SK Telecom SIM Card Has 1Gb Memory, CPU, Android Onboard

Depending on which GSM carrier you are looking at, SIM cards can be preposterously overpriced for what you get. Face it: a SIM card is simply a small data bank embedded on a metallic strip and flattened onto a piece of cardboard. Bell Canada charges a mere $5 each, which is acceptable, but Rogers and Fido demand $35-40, AT&T $25, and T-mobile $20-30! SK Telecom demonstrated what truly revolutionary SIM cards are capable of. At MWC, a SIM card integrated with a CPU, 1Gb storage, and Android OS was shown.


SK Telecom’s prototype is only a concept at the moment, so do not expect to see it for sale soon or perhaps ever. The SIM card communicates via USB and was used with some regular cell phones. I think that the idea of a smart SIM card is practical and, as proven, feasible. However, the CPU is not needed, in my opinion, and surely, a processor would make the card very expensive. Even if CPU makers could cram horsepower onto a chip the size of a SIM card, the same CPU maker could make a more efficient, cheaper, and faster processor at a larger size for regular smartphones. On the other hand, a fast SIM card that contains lots of storage, including the actual operating system, would be terrific.