The new iPhone 4 uses a microSIM, instead of the more commonly used miniSIM. And in the last couple of days I’ve even missed the old SIM, that were the size of a credit card, since it is not so easily lost in a sofa. But anyway, new SIM type, what do you do if you cant’ get one from your provider, for some reason? You do like MacGyver would have done, you make one. There are several tutorials on-line telling you what to do. I’m going to tell you what you shouldn’t do, or what I did wrong.
To clarify: information in a SIM is just placed in the chip part, the golden thing. The rest of the SIM is just plastic. So a microSIM and a miniSIM has the same size of the data chip. So you can easily cut a miniSIM into a microSIM. But make sure you cut it correctly.
This is three microSIMs. From the left: a genuine microSIM from a provider, a self created microSIM that does not work, and a self created microSIM that do work. So why is the middle one useless, and the right one OK? Because of the phone’s connectors.
Here is the iPhone’s connectors roughly drawn up, and you can see that the are missing the correct fields on the one in the middle, because it got an extra “lane” at the top. They are in fact touching the dividers on the SIM. Hence, not connected the way it should be. But on the right one, there is a connection.
So make sure the connectors are getting a hit on the SIM. I’m not sure if I could have cut of the top “lane” of the chip on the middle one, without breaking something. But since I already had done the cutting, some more cutting would have made it too small for the SIM bay in the phone.
So the conclusion: Don’t just cut around the golden chip, make sure that the phone’s connectors can get a clean connection on your result, before you need to get a replacement.
Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank you, you just saved me a whole bunch of time, 15 dollars and a whole bunch of heartache!