iPad and micro SIMs
 

So Apple announced the iPad will be unlocked and would use the new micro SIM format.

In the US, they secured a deal for $15/month for 250 MB of data and $30/month for "unlimited" data with AT&T.

But they said they're still working on iPad-specific data plans with carriers in other countries.

How do these plans compare with prepaid data plans in US? Are there unlimited data plans or are those only with contracts?

Since iPhone is popular, one would expect Euro carriers, especially those which already offer iPhone, to come up with data-only, no-contract plans. But is unlimited data common?

And would they adopt this micro SIM format?

h3g has sold this tipe of sim, but, afaik, the only phone that used this mini/micro sim was lg u880, that wasn't really a best selling ....

Where can I get info on the specifications of this micro SIM? Is it incompatible with the old format? Or are there cutters that can turn your old SIMs into the micro variety if you buy a device with such a slot? This format can work wonders with such phones like watch phones.

There are theories about why they went with micrSIMs. Like they didn't want iPhone users to just pop their SIMs into it and avoid paying data for a second device.

Or that they didn't want the favorable plans (no contract, $15 or $30) to be used for other netbooks or tablets.

It could be that Apple is giving AT&T a piece of the sale of the 3G models to get these contract terms and they may be negotiating to do the same with carriers in other countries.

Is the micro SIM an official standard as something allowed to be used?

I'm nervous hearing this kind of news because it could mean a fractured market in the future full of phones that have different type of SIMs in similar way the US has two major technologies in use (GSM & CDMA).

Would assume it's just physically smaller but electrically compatible, like micro SD and SD?

It looks like it will be electrically compatible, and you might use a good template and some scissors. In fact it looks like this is the size used by those dual SIM adapters where you cut two and put them side by side.

micro-SIM - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article seems to have been subject to quite competitive editing in the last few days ...

I would think that the best way to stop the SIM from being inserted in other devices was to tie it to the IMEI of the iPad series of devices. All you would need is a cheap plastic SIM sized adapter with a cut out for the Microsim for this to fit any other phone. I expect that you'll find Chinese SIM trays made for the iPhone coming out that will comfortably handle this SIM.

Have any providers in France announced how they will provide data services for the iPad?

Supposedly Apple executives went to the UK just this week to negotiate.

Forget when the 3G versions would be available in Europe.

coming also for iPhone
 

My sources tell me that these SIMS are also coming for the iPhone
why?
To stop unlocking and SIM surfing on subsidized devices. Its not much good to me if my carrier doesn't do micro SIMS
I believe it will be exactly the same for subsidized iPad's in Europe.

It seems completely bizarre to me that they want to launch this new tiny SIM format in what will perhaps be one of the largest 3G "mobiles" that you could ever dream of. (Well perhaps it's not strictly a mobile phone, but certainly it's intended as a mobile device).

I'm probably going to be completely wrong on this, but just why would anyone bother paying so much more over an 18/24 month contract for the ipad with a separate 3G data contract? Surely WiFI would realistically be enough for it? Well... at least for most places you will use this oversized mobile device.

I just cannot see many people pulling one of these oversized iphones out of their pocket for a bit of Mobile browsing whilst sitting on the metro for their trip into work. Surely if you want 'mobile' 3G productivity you would be better to get a pocket sized Smartphone with a touchscreen (Android, iphone etc.). I suppose for anything else, and you may as well get something with a decent hard disk capacity, multi-tasking ability, some flash support, and USB-host mode so you can plug a USB stick in. Apart from iPhone syndrome sufferers why would anyone ever even chose an iPad over a Netbook (ideally running a Linux OS like Ubuntu Netbook remix). Problem is, I suspect there are just way too many iPhone Syndrome sufferers in this world!

In the US, there is no contract. You will be able to purchase service on a month to month basis.

It would be good for foreigners visiting the US. They can purchase service for 1 month for $15 or $30 and don't have to worry about paying for hotel Wifi or whatever.

Now, hopefully they arrange such deals in Europe so Americans traveling to Europe could have a cheap plan to use for a short time.

There's also speculation that the next iPhone may also use micro SIM. As for the success of the iPhone, it's precisely because most people wouldn't want to deal with Linux or any kind of complexity.

@petkow
I'm sure Apple's disciples will take their new status symbols everywhere as soon as belt clips are available. For these guys size doesn't matter as long as it won't hang over the knee.
Of course those microSIMs are again an attempt to rip people off. Operators will start selling those iPad-tariffs with microSIMs knowing that most people will use WiFi at home and due to the form factor of the SIM, they won't use it in another device, that is more likely to be taken out of home. So in the end few traffic will be generated over these tariffs.
Anyway, while one may argue about the (dis)advantages of the iPhone compared to other phones, I share your opinion - the iPad is total crap, but it will take a decade until people notice, that not every gadget labeled with a fruit is worth buying.

@wco81
In most European countries you will find deals in the given price range on prepaid basis - you'll just need to cut the SIM card to match the microSIM size, as described here.
What we need is adaptors for microSIMs to get regular SIM size again if needed.

What I really don't understand is that some iPhone users, including the people writing the adverts, seem to think it necessary to have a different application for each website to be used.

Do they find it difficult opening a standard browser and then spelling Tesco?

Probably because the App. Store became a big success and everyone was trying to capture eyeballs on iPhone screens and presence on the App. Store. Seems all big companies, including those who aren't consumer-focused, put out apps. for branding reasons.

Yes a lot of Apps. are basically front-ends for the data delivered from web apps, with a UI tailored to the multitouch UI. It's more than just putting together a mobile web site, in a way. It also lets them integrate video since Flash isn't well supported yet on ARM processors.

In fact, one analyst said Google and other search engines could be adversely impacted if smart phones are used more and apps. on smart phones is the vehicle to access web content, rather than the browser, where search ads bring revenues to the search engine companies.

Of course, free apps. have ads now and Google is well-placed because they bought the biggest mobile ad firm (Ad Mob). We might see bigger ads in iPad applications too.

@andy
Apps have some major advantages over websites: They are more comfortable to use, as they are more finger-friendly while even mobile websites are often a pain to navigate through on touch screen phones, and further you can enhance usability by context menus and other control elements, which you can't have on a website. Even if you want to make a mobile website finger-friendly, you can't do it for all devices due to the broad range of resolutions and at least when it comes to bitmap graphics you can't size them relatively in HTML. Another point is, that apps include a lot of the graphics, which therefore don't need to be downloaded each time and so increase performance over websites, which need to be reloaded completely including all graphics on each visit.
Also you have a lot of APIs, you can use for apps, such as accessing contacts, locating or integrating Google Maps (including multi-touch gestures, which you won't have on a website).
Lastly your brand is flashier if it appears with a large icon in the apps menu compared to a bookmark in the browser (if such is set at all).

I agree with all of the points in the above posts, but I think one of the biggest problems seems to be Apple's refusal to integrate Flash on their devices. They have their reasons: Be it technical or commercial, but the simple fact remains that Flash is a fairly established method of making websites just look and feel good! The fact that iPad won't have Flash either, (especially considering it is primarily aimed at being an iBrowser), seems to be an ever clearer attempt by Apple to keep hammering the nails into Flash's coffin.

In terms of App development, I do see their other roles for ease of input, but I also hate to visualise how the hundreds of thousands of Apps that have been made for the comparatively tiny screen size of an iPhone will look on the iPad. To save their Apps looking like sites tailored to visually impaired people, it looks like app vendors will need to go back to the drawing board and now develop and maintain a parallel app as well.

To me it all seems a bit of a major U-Turn on what the web was supposed to be in the first place. i.e. One remote content and clever local software to get the hardware to display the content and to make it look good regardless of the device parameters. In the same way, shouldn't the hardware also be able to make finger input easier, regardless of the site?

Flash specifically is designed to work with mouse pointers, not touch. But it's very popular among web developers so it will be around a long time.

It was only recently that Flash is suppose to be optimized for ARM processors. So Android is going to support Flash and people who want it have that choice.

Apple is taking a risk but with the big popularity of the App. Store, it's a competitive advantage for them so it's understandable that they're going to emphasize apps. over web browsing. They're betting that the huge number of apps. will give them a head start with tablets over competitors. Many app. developers have indicated that they will update their apps. to support the iPad. One developer whose had 4 million downloads said it would cost 2-4% more to support iPad and it would be one app. which would detect iPhone or iPad and load the UI optimized for either. By contrast, he said it would cost 2-3 times as much money to port to Android, because there's such a wide range of hardware that he'd have to support and test.

If iPad sells well, it will have no problems getting even less successful developers to support it. And if iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad sells well, then the developers of those flash sites will put that content in apps. In fact, Adobe's tools now allow them to develop Flash web sites as well as iPhone apps. at the same time.

In fact, magazines like Wired and I think Sports Illustrated have put together mockups of iPad apps. using Adobe tools. Several media companies have already indicated they will come out with app. versions of their content with interactive features not available on their web sites. They of course hope to charge for content in a way they've been unable to do through the web.

@petkow
I hate the iPhone, so I was not justifying it - that were just general thoughts on apps and are rather related to my experience after three months with Android. I totally agree with you regarding the lack of Flash and the need to completley rebuild apps for a so much bigger screen. Of course this isolation of moble platforms through apps is nonsense and contradicts decades of the development of the WWW. Actually I always expected Java support to advance on handsets and so platform-independant apps to be available.

@wco81
Flash is perfect for touchscreens. Actually the whole UI of some phones (e.g. the LG KU990 Viewty and a lot of Samsung devices like the F700) is built in Flash Lite.

There is no technical reason for Flash not being supported on the iPhone, allthough Steve Jobs claims Flash would drain batteries too much and so on. The truth is, you could build a lot of apps much easier, cheaper and most important platform-independant with Flash, but then Apple would neither have control over what people run on their iPhones, nor could they squeeze money out of them. That's the only reason why there's no Flash for the iCrap.

I think porting an app to the iPad requires much more than just tweaking the UI. The iPad has a fivefold higher resolution and users will expect more than just an enlarged iPhone screen - they want to get some extra benefit from a so much larger device. Developers will completely need to redesign the UI concept of apps, change the layout and combine dialogues, that are scattered over several screens on the iPhone. That will require much more time and effort than 2-4%. I doubt the iPad will remotely have the success of the iPhone and correspondingly will be the effort of developers to go iPad-compliant. I believe a lot of developers will switch to Android, as it's more powerful, easier to develop as it's open source and the variety and number of handset will explode in the short term, resulting a much bigger base of potential customers. Having experimented with Android development in the last weeks, I've tested them on two devices only, while I tried other resolutions on the emulator. There's really no need to test every available handset in every available color. And Android is actually ready for different resolutions and relative sizing of screen elements already since Android 1.6 (we're on 2.1 now).

As I said earlier, they want to leverage the advantage they have with apps. If they build the apps. with Flash or some multiplatform API, then they're ceding that advantage.

So of course they want developers to make apps. which are only compatible with the iPhone OS, so that people keep buying Apple products which have all these apps.

If Android had all the apps., would they behave differently? They don't care because they want people to use browsers and Google services which drive search advertising revenues.

Anyways, you will be able to get portable devices with Flash and we'll see if the claims about battery life turn out to be true and whether Flash games and apps. outshine native Android apps.

The first German provider, simyo, offers microSIMs explicitly for the iPad for pre-order: simyo - Prepaid Micro-SIM-Karte für's Apple iPad inkl. Daten-1GB von simyo
Unfortunatley these guys operate on the eplus network which does support HSDPA in few places only, where bandwidth is throttled to 500 KBit/s.

bob (austria) : main_contentpage login

I suppose everyone is going to have to eventually start offering them. Interesting that the microSIM was actually agreed upon as long ago as November 2003:
SmartCardsTrends -

From there this bit is especially interesting:
I really hate the way Apple somehow feels the need to be the launch customer with this rather "tiny" new device of theirs. They couldn't possibly have found a way for it to accommodate a full size SIM could they?

These guys managed: YouTube - WORLD SMALLEST ULTRA MINI TINY MOBILE CELL PHONE U9 ( size of MATCHBOX )

MicroSIMs can be good for watch phones & other small stuff that might become popular someday. I too see it as odd from a technical/physical standpoint that the smallest SIM format is being used in one of the biggest mobile computing devices around.

I'm sure it was done at the request of AT&T so people didn't just take their iPhone SIM and put it in their iPad. But knowing Apple, probably didn't have to ask more than once :)

I think all 3 UK carriers of iPhone announced iPad support. Not sure what the plans they offered were but obviously they would have to offer microSIMs.

The lost prototype iPhone HD had a microSIM slot. So all iPhone carriers may have to offer microSIMs later this year.

We should know in the next couple of weeks when iPad price and schedule are announced for international markets.

Yes, because the US is the only country where Apple sells the iPhone. :)

I haven't seen numbers, but I doubt the US accounts for more than about 1/3 of world iPhone sales. The iPhone is wildly popular in a lot of countries.

I did some googling and it turns out the US was 54% of iPhone/iPod Touch sales as of mid-2009. Still, that leaves a lot of devices.

In France, they will probably have a 30 euro a month plan with a whopping 100 megs of data. Everytime I've looked at prepaid data in France I came to the conclusion that there was a place worse than the US.

By the way, if you look at the Gizmodo leak on the iPhone 4, it also uses a MicroSIM.

Not sure if this is a comprehensive list but a breakdown of iPad plans per GB:

US iPad Users are Overpaying for their Data Plans | Tableau Public

Maybe ultimately cheaper to get a regular prepaid data offer in some of these countries and find a way to tether the iPad?