If Apple can do away with the SIM card, you can can bet they would make the phone even thinner.
Apple has proposed to do away with sim cards and intact has a patent for doing just that. It caused such a stink among the european carriers that they were forced to drop the idea for now.
This idea is much better than what Nokia is proposing which is a complete revamp of the sim and there is no backward compatibility whereas this proposal of Apple will ensure all the past and present mobile phones can be used.
Not true. Apple has said that THEY won't charge any royalties, but since the design is based on the old SIM design, there may still be license fees involved. If Motorola, for example, has a patent which covers the existing SIM design, Apple can't simply make that patent go away by cutting off some plastic.
That sounds reasonable. In that case, Nokia indeed has a very strong leverage with its SIM-related patents.
In the absence of obvious financial gains, the motivation behind Apple's design is more puzzling. Some have suggested it has to do with the SIM tray that Apple patented recently, but there are non-Apple phones which have similar trays.
Most likely we'll never know what Apple had in mind.
Bitch to the carriers. The fact that we still have to deal with removable SIMs is ridiculous in and of itself.
I recall a lot of Europe requires it. Also, the card has its own microprocessor to handle the encryption, that's one reason why newer phones came with a new SIM, even if you already had a good SIM, to switch to a newer encryption regime and it upgrades your encryption engine.
I don't know what the next system is, I think it's still being worked on. A secure way of managing carriers & changing accounts in a digital manner might be a pretty thorny problem. The existing CDMA way is PITA because it means a half hour call to customer service to switch phones.
50mm^3 is enough space to add another IC so it might be worth switching to a nanoSIM vs. a microSIM.
1) Size is less important than cost -- Royalties go away, or are minimized.
2) Experience is more important than carrier -- supposedly, Apple's implementation include a SIM with ROM and Flash, ROM for network security and ID, Flash for Carrier Info. This would allow Apple to embed SIM in phone and flash to whatever carrier consumer wants at POS. It also would let consumer change carriers by going through Apple instead of carrier.
Let's agree to disagree here.
Paying attention to what's important while sacrificing what isn't is my idea of what's behind Apple's success.
Actually, Apple's success is based on the premise that EVERYTHING is important. Jobs was notorious for spending a lot of time and money on getting even minor things just right.
That sounds reasonable. In that case, Nokia indeed has a very strong leverage with its SIM-related patents.
In the absence of obvious financial gains, the motivation behind Apple's design is more puzzling. Some have suggested it has to do with the SIM tray that Apple patented recently, but there are non-Apple phones which have similar trays.
Most likely we'll never know what Apple had in mind.
Any number of reasons - backwards compatibility. Perhaps their tray design is easier to manufacture. Perhaps they are able to avoid some of the licensing fees by switching to the new design. Reduction in size of the SIM reduces the overall cost (in spite of your denial). Lots of reasons.
1) Size is less important than cost -- Royalties go away, or are minimized.
2) Experience is more important than carrier -- supposedly, Apple's implementation include a SIM with ROM and Flash, ROM for network security and ID, Flash for Carrier Info. This would allow Apple to embed SIM in phone and flash to whatever carrier consumer wants at POS. It also would let consumer change carriers by going through Apple instead of carrier.
Once again, royalties do not go away. I'm not sure that they're even minimized. Apple's SIM design is basically the same as the old one with some of the plastic trimmed away. I don't see how it would reduce the royalties at all.
Of course, it would prevent Nokia from controlling the market and setting new (presumably higher) royalties if the Nokia SIM is selected.
Actually, Apple's success is based on the premise that EVERYTHING is important. Jobs was notorious for spending a lot of time and money on getting even minor things just right.
This is fiction. Nearly every Apples product of late is a trade off. Apple has been finding the right balance, and doing the right trade-offs.
Example 1: new iPad size. It's both thicker and heavier than the old iPad 2, which was advertised as "thinner lighter faster". However, keeping a record-setting battery life was more important to Apple.
Example 2: new iPad radios. There are components on the market that would have allowed Apple to sell customized 4G iPads for many European countries. Fast roll out, lower number of models, and excellent performance on the local 3G networks is what Apple preferred to do instead.
Any number of reasons - backwards compatibility. Perhaps their tray design is easier to manufacture. Perhaps they are able to avoid some of the licensing fees by switching to the new design. Reduction in size of the SIM reduces the overall cost (in spite of your denial). Lots of reasons.
Backwards compatibility would not be necessary if there is no change.
I don't deny the savings, I only insist that they are so negligible that they cannot offset the cost of introducing yet another design.
This is fiction. Nearly every Apples product of late is a trade off. Apple has been finding the right balance, and doing the right trade-offs.
Example 1: new iPad size. It's both thicker and heavier than the old iPad 2, which was advertised as "thinner lighter faster". However, keeping a record-setting battery life was more important to Apple.
Example 2: new iPad radios. There are components on the market that would have allowed Apple to sell customized 4G iPads for many European countries. Fast roll out, lower number of models, and excellent performance on the local 3G networks is what Apple preferred to do instead.
Of course there are always tradeoffs. But you claimed that Apple couldn't possibly care about the size of the smaller SIM because it was insignificant. Apple has spent lots of time and money on things that were even less important than that.
Backwards compatibility would not be necessary if there is no change.
I don't deny the savings, I only insist that they are so negligible that they cannot offset the cost of introducing yet another design.
Please show us how you calculated that.
Furthermore, Apple may have concluded that there is going to be a new design, anyway, so they might as well get their design incorporated and reduce the size at the same time.
It seems like most of the people here complaining about the requirement to have a SIM have not experienced the pain that is involved in switching out a phone on a CDMA carrier. For starters, the whole concept of an unlocked CDMA phone is just not there. You can have a Verizon CDMA phone, or a Sprint CDMA phone, or <insert some CDMA carrier here> phone. On GSM, you can have unlocked phones that are relatively compatible across different GSM networks (sure, you may have issues with the bands your carrier uses for data not being supported, but in general, voice calls just work as long as you have a SIM and unlocked phone).
I can't see why people complain about the hassle of having to insert a SIM card either. Generally, it's a quick process that can be done in less than a minute. And most people will never touch the SIM card in normal usage. But for the people that do need to swap a SIM (broken phone, switching carriers, upgrading without signing a new contract, etc, etc), the SIM card is probably the best compromise we have. Anything SIM-less is going to end up requiring carrier intervention most likely, which just gives them another chance to charge you a "service fee". Why anyone would want that is beyond me.
Of course there are always tradeoffs. But you claimed that Apple couldn't possibly care about the size of the smaller SIM because it was insignificant. Apple has spent lots of time and money on things that were even less important than that.
If Apple wanted to change the design solely to reduce the size, they could have pushed for that with the micro SIM a few years ago. It's a no brainer.
Can you give examples of Apple spending on things that are less important than making a device 0.08% smaller?
Please show us how you calculated that.
Let's see, how can we calculate Apple's savings from making one component 50 mm^3 smaller? There is no change in the number of parts, so we can exclude savings from manufacturing (in fact, changing the design of internal parts will incur expenses, but I assume that the design will change anyway). So we are left with savings from materials. The material supporting the internal structure of the iPhone is steel, and I will also assume that we are saving the same volume as from the SIM card, i.e. 50 mm^3. Steel weights about 8 mg/mm^3, so we save 400 mg per phone. If Apple sells 200 million iPhones this year, then they will save 80 tons of steel in total. Assuming a price of $800/ton, we get $64 000. That's how much Apple will save in a year. If you think the expenses will be less than 64 grand, boy, I don't know what to tell you.
Furthermore, Apple may have concluded that there is going to be a new design, anyway, so they might as well get their design incorporated and reduce the size at the same time.
How do you know "there is going to be a new design, anyway"? Don't the involved parties decide that, or does it just happen?
I have heard the arguments for and against going SIM-free (my own contention is that it is unfeasible and undesirable at the moment). However, I have not heard a single reasonable argument for decreasing the size of one of the smallest components in the phone with a meager 1/3. I am sure one can shave off more from the battery, and regain the 3 minutes of lost battery life by moving to a smaller circuit litography. One can make the glass-plates thinner by 0.0035 mm and get the same volume savings.
Finally, I agree that there is a slim chance that there's a wretched team at Apple which has been tasked with optimizing device size by shrinking one of the smallest components. I find it very strange though that Apple would not put those $110 billion to a better use.
What you do want, is something more like a 'login system', where you enter your credentials into your device, and it presents them to the network.
Bingo.
Quote:
I certainly would not trust EITHER the mobile network (who make their money from selling the services, not providing the local link bit) OR Apple to develop this necessarily in the consumers best interest. They are engaged in a power game for control of the consumer and access to revenue share against each other. Not empowering the consumer.
Why would Apple care? As far as I know they advocate a SIM-less design.
Mostly because of the inconvenience of changing the standard. It would make it more cumbersome to pop your SIM card into your old phone while the new one is out for repair, for example.
AT&T gives me stacks of free SIMs. I keep an old one laying around just in case it's need. That's a pretty easy fix. The extra amount of space, in engineering terms, is quite valuable. The royalties, well I admit I support Apple, but to me making it smaller is the end game, and I am eager for the day when SIMs disappear all together.
AT&T gives me stacks of free SIMs. I keep an old one laying around just in case it's need. That's a pretty easy fix. The extra amount of space, in engineering terms, is quite valuable. The royalties, well I admit I support Apple, but to me making it smaller is the end game, and I am eager for the day when SIMs disappear all together.
That's the first that I hear of a stack of SIMs that would be active with the same account.
The extra amount of space IS valuable, I never denied that; the question is how much space and how valuable. There has to be a lower limit when it doesn't matter any more. If not 50 mm^3, then how much is this limit? 5? 0.5? How do you calculate it? For reference, 50 mm^3 is the volume of an average drop of water.
Until someone gives me a reasonable argument as to why a 0.08% decrease in the total size would matter, I am going to maintain that this decrease is negligible and not worth redesigning the SIM.
I recall a lot of Europe requires it. Also, the card has its own microprocessor to handle the encryption, that's one reason why newer phones came with a new SIM, even if you already had a good SIM, to switch to a newer encryption regime and it upgrades your encryption engine.
I don't know what the next system is, I think it's still being worked on. A secure way of managing carriers & changing accounts in a digital manner might be a pretty thorny problem. The existing CDMA way is PITA because it means a half hour call to customer service to switch phones.
50mm^3 is enough space to add another IC so it might be worth switching to a nanoSIM vs. a microSIM.
Government bureaucracy at its finest. That same microprocessor could be embedded on the SoC or elsewhere, saving precious space. Given that we live in a time where voice, print and face recognition are all possible, that phone call is a sign of humanity's addiction to nostalgia.
That's the first that I hear of a stack of SIMs that would be active with the same account.
The extra amount of space IS valuable, I never denied that; the question is how much space and how valuable. There has to be a lower limit when it doesn't matter any more. If not 50 mm^3, then how much is this limit? 5? 0.5? How do you calculate it? For reference, 50 mm^3 is the volume of an average drop of water.
Until someone gives me a reasonable argument as to why a 0.08% decrease in the total size would matter, I am going to maintain that this decrease is negligible and not worth redesigning the SIM.
Also, they are inactive cards. I activate them in the extremely rare case one is needed. "Stacks" was hyperbolic, but they basically have never charged me for a SIM card because I refuse to pay for them.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrDoppio
That's because the value is so little that it is practically vanishing.
Every last bit counts. Considering such small details is a big part of why Apple has done so well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Misa
If Apple can do away with the SIM card, you can can bet they would make the phone even thinner.
Apple has proposed to do away with sim cards and intact has a patent for doing just that. It caused such a stink among the european carriers that they were forced to drop the idea for now.
Let's agree to disagree here.
Paying attention to what's important while sacrificing what isn't is my idea of what's behind Apple's success.
That sounds reasonable. In that case, Nokia indeed has a very strong leverage with its SIM-related patents.
In the absence of obvious financial gains, the motivation behind Apple's design is more puzzling. Some have suggested it has to do with the SIM tray that Apple patented recently, but there are non-Apple phones which have similar trays.
Most likely we'll never know what Apple had in mind.
I recall a lot of Europe requires it. Also, the card has its own microprocessor to handle the encryption, that's one reason why newer phones came with a new SIM, even if you already had a good SIM, to switch to a newer encryption regime and it upgrades your encryption engine.
I don't know what the next system is, I think it's still being worked on. A secure way of managing carriers & changing accounts in a digital manner might be a pretty thorny problem. The existing CDMA way is PITA because it means a half hour call to customer service to switch phones.
50mm^3 is enough space to add another IC so it might be worth switching to a nanoSIM vs. a microSIM.
CDMA's not looking to shabby right now, is it?
Everyone wants embedded SIMs, anyway.
2 Points on this:
1) Size is less important than cost -- Royalties go away, or are minimized.
2) Experience is more important than carrier -- supposedly, Apple's implementation include a SIM with ROM and Flash, ROM for network security and ID, Flash for Carrier Info. This would allow Apple to embed SIM in phone and flash to whatever carrier consumer wants at POS. It also would let consumer change carriers by going through Apple instead of carrier.
Actually, Apple's success is based on the premise that EVERYTHING is important. Jobs was notorious for spending a lot of time and money on getting even minor things just right.
Any number of reasons - backwards compatibility. Perhaps their tray design is easier to manufacture. Perhaps they are able to avoid some of the licensing fees by switching to the new design. Reduction in size of the SIM reduces the overall cost (in spite of your denial). Lots of reasons.
Once again, royalties do not go away. I'm not sure that they're even minimized. Apple's SIM design is basically the same as the old one with some of the plastic trimmed away. I don't see how it would reduce the royalties at all.
Of course, it would prevent Nokia from controlling the market and setting new (presumably higher) royalties if the Nokia SIM is selected.
/
This is fiction. Nearly every Apples product of late is a trade off. Apple has been finding the right balance, and doing the right trade-offs.
Example 1: new iPad size. It's both thicker and heavier than the old iPad 2, which was advertised as "thinner lighter faster". However, keeping a record-setting battery life was more important to Apple.
Example 2: new iPad radios. There are components on the market that would have allowed Apple to sell customized 4G iPads for many European countries. Fast roll out, lower number of models, and excellent performance on the local 3G networks is what Apple preferred to do instead.
Backwards compatibility would not be necessary if there is no change.
I don't deny the savings, I only insist that they are so negligible that they cannot offset the cost of introducing yet another design.
Of course there are always tradeoffs. But you claimed that Apple couldn't possibly care about the size of the smaller SIM because it was insignificant. Apple has spent lots of time and money on things that were even less important than that.
Please show us how you calculated that.
Furthermore, Apple may have concluded that there is going to be a new design, anyway, so they might as well get their design incorporated and reduce the size at the same time.
It seems like most of the people here complaining about the requirement to have a SIM have not experienced the pain that is involved in switching out a phone on a CDMA carrier. For starters, the whole concept of an unlocked CDMA phone is just not there. You can have a Verizon CDMA phone, or a Sprint CDMA phone, or <insert some CDMA carrier here> phone. On GSM, you can have unlocked phones that are relatively compatible across different GSM networks (sure, you may have issues with the bands your carrier uses for data not being supported, but in general, voice calls just work as long as you have a SIM and unlocked phone).
I can't see why people complain about the hassle of having to insert a SIM card either. Generally, it's a quick process that can be done in less than a minute. And most people will never touch the SIM card in normal usage. But for the people that do need to swap a SIM (broken phone, switching carriers, upgrading without signing a new contract, etc, etc), the SIM card is probably the best compromise we have. Anything SIM-less is going to end up requiring carrier intervention most likely, which just gives them another chance to charge you a "service fee". Why anyone would want that is beyond me.
Can you give examples of Apple spending on things that are less important than making a device 0.08% smaller?
Let's see, how can we calculate Apple's savings from making one component 50 mm^3 smaller? There is no change in the number of parts, so we can exclude savings from manufacturing (in fact, changing the design of internal parts will incur expenses, but I assume that the design will change anyway). So we are left with savings from materials. The material supporting the internal structure of the iPhone is steel, and I will also assume that we are saving the same volume as from the SIM card, i.e. 50 mm^3. Steel weights about 8 mg/mm^3, so we save 400 mg per phone. If Apple sells 200 million iPhones this year, then they will save 80 tons of steel in total. Assuming a price of $800/ton, we get $64 000. That's how much Apple will save in a year. If you think the expenses will be less than 64 grand, boy, I don't know what to tell you.
How do you know "there is going to be a new design, anyway"? Don't the involved parties decide that, or does it just happen?
I have heard the arguments for and against going SIM-free (my own contention is that it is unfeasible and undesirable at the moment). However, I have not heard a single reasonable argument for decreasing the size of one of the smallest components in the phone with a meager 1/3. I am sure one can shave off more from the battery, and regain the 3 minutes of lost battery life by moving to a smaller circuit litography. One can make the glass-plates thinner by 0.0035 mm and get the same volume savings.
Finally, I agree that there is a slim chance that there's a wretched team at Apple which has been tasked with optimizing device size by shrinking one of the smallest components. I find it very strange though that Apple would not put those $110 billion to a better use.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bishop of Southwark
What you do want, is something more like a 'login system', where you enter your credentials into your device, and it presents them to the network.
Bingo.
Quote:
I certainly would not trust EITHER the mobile network (who make their money from selling the services, not providing the local link bit) OR Apple to develop this necessarily in the consumers best interest. They are engaged in a power game for control of the consumer and access to revenue share against each other. Not empowering the consumer.
Why would Apple care? As far as I know they advocate a SIM-less design.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrDoppio
Mostly because of the inconvenience of changing the standard. It would make it more cumbersome to pop your SIM card into your old phone while the new one is out for repair, for example.
AT&T gives me stacks of free SIMs. I keep an old one laying around just in case it's need. That's a pretty easy fix. The extra amount of space, in engineering terms, is quite valuable. The royalties, well I admit I support Apple, but to me making it smaller is the end game, and I am eager for the day when SIMs disappear all together.
That's the first that I hear of a stack of SIMs that would be active with the same account.
The extra amount of space IS valuable, I never denied that; the question is how much space and how valuable. There has to be a lower limit when it doesn't matter any more. If not 50 mm^3, then how much is this limit? 5? 0.5? How do you calculate it? For reference, 50 mm^3 is the volume of an average drop of water.
Until someone gives me a reasonable argument as to why a 0.08% decrease in the total size would matter, I am going to maintain that this decrease is negligible and not worth redesigning the SIM.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM
I recall a lot of Europe requires it. Also, the card has its own microprocessor to handle the encryption, that's one reason why newer phones came with a new SIM, even if you already had a good SIM, to switch to a newer encryption regime and it upgrades your encryption engine.
I don't know what the next system is, I think it's still being worked on. A secure way of managing carriers & changing accounts in a digital manner might be a pretty thorny problem. The existing CDMA way is PITA because it means a half hour call to customer service to switch phones.
50mm^3 is enough space to add another IC so it might be worth switching to a nanoSIM vs. a microSIM.
Government bureaucracy at its finest. That same microprocessor could be embedded on the SoC or elsewhere, saving precious space. Given that we live in a time where voice, print and face recognition are all possible, that phone call is a sign of humanity's addiction to nostalgia.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrDoppio
That's the first that I hear of a stack of SIMs that would be active with the same account.
The extra amount of space IS valuable, I never denied that; the question is how much space and how valuable. There has to be a lower limit when it doesn't matter any more. If not 50 mm^3, then how much is this limit? 5? 0.5? How do you calculate it? For reference, 50 mm^3 is the volume of an average drop of water.
Until someone gives me a reasonable argument as to why a 0.08% decrease in the total size would matter, I am going to maintain that this decrease is negligible and not worth redesigning the SIM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law
Also, they are inactive cards. I activate them in the extremely rare case one is needed. "Stacks" was hyperbolic, but they basically have never charged me for a SIM card because I refuse to pay for them.