Are SIM-less phones the future of smartphones?
Internet and smartphones are soul mates, the invention of each made them naturally co-exist and evolve at an exponential speed.
As the soul is to the body, similarly internet is to the smartphone. But there's a third wheel in the love story - the SIMCARD.
Simcard has been the powerful tool that makes using the smartphone along with all its features possible.
With evolution, the size of the sim card has only been getting smaller, agreeing with the saying "size doesn’t matter" because clearly the smaller the better, advanced and more satisfying.
Ummmm...
The trio of the smartphone, sim card and Internet has changed the way the world connects.
The world is in your pocket, information is just a click away and your friends are just a text away, even if your worlds are poles apart.
So what next? What does the future hold for us?
Well, the rate at which the size of sim card is getting smaller, don’t you think the time is not far when the sim card ceases to exist, gets extinct and only lives in “if you are a 90s kid, this will make you nostalgic” memes?
Now your mind thinks it’s quite impossible for the sim card to leave us behind because it is an important part of our lifecycle.
Well, there’s good news, humans can live without a sim card because now we are addicted to the Internet and Internet is our master, our driving force, and our soul.
Before your mind starts getting confused, here’s how we can do away with the sim card and still live a wonderful life controlled by virtual reality.
The network towers (Base Transceiver Station, BTS), is responsible for carrying radio communications between the network and the mobile phone and also for transmitting Internet signals 2G/3G/4G.
What if the network towers only transmit Internet signals 2G/3G/4G and completely stop radio communications for CDMA and GSM smartphones?
We will still be able to connect to the world through Internet, through Wi-Fi and without the need of a sim card.
The world of Internet has given rise to VOIP – voice over Internet protocol, which has helped billions to connect through Skype, WhatsApp and Facebook at a much cheaper price and higher quality.
The sim card can be eliminated and service providers can only provide Internet services directly to the users, whose unique identification number can be the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) in place of the phone numbers.
How can we benefit from eliminating the sim card?
Upside, you will not have to memorise your girlfriend's phone number in order to impress her, downside you will have to memorise the 16 digit IMEI number.
We can always use the nano, micro or macro space to increase the battery size increasing the battery life of the smartphones or add another processor that will help speed up the phone with seamless multitasking.
The connectivity cost will decrease ten folds because SMS services and phone call services will be eliminated.
Internet services will improve because the users will opt for service providers on the basis of their performance in speed and connectivity.
This, in turn, will help users to get cheaper and higher quality wireless Internet services on their smartphones because of the competition between service providers.
In future, the use of telephone will completely be free of costs, as many countries are trying to connect their whole geography through Wi-Fi by collaborating with companies such as Google and Facebook.
What do you think? Is the clock ticking closer to phones without sim cards? If Apple can do away with the headphone jack, why not do away with the sim card as well?