DIY nano-SIM to regular size SIM adapter

Stuck with a smaller-SIM card and have to switch to a phone which uses the larger (normal) version? 

Like a lot of people I recently put in an order for a new iPhone which are several weeks away from delivery, and in simultaneously managed to sell the existing older-generation iPhone. What to use in the meantime? I fished out an older Android phone from one of the storage drawers, but had an issue - it uses a ‘normal’ regular size SIM card. The size difference is shown below.

There were two options. First, to purchase a commercially available adapter as in image below.

Or second, perhaps much more fun and challenging - make my own. I took on the challenge, as I didn’t have the time to wait for a purchased version to come in.

The following ingredients were required:

1. Correct measurements template for each of the SIMs - 
• take a PDF printout from the helpful folks at nanosim-adapter.com 
2. A material of the same thickness as a SIM card to make the adaptor
• some thick card - example: discarded garment labels, or in my case, a sock pack cover.
3. Tools 
• scissors, basic sellotape, a little glue

Steps:

1. Take a printout of the earlier mentioned PDF sheet (A4 size). Make sure that in the print preferences, you do not scale down the document, or fit-to-page, or fit-to-margins.
2. Cut out the full SIM shape on the page, and 
   
3. Glue it to a suitable card material (For me it was a sock packet :) . Make sure to use very little, minimum glue. You don’t want it leaking into your phone. 
   
   
   
   
4. Cut the card to the regular SIM shape
   
5. Carefully cut out the hole for the nano-SIM, 
   
6. Make sure the actual nano-SIM card fits into the hole on the card.
   
7. Flip the card template and nano-SIM together over on the non-contacts side, and put sellotape across the back. 
   
8. Trim down any extra card or sellotape.
9. Your nano-SIM adapter is ready 
10. Put into your phone to test it out. 
    

If you got it right, it should work as it did for me (see below)! Cost = $0. 

Cellphone using SIM adaptor showing full reception

Note: The website mentioned also offers options of converting a regular-SIM to nano/micro-SIM, which is probably a DIY destructive process. Also to convert micro-SIM to regular-SIM, which is similar to steps above.

It's not as fast as on TV

Products rarely work as well as advertised. Somebody tried out the new iPhone 3G and made the video below comparing it to the ad.

Work from Home

These days with all the information at one's fingertips and devices that enable mobility, it's inevitable that the possibility of working from home arises. One normally pictures sitting in pyjamas at home tapping away on the work computer keyboard with the kids running around in the background.

When the idea was joked about in our office meeting, there were two groans - and both from guys married with kids. I was one of them. I find it hard to imagine how one can be serious about doing work surrounded by the distractions of domestic bliss.

However it seems one US company has implemented just that plan, potentially saving a lot of money.

Rick Boyd used to spend US$500 (NZ$648) a month on petrol and road tolls commuting between his home and office in New York state. Now Boyd doesn't commute any more because his company, Chorus, which provides clinical and management software for community health centres, has gone virtual.

Chorus closed its headquarters in Hasbrouck Heights, New York in early June and its other office, in Texas, a month later. Now all of the company's 35 employees and full-time consultants work at home. For the most part, they love it.

Chorus CIO Rick Boyd says existing technology made it easy for his company to go virtual.

Boyd says the company decided to close its offices to save money and spare employees the hassle and rising cost of commuting and because it had the necessary technology to support such a move. President and CEO AJ Schreiber says Chorus can continue to serve customers while simultaneously saving US$400,000 a year simply by closing its 15,000 square feet of office space.

There's a catch - the following constraints were implemented to make this work:

1. employee needs to have separate space in home, separated from rest of house and denizens. (Sorry no TV)
2. employee needs to have work desk
3. employee needs to be on desk during work hours, odd hours not allowed
4. employees provided with computing and telecommunications equipment - laptops, monitors, keyboards, headsets, internet service, IP Communicators, Blackberry/Windows smartphones
5. employee can buy office supplies (Paper, Ink, Post It notes etc.) and bill it to company
6. right infrastructure, with backup plans in case something goes down

So in other words - you take your office cubicle and put it at home - no escape, really.

Read more in the Computerworld article.

Turning point for Browsers

Both Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and Firefox 2.0 became available around October 2006. Since then their rise has been fast and steady. At this point, it looks like they are not taking over each other's market share, rather they are replacing their previous versions - Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 1.5. Internet Explorer 7 may reach a plateau at around 80% at the most, then we'll see if starts going down as Firefox goes up.

These new versions are built to address the evolving changes in the internet. Whereas Firefox has been continuously changing with frequent updates, MS Internet Explorer development had been stalled for the past 6 years. I was able to attend a Webstock conference in May last year, where Tony Chor, the Program Manager of the Internet Explorer 7 team explained the circumstances. After the launch of Windows XP operating system, most of the Internet explorer team had disbanded and there was lack of expertise to pick up the threads again. The start of the Internet Explorer 7 project mostly consisting of bringing these people together again. Tony promised that they plan to issue updates more frequently in the future. Ben Goodger, Google employee and lead designer of Firefox, at the same conference, was focused more on the future, all the way up to Firefox 3 and its possible features.


Ben Goodger and Tony Chor

At Tony's session, one of the participants asked him, "If there was an arm-wrestling match between you and Ben, who would win?". After the laughter had died down, Tony good-naturedly replied, "probably Ben". In the conclusion of the conference, Kathy Sierra remarked that somehow Tony didn't look very sincere when he said it.

Both Firefox and Internet Explorer have implemented a plug-in architecture, where users can find other small programs that can be fitted into the browser to perform 'cool' features. In Firefox, many of these plug-ins go on to become part of the standard installation in the next version. Independent developer enthusiasts contribute these plug-ins. This architecture has already been around in Firefox for some time, and the browser has a large community contributing lots of plug-ins. Internet Explorer has just started on this path, and it's community is minuscule. Microsoft is actively encouraging corporate partners and its developer community to become contributors.

As for Safari, nobody except Apple technology enthusiasts use this, and that's restricted to 5% of the computers market for now.

If mobile phones become a significant platform for access to the internet, then the whole scenario might change. For example, if Apple's iPhone becomes as popular as the iPod, there will be far more people using the phone to access the internet than computers, and the mobile phone browsers will dominate and determine web interface design. A likely scenario is that all models of mobile phones are going to evolve to provide internet access. Whether that access is practical or satisfactory remains to be seen.

The future of browsers is important to us techies as browsers are increasingly the basis of delivering software services, and we have to design the web pages to work on as many browsers as possible. For believe it or not, not all the browsers follow the standards correctly or in the same manner - the same web page will behave differently on different browsers. In taking care of all possibilities, resource and time constraints force us to choose which browser to build for and which browser to ignore.

Looks like it's Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Firefox 2.0 for now.

Technology Interfaces of Tomorrow

Finally technology is coming close to what I had been dreaming in interface design. Interface being the part of the machine you touch and see. Such as a number keypad on phone, the keyboard/mouse on a desktop personal computer, the joystick/gamepad for video game devices, the touch screen on some Automatic Teller Machines (ATM).

A lot of you by now would have seen Apple CEO, Steve Job's keynote address introducing the iPhone (see previous post). It's an impressive concept and will hopefully serve to shake up the 'Yaaawn' sleepy mobile phone industry - that have been launching very boring devices. However I don't swallow Apple's claim of having 'reinvented' the mobile phone. A lot of parallel impressive initiatives are also due to be launched, but have had their thunder stolen by Apple.

Take LG's Prada phone, which will be launched quietly this year in Europe before the iPhone.



Also, waiting for adoption is Synaptics' Onyx Concept.




All of the above incorporate some form of multi-touch or touch-screen technologies to allow the interface buttons and controls to change depending on the feature being used - a keypad for writing text, number keypad for the phone dialing, play/pause/stop/forward buttons for playing music or video.

A full implementation of multi-touch technology can be seen in a research presentation by Jeff Han at TED in California. This goes beyond just mobile phones.



The future promises foldable screens, Rollout screens, further convergence of features and devices, and more imaginative way to facilitate that convergence.




Other great obstacles in adopting featured portable devices is the battery life and pervasive connectivity. A battery should last at least 48 hours with the gadget being in full use for true portability. Also, mobile connectivity to a telecom network and wireless internet is still very patchy. It is all, in a way, just getting started.

Till all of these technologies become available in the marketplace in some reliable format, I'll may probably stick with my trusty Kyocera 7135.