM card. In the beginning, the operators had no time to respond to the introduction of specialized Micro SIM cards, only through a special card cutter, cut the larger Mini cards into Micro cards. Of course, this means that the actual useful parts of the SIM card at this point are pretty much those small pieces of metal that we see on the outside.
While other handset makers began to follow Apple's lead and gradually advanced to Micro SIM cards, Apple continued to lead the way with the release of the iPhone5 in 2012, introducing a slimmer Nano SIM card whose clipped edges were close to the limit of the card's interior components.
At this time, in addition to the original size SIM card, which has completely disappeared, there are actually three kinds of mobile phone SIM cards on the market, from the biggest to the smallest, namely Mini SIM card, Micro SIM card and Nano SIM card. To that end, today's carriers make SIM cards with different cuts, from large to small, so that users can take them out of different sizes depending on the phone.
To solve the problem of how to use a cut-down SIM card for a phone with a larger slot, the universal market has come up with a variety of cool gadgets that, through various combinations, make it relatively easy to replace your SIM card with a different phone.
Many mobile phones are also thoughtfully designed to be compatible with Micro SIM card and Nano SIM card applications through different ways of horizontal and vertical placement in the same slot position.
The most radical of these, of course, is the cardless technology we mentioned in the beginning, which has been strongly resisted by carriers because it would further squeeze them out of existence. Ultimately, however, technological progress is unstoppable. The disappearance of the physical form of SIM card will not only free up more precious space inside the mobile phone and further promote the miniaturization of smart phones, but also bring more development space for the mobile phone in the future, multi-number, cross-network use and more imaginative future functions.
In the future, these various SIM cards are destined to become a collection of historical and technological developments.