SIM To Become a Storage Card, DRM Controller
Feb 17, 2006, 3:37 PM by (staff)
European carrier Orange will soon begin deploying 512 MB SIM cards to subscribers who purchase a compatible 3G phone. The cards will act as regular SIMs, authenticating the phone on the network and storing contacts and text messages. However since the card has significantly more storage than the typical 32-64 KB SIMs, they will also act as storage cards, allowing users to store personal as well as downloaded content on the card. Storing protected on the card would allow users to take DRMed content with them from phone to phone without having to repurchase songs, ringtones, etc. M-Systems, manufacturer of the 512 MB SIM card says it will have 1 GB models available by year's end. Very few phones are compatible with this technology as of yet; Orange will only be launching with one phone - the LG U8210. Axalto, another SIM company, launched a competing technology called SIM on the Go that stores the DRM rights but not the files themselves on traditional SIM cards. DRM rights are currently stored on the handsets themselves.
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Comments
OH GOD, are they high?!
Here's what they should have done: take the MiniSD standard, and cram SIM functionality into it. Done and done. No need to wait for larger formats (4GB MiniSD is almost here), no need to struggle to increase the capacity of this new Flash/SIM standard, plenty of manufacturers already cranking them out, etc.
What happens when you've filled the 512MB, which is nothing lately? Are they going to start making phones with what amounts to two flash card slots? Sure, I guess it is convenient that the already-present SIM slot becomes a memory card slot, but really. What about when you fill it up and need a 1GB or 2GB Flash/SIM card - you'd have to deal with the carriers to get your semi-hardwired SIM info o...
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Firstly, to add an MiniSD format expansion slot adds quite a bit of space. If we are all using a SIM card anyway, why not utilize that for a combined information/storage capacity and make phones smaller?
Secondly, it's 512MB ...
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for gsm carriers this is sweet...................
but i could see gsm carriers charging monthly for games now 🙄 .
It seemed like a good idea until I saw the DRM thing on it. DRM can go to hell.
Super
Dream on. Do you have any idea how many different versions of games we have to ship in order to support all of the different handsets carriers use? I recently relea...
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