I hope Apple doesn't win this. I really don't want my phone to get any thinner. I'm afraid i'm going to break it in half if i do.
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Apple Proposes Standard for Smaller SIM Cards to Make Even Thinner iPhones
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why not thinner??
no one thinks the ipod touch is too thin, so if they make it as thin as ipod touch, pretty sure thatd be amazing
no one thinks the ipod touch is too thin, so if they make it as thin as ipod touch, pretty sure thatd be amazing
Because not every carrier supports no sim card phones (can't remember the technical name) for example I don't think they are supported at all in Australia where I live. But yes that is what will happen eventually
It's funny when operating in countries with strong consumer legislation then Apple is happy to play with in those systems and earn good money doing so. Apple is only "pandering" to carriers in countries where weak consumer legislation means the carriers have both the consumer and the handset makers by the balls. It would seem from the outside that their overall effect on the U.S market has been to more it every so slightly away from carrier control.
The embedded sim will be as much a standard module as the current sim card any advantage/disadvantage to consumers will still rely on the market/legislative power of the consumers. Apple will play the game that needs to be played and will use the freed up space to add features or reduce size or both.
I can't understand why people think that the difference between mini-sim and micro-sim is minor and that further reduction are pointless. I mean stuff inside the phone is tiny. You look at iFixit teardown the sim and infrastructure are as big as the A4. The sim seems to dictates the width of the board with in turn changes the size of the battery. The noise cancellation chip in the story above is 3x3mm, gryo's, compasses chips are all tiny.
Say they saved 9+sq.mm off the sim and put that into a bigger back camera module.They could change from 1/3.2 to a 1/2.7 sensor. That would be a big bump in Image quality.
Small saving can have big results.
The iPhone is too thin and small as it is. Apple needs to learn that small doesn't always mean better. Yes I agree that you do not want a huge brick of a phone but the first generation iPhone was thin enough. I think Apple needs to focus on having a 4.3" high resolution screen instead of getting smaller SIM cards.
Apple is falling behind so fast in the smartphone arena and they are going to have trouble catching up pretty soon if they don't get on the ball. It is like Mac vs. Windows all over again.
Apple is falling behind so fast in the smartphone arena and they are going to have trouble catching up pretty soon if they don't get on the ball. It is like Mac vs. Windows all over again.
I doubt it really has anything to do with thinness and everything to do with changing the standard for their own internal benefit which has nothing to do with form factor. The sim is already around 1mm think.
I hope that eventually there will be an invisible iPhone. That should get rid of the fanboys in a hurry.
If adopted only by Apple devices, however, a new form factor would be an incredible setback for iPhone unlockers, since an unlocked device is useless unless multiple carriers offer a compatible SIM. Apple has submitted its proposal to ETSI with support from Orange, which says we may even see the smaller SIM sliding into devices next year.
And at the same time, that'll frustrate customers with legitimately unlocked iPhones.
With new carbon-fiber technology, you won't be able to get "too thin". Smartphones will end up being 2-3mm thick in 20-30 years and today's iPhone 4 will look like one of those early BRICKS.
Such as...?
I don't believe they do pander to carriers. I want to refresh your memory about a few things about the US networks before Apple entered the phone market:
1) Ringtones needed to be purchased in order to be put on the phone, predominantly sold by the carrier at ridiculous prices.
2) Games, video, and music were also sold via the carrier, with terrible quality and high pricing.
3) It was common practice in the US for carriers to force phone manufacturers to disable Bluetooth and other features on phones, to prevent users putting on music or other media from sources outside their own stores.
4) Networks were not suitable for modern Internet use. But the iPhone literally forced carriers to rush to make multi-billion dollar upgrades to the networks to accommodate.
5) Verizon and AT&T used to actively block any phone using their service that wasn't licensed through them. Apple, and in turn Android, made them open their networks to all phones that were compatible with the network.
6) Visual Voicemail didn't exist. AT&T spent millions creating the system for Apple.
7) Lastly, buying a phone used to be a horrendous experience that took an hour in-store to go through the activation process. Apple required carriers change that, and Apple simplified it immensely.
All these items on this list, who benefited? Apple? Sure. But not as much as we, the consumer did. Carriers used to have huge control over the phone manufacturers, dictating what hardware could be used. If Apple were pandering, why didn't they block YouTube and other video streaming apps from iPhones? Well, it turns out, AT&T did ask Apple to do this very thing when they were first struggling with the excess capacity. Apple said no. (source: Wired Magazine, July 2010)
The only time I can see that you may argue Apple have pandered to carriers is in regard to tethering.
As much as I dislike the bloated thing iTunes has become, I think Apple are going to get rid of that umbilical cord link in iOS in the very near future. In which case, the soft sim would likely have been possible via the phone itself. There's no reason it couldn't have. It's also possible it could have intelligently detected your use of different devices (Phones, iPad) and switched account between them depending on which is used. Very convenient for the user.
And cassettes and CDs were very simple and easy too. Now we have MP3s and they require a computer to be similarly involved, but we've gained convenience and space-saving that go beyond our initial fears when MP3 players were first introduced"I won't be able to buy a CD in a store and play it on my Walkman on the way home, i'll have to rip it then transfer and blah blah... we should just stick with CDs. I don't want Apple to take away our convenience just for a smaller product."
must be thinner
It seems like the thinner Jobs gets from his illness the thinner the products get... I love you Steve
It seems like the thinner Jobs gets from his illness the thinner the products get... I love you Steve
Just my 2 cents on the never-ending argument over sim cards/embedded sim cards.
Here we go again. The Americans on the board are extremely pro embedded sim card because they read an article in which apple states that this will free them from the chains of US carriers.
It's BS.
Americans, read my lips: Europeans have been freed from these chains long, long ago BECAUSE of the sim card standard.
Look at Verizon. They have embedded sims. Has that offered more freedom? No. Quite the opposite. I was with them for 5 years, I know. Had to pay out the butt just to get bluetooth functionality unlocked. If I wanted to switch phones, I had to call a 1800 number and enter a series of codes. This didn't even send my contacts over. Had to pay them extra money to download the contacts installer.
In Europe, we have one standard. My crappy LG phone just stopped working and the touch screen would not function. I couldn't do a thing with it. I just took the sim card out and switched to my trusty nokia. Voilà. Contacts and phone account switched over with a switch of a chip.
America: the phone plan, carrier and phone itself are one entity in itself.
Europe: your phone is yours and you are allowed to pick your carrier and phone plan you desire.
Here we go again. The Americans on the board are extremely pro embedded sim card because they read an article in which apple states that this will free them from the chains of US carriers.
It's BS.
Americans, read my lips: Europeans have been freed from these chains long, long ago BECAUSE of the sim card standard.
Look at Verizon. They have embedded sims. Has that offered more freedom? No. Quite the opposite. I was with them for 5 years, I know. Had to pay out the butt just to get bluetooth functionality unlocked. If I wanted to switch phones, I had to call a 1800 number and enter a series of codes. This didn't even send my contacts over. Had to pay them extra money to download the contacts installer.
In Europe, we have one standard. My crappy LG phone just stopped working and the touch screen would not function. I couldn't do a thing with it. I just took the sim card out and switched to my trusty nokia. Voilà. Contacts and phone account switched over with a switch of a chip.
America: the phone plan, carrier and phone itself are one entity in itself.
Europe: your phone is yours and you are allowed to pick your carrier and phone plan you desire.
I think you have it backwards.....
After all there are CDMA multi carrier networks (well there were a while ago) with as much freedom to move the number as you discribe. And gsm networks with SIMs with no freedom to move either.
Its nothing to do with the techno gee wizzery. It's all to do consumer rights and market power. Maybe these free market standardized on gsm networks to force competition based on service and product not who can find the best way to lock people in. The technology does play a part but it's not in itself the driver.
They would when you drop your phone and have to use an old phone or a loaner and find that the new nano-SIM doesn't fit in the old handset.
Or you turn up at your holiday destination and they don't sell any PAYG nano-SIMs.
They also rely on locking in their customers to their own services which is precisely why people are nervous about soft SIMs. If Apple got to choose the list of compatible carriers with their phone then they could potentially block carriers they have no agreement with.
You can also see why the carriers themselves would be upset about them if they couldn't attract users from other networks to their network without Apple's say so.
That's not to say that's how Apple would do it but you're relying on Apple being nice instead of just sticking any SIM into an unlocked phone.
you will never see a removable battery in an iphone.Will it make room for a removable battery?
Smaller home buttons all round! Thinner font size apple so my eyes can strain more!
If Apple were designing a dumb phone, thinner would be fine.
But their obscene obsession with making a tinier smartphone is just asinine.
Why not make a new iphone so thin its transparent, then I could put it in the palm of my hand, wad it up, and toss it into the trash!
Flippin Apple is Bulimic
But their obscene obsession with making a tinier smartphone is just asinine.
Why not make a new iphone so thin its transparent, then I could put it in the palm of my hand, wad it up, and toss it into the trash!
Flippin Apple is Bulimic
Who would have thought the SNL was being prophetic with that iPod sketch about miniaturization?
http://www.maxmouth.com/view_video.php?viewkey=f4cc0ad3819a36752467
http://www.maxmouth.com/view_video.php?viewkey=f4cc0ad3819a36752467
People who do this are going to have to realize that the phone companies don't want you to do so. Not just Apple. In fact, Apple probably doesn't care, except that they have partnered with the carriers and follow the party line. (once they've agreed to it, which may include years of arguing for what Apple wants, first)
They don't. They make it more difficult for hackers. Legit or not.
I do. Plenty of people do. That was always my problem with my 1G Touch. (and iPhones 1-3) I stuck it in a large, full coverage case so it didn't get lost in my hand. Much prefer iPhone 4 size.
I'm not sure you can say Apple was behind all of this, nor that all is correct. Ringtones have been free on various phones for quite some time. Razr, for instance. Still took me close to an hour to get my iPhone last month. Verizon still blocks like that, afaik.
1)Not true if you were using a Windows Phone Palm Phone or Symbian Phone. Heck if you had the USB connection kit for your "dumb" phone some would allow you to load tones.
2)Again if you had a Windows Palm or Symbian phone you could get those things without the carrier, the price may not have been cheap, but when you have a small market...
3)That is true depending on the device. As it is now Apple is forced to turn off things that the carrier doesn't want on (tethering??) or cripple devices for no apparent reason (lack of bluetooth vcard sharing, 20MB download limit on 3g).
4)I sorta agree there, but we are now seeing carriers clamp down on users when things used to be more open (unlimited internet going bye bye).
5)Verizon may have done that via the virtue of ESN, but AT&T couldn't do that because of SIM.
6)VVM doesn't exist on every carrier that carries the iPhone...
7)The first iPhone simplified it immensely, now they like to activate the phones before you leave, unless you say it is a gift, or order it online. It would be even less of a hassle if you didn't have to activate the phone at all through iTunes, just stick the SIM in and go (like every other SIM phone).