Over the years, different types of phones come with support for different sizes of sim cards. As it appears, the size of the sim card has kept reducing as more and more phones are being reduced.
Apparently, the phone manufacturers are creating more space for features and components as they seek to make phones portable enough. So what happens when you have a sim card whose size is not supported on your phone? Simple, use Sim card size adapters. Here is how:
What is a sim card size adapter?
A sim card size adaptor is a piece of plastic that you can use to put your micro-SIM into a phone that takes a normal sized sim card. It allows the user to use their micro-SIM with any phone that takes a normal sized card or use it to transfer your contacts between phones that take different sized sim cards.
You will have to be careful when choosing a SIM adapter. Don’t just buy the cheapest you can find in the market. Get one that you are sure will fit the sim card perfectly. This keeps them in place when removing the sim card, which is when most of the havoc occurs.
A good sim card size adapter may cost a little bit more, but it is worth the price.
How to use
Most telecom companies now make sim cards that have been already cut out to fit the sim card size demands of different phones. In this case, you need to extract the size supported by your phone and insert it into your phone.
In case you lost the outer shell that makes your nano sim card into a micro sim card, use the sim card size adapter to convert it into a micro sim card.
Simcard sizes explained
There are three kinds of SIM around: standard, micro, and nano. Standard SIMs were the original and tend to appear in much older phones, such as the Galaxy S2.
Related Article: What is a sim card and how does it work?
The next size down, micro SIM, was developed to help make smartphones slimmer: when you’re trying to cram so much technology into a single case, every millimeter counts. Micro SIM slots appear in the Galaxy S3 and S4 and so on.
The next and final size is the smallest, the nano-SIM. You’ll find nano SIM slots in the iPhone 5 onwards and on Android devices released within the last few years.
Mainly, there are three sizes, but there’s actually a fourth and fifth option: a multi-SIM, whose credit card-sized molding can be swapped out to make a standard, micro or nano SIM card; and a combi SIM, which can be swapped out as a standard SIM or micro SIM. You’ll often see multi and/or combi SIM cards when you’re looking at pre-paying phones or SIM-only contracts.
