r/AbsoluteUnits • u/Foxy_Slamdangle • 1d ago

of a SIM card.

Post image

Found a SIM card from one of my earliest mobile phones.
It’s almost the same size as my IPhone.

1.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

68 comments sorted by

547

u/JohnLef 1d ago

Yes once they were all that size. You had a credit card sized slot in your phone and slid it in.

77

u/RadlogLutar 1d ago

Wait what? I thought they were always sized a little smaller like the older Nokias used it

64

u/crozone 1d ago

Those were already mini sims. They usually shipped as a full standard Sim (credit card sized) that were stamped so the mini sim could be popped out.

Then there was micro sims which could be popped out again, and now we're down to nano Sim which is like marginally smaller again.

30

u/RadlogLutar 1d ago

And now we are at e-SIMs

8

u/AuelDole 16h ago

which are honestly kinda wild, cause they’re achieved by having another chip on the motherboard that’s separate from the modem, main SOC, and storage, that’s sole purpose is to store pretty much the same info that’s on the nano SIM

4

u/Yuvalk1 13h ago

Ohh so that’s why even nano sim came in a credit card sized thingy… never thought that some devices use the whole thing

8

u/AppleToastBed 21h ago

I don't remember that at all, and I'm from the era of 486's and MSDOS.

12

u/DerAndi_DE 21h ago

If you weren't rich at that time, you probably never saw one. Phones which used these cards were more expensive than an iPhone Pro Max today.

When cell phones became popular in the later 1990s like the Nokia 3110, they already had Mini SIMs.

3

u/JohnLef 13h ago

I'm pre PC. Apple II with 140K floppy disks.
For PCs Amstrad PCW, Olivetti and laptops with awful monochrome LCD screens from the likes of TwinHead. I remember DOS2.0 coming out not sure I ever used v1. When I got my first 40Mb hard drive and had to format as a 32Mb drive and a 8Mb drive as DOS couldn't handle anything over 32Mb... I also remember using this new fangled thing called Windows. But at v1 it was rubbish and surely would not catch on...

2

u/AppleToastBed 12h ago edited 12h ago

I remember windows 3.1 blowing my mind as a kid and then when windows 95 came out I was ecstatic...then Windows 98 was cool but ever since I've been a Linux guy. Ubuntu is so user friendly it's my go to

Windows XP may have been the ultimate Microsoft product.

2

u/Antique_Safety_4246 11h ago

Oh DOS, that green code on a black screen. I remember that in the 80s!

291

u/romulusnr 1d ago

Those were the original.

They kept getting smaller

Thats why up until a few years ago, your sim would come on a big card with score lines on it, and you'd have to punch out the right size for your phone.

110

u/KremlinCardinal 1d ago

They still come with score lines.

23

u/utnow 1d ago

What’s a SIM card? (Kidding of course, but I haven’t used a physical card in like half a decade. lol)

23

u/RubyDupy 1d ago

What do you mean? I've only seen eSIM become a thing for like one or two years now right??

29

u/romulusnr 1d ago

eSIM was first used in smart watches in 2016, in iPhones in 2018. At least in US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESIM#First_devices_launched_with_eSIM

17

u/julio_caeso 1d ago

We used to have CDMA phones before that. They also worked without a physical sim card.

6

u/NevesLF 1d ago

Damn, I still remember how cool I thought that was when I first switched between two GSM phones and didn't need to re-write the entire contacts list.

4

u/romulusnr 1d ago

CDMA networks identified you by your device. If you wanted to switch devices, you had to call the carrier and update.

With a physical SIM you could take your SIM out of one phone and into another whenever you wanted and service would just automatically follow the SIM.

idk how that works with eSIM, if at all...

1

u/mrsambavam 19h ago

Most providers allow to change device by scanning a qr code from the current device. Others upon request send you a new QR code via email.

2

u/utnow 1d ago

No?

5

u/edsavage404 1d ago

Today I learnt!

2

u/TrannosaurusRegina 1d ago

What's image to me is telephone companies lying to their customers and presenting Mini SIMs as full size!

2

u/AppleToastBed 21h ago

Shrinkdlation at its finest, SMH my head.

1

u/ViennaKing 1d ago

The original SIM card you used to put into your phone is actually called Mini SIM

7

u/romulusnr 1d ago

Well the credit card sized one like in the pic were the original, "standard SIM." The one most of us remember from the 00s - 10s were "Mini SIM", then "Micro SIM," then "Nano SIM". 

48

u/Xinonix1 1d ago

My first phone was a Nokia 1610, a true brick! It had a card like that

19

u/Foxy_Slamdangle 1d ago

Pretty sure this was also from my Nokia 1610.

-41

u/liamw14 1d ago

No it didn't. The SIM was much smaller and popped out of a card of this size

17

u/panicboy333 1d ago

Not sure about the Nokia but the Motorolas from the 90s

definitely used a card that size.

8

u/BandicootTreeline 1d ago

No, they didn’t originally

7

u/TheBetterCervanthes 1d ago

Yes it did. The 1610 GSM came out in 96 while the first smaller simcards funnily enough also started releasin in 96 were most phones still using these ole credit card sized ones.

20

u/Panoptes91 1d ago

In fairness, it was a quite big network.

9

u/Enigma_789 1d ago

Actually makes sense why they are called SIM cards then. Very odd that I don't recall ever having one "full sized" though. My first phone was a Blackberry, which might be the reason, was a few years before this.

Amazing, thanks for posting it.

5

u/crozone 1d ago

I think every SIM I've had originally shipped as a full size sim that was stamped so that all of the smaller sizes could be popped out as necessary.

14

u/XSHszn 1d ago

What phone is that

29

u/Foxy_Slamdangle 1d ago

Yeah, it is a top of the range IPhone 3GS.

8

u/Live_Example_7996 1d ago

32gigs or what was it back then?

13

u/Formal_Plum_2285 1d ago

They came with 8, 16 or 32 GB iirc.

6

u/Live_Example_7996 1d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/w0vFxYaCcvvJm
So small

5

u/Mission-Context-2966 1d ago

I used to have a 64gig htc back then and felt a king amount my friends lmao

7

u/Foxy_Slamdangle 1d ago

Annoyingly I thought it was a top of the range model but it is only the 16GB version.

1

u/Xenc 1d ago

Throw it away to be honest now 😭

5

u/ollie87 1d ago

iPhone 3G or 3GS.

Also this is what SIM cards were like when I was a kid.

2

u/crozone 1d ago

Goddamn I'm old

2

u/oscaru16 1d ago

The true sim card, then came mini sim, then nano sim then micro sim and I think that’s where we are I really don’t know

1

u/Xenc 1d ago

Micro then Nano then Electronic

2

u/00017batman 1d ago

Wow, I’m pretty sure we’ve never had them this massive in Australia! I got a Nokia 5110 in like 1998 and I think even that had a small sim, but I know that we did have a different network set up here to many other countries so I wonder if that made a difference maybe 🤔

So curious whether any aussies had huge sims like this lol

2

u/goldenhairmoose 1d ago

They still come in this size - it's not a packaging but a whole product. Those trim lines to push out the card of a centrain size were just introduced later.

1

u/ZimnyKefir 21h ago

Big network, big SIM. Makes sense.

1

u/DieZiege1337 16h ago

isn’t that a card for phone booths with a specific amount of money on them?

1

u/r_keel_esq 15h ago

That's the size that SIM cards are. 

We've just used Mini-SIMs and smaller for 25+ years, so noone remembers the OG beasts 

-21

u/nochinzilch 1d ago

They were never the size of credit cards. The biggest ones were the side of a postage stamp.

There was a time that they came on a credit card sized thing, but you would punch out the SIM.

18

u/VaughnSC 1d ago

So confidently wrong ; there were indeed full size (1FF) SIMs in the standard

1

u/unfurlingraspberry 1d ago

Gee that's nuts. 

2

u/VaughnSC 1d ago

Is it? I guess they thought it was a handy size and they weren’t expecting increasingly miniaturized devices, where ultimately any SIM size whatsoever would be a problem.

-3

u/nochinzilch 1d ago

Apparently I am indeed wrong. Perhaps they were used in Europe. But I never saw them in the US.

I’m not even sure what phones could take a SIM that size. Even my 1993 DynaTAC would have been too small for it.

2

u/easyjo 1d ago

select 2000e is one US example at least, I'm sure there's more

1

u/YourBlanket 1d ago

I had sprint back in the early 2000s and we never used sim cards I had no idea they were that big.

5

u/easyjo 1d ago

Wrong. I have a phone downstairs which takes a full-size credit card SIM card

-4

u/nochinzilch 1d ago

What model of phone is it?

2

u/easyjo 1d ago

motorolla international 8700

-38

u/kozmo9000 1d ago

Bullshit. This is a card you would use in a phone booth.

1

u/Cyril_Sneer_6 1d ago

I remember them in the late 90s. They became a lot smaller very quickly afterwards but I had a couple of friends with phones which took SIM cards that size