Nano sim cards : an overview
Apple has officially announced that nano sim cards will be used in iphone 5. After this announcement, nano sim cards have become a topic of discussion among people. However, there is a lot of confusion in general public regarding the use of nano sims. This article is an attempt to clear that confusion.
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With the official announcement from Apple that Iphone 5 will use Nano Sim card, major telecom companies have come into action to place order for nano sim cards.
Many telecom operators have already maintained the stock of nano sim cards. However, there is a lot of confusion about nano sim cards in general public.
Nano sim card was introduced by the European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI) in June 2012. Its dimensions are 12.3mm X 8.7mm X 0.67mm which is 40% smaller than the regular sim cards. 
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After their invention, sim cards have been reducing continuously in size. The first generation of sim cards was very large and with the reduction in size of cellular phones, sim cards were also modified accordingly to fit into them. The sim cards were modified continuously from smaller plug-in sims to mini-UICC sims. Mini-UICC is also known as 3rd Form Factor (3FF). Since the mobile phones are getting thinner and thinner, there arises a need for sim cards that are not only small in size but also in thickness. This lead to the concept of Nano sim cards which are only 0.67 mm thick.
Nano sim cards are also known as 4FF (4th Form Factor). With the introduction of nano sim cards in the market, there is a great scope of miniaturization for mobile phone manufacturers. The space saved by using nano sim cards can be used for other mobile hardware like memory card battery space and other hardware space.Implementation challenges
It was easy to implement micro sim cards from plug-in type sim cards by cutting the edges to the desired size. However, it is not possible to create nano sims in same way. The reason is simple. We can cut the edges to reduce the size, but we can't reduce the thickness. That is why, nano sim cards need to be implemented separately and cannot be recreated from the existing sim cards.Nano sim cards in India
With the announcement of using nano sim card in Aplle Iphone 5, telecom companies in India have also become active to order nano sims. Vodafone and airtel have already placed orders for nano sim cards. They are waiting for the availability of iphone 5 in Indian market so that they can grab this opportunity to provide nano sim cards to the iphone users in India.
No doubt, the nano sim is much compact than the current sim cards and will save a lot of space in the mobile phones for manufacturers. But, it may also create some problems. Sim cards are already very small and are hard to handle outside the mobile phone. If they are lost, it is very difficult to find them. Nano sim cards are even smaller than existing sim cards. So they may be hard to handle in our hands and may lost if we drop them accidentally. Also, nano sim cards cannot be reproduced from the existing sim cards. So current stock of plug-in sim cards and micro sim cards cannot be used to create nano sim cards.
Practically, the benefits of nano sim cards overcome its disadvantages. So, we can say that it is a great milestone achieved by telecom industry.
"It was easy to implement micro sim cards from plug-in type sim cards by cutting the edges to the desired size. However, it is not possible to create nano sims in same way. The reason is simple. We can cut the edges to reduce the size, but we can't reduce the thickness."
No problem! use a sand paper for reducing the thickness