
It was introduced back in 1996, and as the oldest of them it was the standard for a while – hence the name. It has a large amount of plastic around the chip, and tends to only be found in the oldest of phones (and some other devices). Indeed, they were introduced in 2003, so they’re getting on a bit now.Ī standard SIM is the biggest SIM card size currently in use, and despite being thought of as the ‘standard’ it’s the most rarely used. In terms of smartphones, you might need one of these if your phone is over six years old, but they’re rarely used in recent years. These have more plastic around them than a nano SIM, but less than a standard SIM. This is basically just a small integrated circuit with almost nothing around it, and it’s the kind used by the vast majority of modern devices.Ī micro SIM card is the middle size.

There are four common SIM card types, which are as follows:Ī nano SIM is the smallest SIM card size, and it’s also the most modern (other than eSIMs, which we’ll get to further down) having been introduced in 2012. 1.2 What are the different SIM card types? However, while that means that the most common SIM cards are a lot smaller than a standard SIM card, the older, larger SIM card sizes are still in use too in some older devices, and in some devices that don’t need to make the most of their space. There are different-sized SIM cards because it has become increasingly desirable to have smaller SIM cards, since that frees up more space in a phone (or other device) for other tech, without making the phone larger. SIM Card Sizes 1.1 Why are there different-sized SIM cards?

