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What's wrong with storing contacts on a SIM card? Seems like a good idea, just move it to a new phone and boom, all your contacts are there.

by gagege 13y ago

wcummings 13y ago
All the cool kids sync their data in "THE CLOUD"
hmottestad 13y ago
You are fairly limited w/regards to space.
gbl08ma 13y ago
My main problem with it is the lack of enough fields to store all contact information. If you have, for example, a person's home phone number and mobile phone number, you end up using two entries instead of one, because last time I checked (and at least on the SIM cards I own) the storage format is a simple two-column list: Name-Phone. Furthermore, there are strict limits on the amount of characters one can insert (and the character set is very limited, too). Additionally, one can only store 250 entries or so (varies from card to card). To sum it up in one word, for me it's very unpractical. I remember having to use Bluetooth to transfer contacts from a old feature-phone to a new feature-phone because, obviously, the SIM card would not hold all the contact information I had in the old phone. We certainly have the technology to make better cards with more storage (BTW, the space for SMS text storage on the cards I own is ridiculously small, too). But as people moved on to store information on "rich" contact systems and, more recently, in the cloud, I think there isn't much motivation to innovate in that area.
- gagege 13y ago
  Interesting. I didn't know they had those limitations. Better off with regular SD card backups then.
SifJar 13y ago
Not as good as syncing to some online service e.g. Google. I recently bought a new Android phone, before that I used a Windows Phone 8 phone and before that another Android. On both the WP8 and second Android, I simply logged into my Google account and all my contacts synced in mere minutes. (On the Android, it also reinstalled all my apps, reconnected to all my WiFi hotspots etc.). I believe a SIM card can hold 100 numbers. Many people will have more numbers than that, so that's not really a viable alternative. Manually exporting to an SD card and then importing (which I believe can be done on Firefox OS, although exporting requires a third party app) is another option, but it's not as convenient as syncing to an online service.

What's wrong with storing contacts on a SIM card? Seems like a good idea, just move it to a new phone and boom, all your contacts are there.

by gagege 13y ago

What's wrong with storing contacts on a SIM card? Seems like a good idea, just move it to a new phone and boom, all your contacts are there.

wcummings 13y ago

All the cool kids sync their data in "THE CLOUD"

hmottestad 13y ago

You are fairly limited w/regards to space.

gbl08ma 13y ago

My main problem with it is the lack of enough fields to store all contact information. If you have, for example, a person's home phone number and mobile phone number, you end up using two entries instead of one, because last time I checked (and at least on the SIM cards I own) the storage format is a simple two-column list: Name-Phone. Furthermore, there are strict limits on the amount of characters one can insert (and the character set is very limited, too). Additionally, one can only store 250 entries or so (varies from card to card). To sum it up in one word, for me it's very unpractical. I remember having to use Bluetooth to transfer contacts from a old feature-phone to a new feature-phone because, obviously, the SIM card would not hold all the contact information I had in the old phone. We certainly have the technology to make better cards with more storage (BTW, the space for SMS text storage on the cards I own is ridiculously small, too). But as people moved on to store information on "rich" contact systems and, more recently, in the cloud, I think there isn't much motivation to innovate in that area.

gagege 13y ago
Interesting. I didn't know they had those limitations. Better off with regular SD card backups then.

SifJar 13y ago

Not as good as syncing to some online service e.g. Google. I recently bought a new Android phone, before that I used a Windows Phone 8 phone and before that another Android. On both the WP8 and second Android, I simply logged into my Google account and all my contacts synced in mere minutes. (On the Android, it also reinstalled all my apps, reconnected to all my WiFi hotspots etc.). I believe a SIM card can hold 100 numbers. Many people will have more numbers than that, so that's not really a viable alternative. Manually exporting to an SD card and then importing (which I believe can be done on Firefox OS, although exporting requires a third party app) is another option, but it's not as convenient as syncing to an online service.