Sunday, December 14, 2008

Ah, the SIM Card

By Fabian Toulouse

Cell phones are ubiquitous -- everyone has one. There are many types of cell phones out on the market today, which makes it hard to pick the right one for you. More and more people are looking to get the phones that have a SIM card installed as this enables you to take your personal info with you when you switch phones. So what exactly is a SIM card and what does it do?

A SIM card (Subscriber Identity Module) is an integral part of any cell phone. Generally, you can take a SIM card and use it with other phones from your provider but most often you cannot take that card and use it with a different provider's phone. There are many companies that only have phones that use SIM cards and this is a good thing as your entire phone info is stored on the card.

Typically, you can simply take the SIM card out of one phone and put it in another of the provider's phones and turn it on. It will take a few minutes to load the stored info but when it is done, the phone will be ready to use with your original cell phone number, complete with your entire contact list already downloaded into the new phone. This saves a great deal of time, as you do not have to worry about entering in all of your contacts and their info all over again. This can save both you and the cell company a great deal of time.

SIM cards first came around in 1991 and the currently come in two different sizes. The most common one used is the compact one that can be easily moved from one phone to another and the other is about as large as a credit card. These larger cards are still in some of the phones but they generally are not removable. The smaller SIM card is the one that can be removed and it makes things much easier. Some phones actually have both installed but you will find that more and more phones are going with the smaller SIM card for convenience.

If you are a cell phone user then chances are that your phone may have a SIM card. This card will store your SMS messages as well as all of your contacts and their info that you have stored in the phone. The card helps to activate the phone so that you can use it. While there are other programs out there that will store your phones info, the SIM card is still one of the leading products on the market today. More and more cell phone providers are getting their phones connected with SIM cards so if you do not have a cell phone with a SIM card, your nest phone just may have one. - 16463

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