The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has approved a new nano-SIM design in Europe as the official fourth form factor.
Although, the screens have been getting bigger and bigger resulting in larger smartphones, they are increasingly getting slimmer as well. This has resulted in a lot of components being made smaller and cramped into the teeny weeny spaces inside smartphones.
And hence our standard SIM size is getting a bit too luxurious to say the least. And the topic has been hotly debated since Apple has been pushing for a decrease in the SIM size by at least 40%. Interestingly though, most other manufacturers like Motorola, Samsung, Nokia and RIM have been opposing the same, with Nokia proposing its own design which didn’t gather much approvals as well.
The ETSI approved nano-SIM is said to be a third smaller than the MicroSIM card and allow manufacturers to build even smaller smartphones. Also called the fouth form factor (4FF) card it will have a width of 12.3mm, height of 8.8mm and thickness of just 0.67mm.
It is believed that the new design approved by ETSI is the one proposed by Apple, though RIM and Motorola also seem to have reworked on Apple’s design and added a notch to it to ensure the card is secured in its position.
Apparently the existing SIM cards cannot be converted into Nano SIM like Micro SIM’s owing to the size of the Nano SIM which is just one third of the original. Though you might be relieved to know that the Nano SIM is backwards compatible, i.e. the Nano SIM would work in the slots of the old SIM or Micro SIM’s with the help of a simple adapter. How I wish the existing SIM’s could be cut to the size of the Nano ones, but that might require us to cut the chips on it as well, which would certainly render them useless.
Irrespective of the size and the ownership of the design, we just hope that it is widely available with the carriers once the manufacturers start adopting the design in their smart devices and the end user is not hassled.
