It’s been just over a year since Apple shipped the iPhone 4, and since that time the amount of devices to hit the market that use the new smaller microSIM card format has remained so small that you can count them all on one hand. There’s the iPhone 4, of course, the first and second generation iPad, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and the Nokia N9. We’re wondering what the hold is up since microSIM cards have the benefit of being smaller, and thus allow hardware vendors to either A) shove more technology into the same amount of space they usually have to fill when building a smartphone B) use larger batteries so people can stop worrying about whether or not their smartphone will die by the time they get home from work or C) make the already anorexic devices on the market even more thinner. Anyway, T-Mobile USA has just announced that they’ll now be offering customers microSIM cards. It’s really just a nice way of saying: “listen, if you’ve got an unlocked iPhone or iPad and want to use someone other than AT&T, use us.” Will any of this matter next year when T-Mobile becomes a part of AT&T? Probably not.
The good thing about the microSIM is that it has the same electrical contact configuration as a regular SIM card. In other words, you can take a pair of scissors to a regular SIM card and turn it into a microSIM card in just a few minutes. This writer remembers when Finnish operator Elisa started selling the iPhone 4 unlocked. You could stroll into the store and pick one up and the sales staff would gladly assist you in converting the SIM card you already had using a dedicated device that looks like a hole puncher. Put your SIM inside, squeeze the handles, boom, you’re done.
Said dedicated devices can be bought for quite cheap actually, but remember, once you’ve cut your SIM … it’s going to be a royal pain in the ass to put it in a full size SIM slot again.