With all the advanced technology roaming around these days, I began to wonder if people still knew that their GSM phones use SIM cards. You know, those little plastic things that the carrier sticks in your phone that allows it to work? Feels like the technology that makes our technology work is getting over shadowed by OLED screens and quad-core Exynos processors. Believe it or not, some phones wouldn’t be more than a paper-weight if it wasn’t for SIM cards, but now they will be less apparent than ever.

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute, or ETSI for short, has approved a proposal by Apple that will introduce new Nano SIM cards to the mobile market. If you remember back to when micro SIM cards came out, then this will be more confusing. These new Nano SIM cards are 40 percent smaller than micro SIMS. Now these cards didn’t come without a fight. There were actually several large companies with different proposals, including RIM, Nokia, and Motorola.

The ETSI wrote the following on the matter:

“The fourth form factor (4FF) card will be 40% smaller than the current smallest SIM card design, at 12.3mm wide by 8.8mm high, and 0.67mm thick. It can be packaged and distributed in a way that is backwards compatible with existing SIM card designs. The new design will offer the same functionality as all current SIM cards….The new form factor was adopted by industry with the involvement of major mobile network operators, smart card suppliers and mobile device manufacturers. The new design will be published in due course in ETSI’s TS 102 221 specification”

What does the mean for the consumer? It has some pretty cool implications if you think about it. The biggest being that the less room the SIM card takes up, the more room there is to expand or include other components. A battery could be a little bigger, or it could give more room for a larger camera, the speculations are endless. Granted it isn’t a huge amount of space gained, everyone knows what Apple is capable of doing with a small portion of extra space.

Are you guys excited by this? What are your thoughts? Chime in down below.

Via: iDownloadBlog   Source: The Verge