Apple Developing Custom Built-In SIM Card for iPhone?

[GoodWatch]

What I mean is Apple might have a solution for travelers that we don't know about. But if y'all enjoy getting your panties in a bunch, please continue. I guess that's part of the fun of rumor sites anyway, a place to vent about rumors.

Have you ever visited Indonesia? Or other countries like that? Where SIMs and 'pulsa' is sold at small stalls at road sides? I don't see those people (without even so much as a dial-up connection) doing the mumbo-jumbo to change a provider on a SIM. I'd very much like to see that Apple solution of yours. This has nothing to do with 'getting panties in a knot', just with common sense. I have the solution: to bring a cheap, second phone just for that purpose. I'll send the bill to Steve, he can afford it.

 

[cameronjpu]

we don't know anything about this. It could allow the phone to be on multiple networks at the same time (or have a priority order). Or it could be apple's method of lock-in/control... not enough data.

But I like the fact that I go to an apple (or a Walmart), they activate the iphone by jumping on the local wifi, register with the carrier and assign the phone number. From a Stocking perspective, that makes HUGE benefits (I'd hate to 'run out' of tMobile SIMs at a store).

Eh? You know how tiny a SIM is? Anyone selling phones could fit 1000 SIMs in the space occupied by a typical iPhone box. This can only be a bad idea. SIMs are so easily swapped, that's the idea! You have a pile of iPhones and a pile of SIM cards. User can pick whichever one he wants to use, you slide it in, and you're activated.

 

[cameronjpu]

\Of course, with the current iPhone, you're locked into using one SIM anyway, so it doesn't really make a difference: you can't change SIM cards even if you can physically take it out. I bought my current Nokia Express Music 5310 without a SIM lock so I have the freedom of using any SIM.

I know - if only there was some way to remove the SIM lock from the iPhone. I bet a lot of people would be interested in that if it existed.

 

[cameronjpu]

I think a built-in "SIM chip" would be a better idea for iPad than iPhone. So maybe the new chip is really for iPad.

The iPad already uses a different-sized micro-SIM card than iPhone, and traveling between countries and losing 3G connectivity could possibly be less of an issue with iPad. Depends on the user's needs, of course.

Just a silly thought.

iPhone4 uses the same Micro SIM.

 

[Antares]

Eventually, all phones will no longer have SIMS. SIMS are an older technology that is no longer necessary in phones. A lot of people don't seem to understand this.

For example, my currrent phone doesn't have a SIM. If I want to change phones, I just call the up cell provider and give them the new phone's identification number. They type some stuff in on their end and....moments later, the new phone can now send and recieve calls using my phone number.

If the phone is broken, I can quickly switch to a temporary phone. When it's fixed, I can quickly switch back to the old phone. None of the hassles of needing a physical SIM card to swap. Quick and easy.

If this becomes universal for all cell providers/manufacturers, you would be able to easily switch between any carrier whenever you want. No messing with trying to get a physical SIM for each carrier. This is a good thing!

 

[vvswarup]

Here we go again...

They're going to beome a media carrier like AT&T and Comcast. All streaming so they dont have to create such a large footprint with cables. The sim card holder is for an Apple sim card. Apple is going to take over tech world in 2011!

Come on! An Apple SIM card? Just how are people going to actually use the iPhone for one of its intended purposes, which happens to be making calls? I don't think Apple has been working on a cellular network. That kind of an endeavor is a can of worms that Apple is just not going to stomach.

Quite frankly, your assertion sounds like a great big conspiracy theory.

 

[cameronjpu]

This would be good if it were to allow data for several carriers to be downloaded onto the SIM card so that users could switch when they cross borders as easily as switching to a different Wifi network. I have SIM cards for five countries. I would love to be able to switch among them in the Settings app.

That would be nice. But what if four of the countries allowed downloading the SIM information to the programmable chip, but the 5th didnt? So your trade off here was that you could use it so much easier in those four contries, but could not use your iphone at all in the 5th. Then would you think it would be a good idea?

 

[cameronjpu]

You get off the plane, your iPhone detects your location by GPS and tower info. You log in by WiFi, your iPhone takes you to a page where you can choose the carrier and plan you want. It is automatically billed to your iTunes account.

Your iPhone is locked in your home country, when you are not in a place covered by your home network, it becomes unlocked until you are.

Edited to say,

How about an external SIM card reader that will let you load a SIM from another iPhone?

RE edited to say,

The external SIM card reader could read the micro or mini SIMs. You could use the SIM from an original iPhone or one from an iP4.

That sounds MUCH simpler than the current way

 

[cmwade77]

The way I see this is that it will lock the iPhone to only approved carriers, this is not a good thing.

 

[Nahaz]

This is where I see Apple having a few road bumps in their plans.

1. Pre-Paid Sims. How are they going to manage the millions of owners that don't like being on a month by month bill?

2. How will Apple manage the sim transfer for people that need to use carriers in another country. They will need some type of online software to be able to switch.

3. The use of the same sim on multiple devices will be gone. Is this going to peeve thousands of people?

 

[cameronjpu]

We might be missing the bigger picture here... a virtual sim card would allow the phone to quickly change between carriers on the fly.

This is a very large loss of freedom and flexibility in exchange for a very small gain in convenience. Bad idea.

What if apple were to purchase minutes in bulk from all of the major carriers and instead of signing up with AT&T or Verizon for your phone plan you now sign up directly with apple and pay your monthly bill through iTunes. The virtual sim could decide which carrier has the best signal or cheapest price at given moment / location.

They now become a virtual carrier while they spend their $50B to build an apple owned 4G network.

Yeah why would Apple want to make 50% profit selling simple hardware, when they could slog out 1% profit by running a network? Brilliant!

Imagine a world where you pay $99 a month for 5GB of data regardless of what it's used for?

Uh yeah.... That sounds about right for Apple. Great product (5 GB) but way overpriced. I'd rather pay about half that, which I do currently in the USA on ATT.

Apple likes to compete in areas where you can provide a premium service and get paid premium prices for it. Does that sound like the cell network to you?

 

[jent]

We might be missing the bigger picture here... a virtual sim card would allow the phone to quickly change between carriers on the fly.

What if apple were to purchase minutes in bulk from all of the major carriers and instead of signing up with AT&T or Verizon for your phone plan you now sign up directly with apple and pay your monthly bill through iTunes. The virtual sim could decide which carrier has the best signal or cheapest price at given moment / location.

They now become a virtual carrier while they spend their $50B to build an apple owned 4G network. This would allow apple to control the entire customer experience and they could stop this nonsense of voice data vs text messages vs internet vs tethered internet mess we have today.

Imagine a world where you pay $99 a month for 5GB of data regardless of what it's used for?

I have no idea if that's feasible, but that would be spectacular. Combine that with a Google Voice-like service and it would be perfection.

 

[cameronjpu]

That's the way I read the article.

I can also see this useful for large company issued iPhones where one person inherits the old phone and gets a new ID in the phone, or a phone breaks and they need to roll an old user to a new handset. The changes can be done internally in the IT department.

If, as the article indicates, this can be done without involving the carrier, you have improved the iPhone for enterprise users.

Additionally, this can aid in updating from one phone to the next and "zeroing" out the old phone so you can sell it on eBay, sim included.

A lot of you need to "lighten up" when these rumors come out. We only know a tiny bit about the changes and from the comments it seems of many of you are ready to cut and run. Remember this is only a rumor, we have no idea of how this fits into the future user experience.

I'm guessing you think only the people who think this is a bad idea should lighten up, right? The people who agree with you, well, they are right, so the people who think it's a bad idea shouldn't tell them to lighten up, right?

 

[cameronjpu]

Would this mean that

a) your phone would be pretty much locked to an Apple blessed carrier?

or

b) You could be w/ Carrier A in the U.S. but when you travel overseas you could prepay w/ a local carrier in the country you are visiting vs. paying out the nose for international roaming?

If A -- that could be a deal killer for me. If B -- I'd be even more in love w/ my phone.

But but but!

See, situation B already exists with the current situation! It's easy, it's cheap, and it already works. Situation A, gee wouldnt it be a shame to bring about situation A in the quest for situation B, given that B already exists?

 

[cameronjpu]

So what happens when you send your phone in for repair, and you remove your sim and use it in another phone to keep it safe and still be able to work, ey?

You can't do that anymore, but it's totally worth it because you won't break your back carrying around all your 3 sim cards all the time.

 

[deconstruct60]

Have you ever visited Indonesia? Or other countries like that? Where SIMs and 'pulsa' is sold at small stalls at road sides? I don't see those people (without even so much as a dial-up connection) doing the mumbo-jumbo to change a provider on a SIM.

But do those most of the folks need an iPhone? For the communities where they don't even own a phone at home and this is their only access to making a call ( borrow /rent community phone and plug in your own SIM card) then what they need is a telephone. The iPhone makes for a terrible telephone in terms of cost efficiency . It is an iPod Touch that happens to also be a phone. It is not a phone first.

Where the stalls/shops primarily sell cards instead of phones that isn't really the iPhone market segment. If drink all the kool-aid hype you'd think they were the best selling phones on the planet. They aren't. Vast majority of the phones in the world are primarily just that.... phones.



Most of the aspects of the iPhone are designed around it being a personal device. Not a shared device. ( there is no user id login or multiple login accounts). There is no multiple call log per user. There is no "temporarily" set up gmail/email account mode.

 

[cameronjpu]

There's nothing to say that this built in sim approach won't have the ability to act as a dual sim. It's just a chip with storage capabilities after all. I'm sure if apple don't supply a dual sim feature whereby it can store two sets of carrier info. Then some clever person will develop something along those lines in the jailbreak community.

But this is here say at the moment. Would people still be dead set against this idea if it had a duel sim capability?

Only if you could assure me that no matter where I went, I could get a local number to use as I pleased. And I know that's not possible. What's so terrible about SIM cards? All the comments praising this idea are from people who wouldn't actually use it - the people who would actually use the seamless travel SIM swapping are not happy about it. Doesn't that tell you something?

 

[akbc]

As long as I can actually "CHANGE CARRIER" when I travel -- instead of choosing a roaming carrier, as I would do right now with my multiple SIM cards, then I'm fine.

I'm not going to be stuck with paying $2/min when I'm abroad... When that happens, good-bye iPhone, HELLO WP7/Android!

 

[cameronjpu]

Actually it is (or can be)

So you're going from a system that is portable, to a system that could be portable. Woohoo!

Not really. It could be done as a service that is independent from the carriers. What this seems much more to be is trying to pull back from assigning millions of SIM ID numbers to cards that aren't used.

What happens with lots of SIM cards is that the numbers are pre provisioned at least in the cards, if not also on the carriers networks (e.g, rip from package and plug in pre-paid.).

Wait, I thought that the problem was that SIM cards were always running out, forcing users to buy phones with the carrier they didn't want because of how often SIM cards run out at retailers. Now we're concerned that there are too many SIM cards?

 

[cameronjpu]

Eventually, all phones will no longer have SIMS. SIMS are an older technology that is no longer necessary in phones. A lot of people don't seem to understand this.

For example, my currrent phone doesn't have a SIM. If I want to change phones, I just call the up cell provider and give them the new phone's identification number. They type some stuff in on their end and....moments later, the new phone can now send and recieve calls using my phone number.

Sounds great. What did you do when you were in Egypt looking for local service? Do you speak Egyptian?

 

[deconstruct60]

But but but!

See, situation B already exists with the current situation! It's easy, it's cheap, and it already works. Situation A, gee wouldnt it be a shame to bring about situation A in the quest for situation B, given that B already exists?

You have to find a physical store to do B now (buy a pre-paid card). What if you just got off the plane and while waiting for your bag to drop in the baggage carousel you buy your pre-paid "card" over the airports Wifi and turn it on. You can't do that now.

The point is you don't need the physical card. You just need the info what is on the card. On the internet you can deliver that information anywhere. It is just bits of data.

It is like e-Books verus having to physically go down to the local bookstore. There were books for 100's of years before, but that doesn't mean folks don't buy them electronically now.

 

[y3k]

All the right questions people!

The answer is, it's not about your convenience this time, it is about linkage to the Apple-approved providers and Apple's GSM traffic earnings.

What is happening right now? I am living in Ukraine, a country where NO official iPhone provider exists. So I'm buying my iPhone at the full price of 570 pounds in London and inserting my Ukrainian SIM card in - so I can use iPhone without visual voice mail, the rest is just working.

Would I be able to do this with new SIM-less technology? No. Because programming your built-in SIM or provider's system whatever to support that built-in crap would be possible only in the case it's a provider with Apple contract. Why? Because this new technology is unmanageable in case everyone would need to support it. If it's limited number of providers around the world - yes, in this case I believe it's possible to implement.

So no iPhone 5 for the third world anymore! No iPhone for a gadget-freak country with 40 million official population and 50 million handsets online...

 

[cameronjpu]

You have to find a physical store to do B now (buy a pre-paid card). What if you just got off the plane and while waiting for your bag to drop in the baggage carousel you buy your pre-paid "card" over the airports Wifi and turn it on. You can't do that now.

The point is you don't need the physical card. You just need the info what is on the card. On the internet you can deliver that information anywhere. It is just bits of data.

Are you kidding? Have you traveled? You think finding a free open wifi network is easier than finding a SIM card?

It is like e-Books verus having to physically go down to the local bookstore. There were books for 100's of years before, but that doesn't mean folks don't buy them electronically now.

Why do people insist on using bad metaphors. We all understand the issues here, why waste good electrons on a terrible metaphor?

 

[atomicmufin]

weirder rumors every day..

 

[NoExpectations]

Not sure if I fully understand it, but if this upsets the carriers, then they will start pushing more 'open' phones.

Don't bite the hand that feeds you. Without a network, the iPhone is simply an expensive "Angry Birds" console.