Apple's Upcoming Ultra-Slim iPhone Hits Roadblock Over SIM Tray Rules 54
Apple's upcoming slim iPhone model faces potential sales obstacles in China due to design limitations that prevent fitting a physical SIM card tray, which is mandatory in the Chinese market.
The new device, planned for release next fall, measures 5-6 millimeters thick compared to the iPhone 16's 7.8mm, The Information reported Monday [non-paywalled source]. The company aims to revitalize iPhone sales in China, where revenue has declined for three consecutive years amid competition from Huawei and Vivo. The thin iPhone relies on embedded SIMs (eSIMs), which Chinese regulators haven't yet approved for smartphone use. Engineers are also struggling with battery placement and thermal management in the slim design, the report added.
The new device, planned for release next fall, measures 5-6 millimeters thick compared to the iPhone 16's 7.8mm, The Information reported Monday [non-paywalled source]. The company aims to revitalize iPhone sales in China, where revenue has declined for three consecutive years amid competition from Huawei and Vivo. The thin iPhone relies on embedded SIMs (eSIMs), which Chinese regulators haven't yet approved for smartphone use. Engineers are also struggling with battery placement and thermal management in the slim design, the report added.
Ok...., (Score:2, Insightful)
Not sure why this is news. Product engineers often "struggle" in the process before landing on a final design.
Re:Ok...., (Score:4, Funny)
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Skinny jeans? How last century of you. Sagging is the style today.
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I'm ahead of my time, I've been sagging for decades!
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Didn't they previously have an issue with hipsters and Fanbois bending their phones in their skinny jeans?
I think it was more fat ass + slim phone + back pocket + sitting = bent phone. I guess Apple doesn't keep up with the news. [slashdot.org]
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Didn't they previously have an issue with hipsters and Fanbois bending their phones in their skinny jeans?
No. Apparently they were just sitting on it wrong. :-)
More seriously, how thin does a cell phone need to be. Or, more pointedly, why make it even thinner? 5-6mm instead of 7.8mm, really?
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Sales team: Our sales are sagging.
Marketing Team: I know! Make it thinner!
Tim Cook: Engineering, get on it!
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Size is also proportional to weight. Oddly enough, some people don't like carrying bricks
In other news (Score:3)
Re:In other news (Score:4, Funny)
In other news, the iPhone 17 is reported to be so thin that you can cut yourself on it.
In Fanboi IQuarterly, we’re about to see the defensive outrage over Bendgate MarkII, Mod Dumb.
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In Fanboi IQuarterly, we’re about to see the defensive outrage over Bendgate MarkII, Mod Dumb.
"You're bending it about the wrong axis."
Re: In other news (Score:2)
Maybe they can put the SIM in the millimeters-thick case the iPhone will require to protect its delicacy?
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How about just putting the SIM contacts on the surface beside the camera and make it a glue-on SIM tray.
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This just means you'll need a thicker case to put your iPhone in to protect it, right?
Seriously.. noone asked for a thinner iPhone at this point, IMO.
Phones as thin as that do exist (Score:2)
and they have SIM trays just fine.
This is not something worth posting on /.
10 years ago.... (Score:2)
The iPhone 6 was so thin it bent if you looked at it funny: https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/... [fandom.com]
It was 6.9mm thick.
Who wants this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is looking at their current 7.8mm phone and thinking "AHH! This is just too thick!" and is demanding a 1.8mm reduction? How about keep it at 7.8mm and improve battery life?
And who is using an iPhone in China without a case (because it represents such a huge investment)? So whatever number of mm you shave off is just being replaced by the case because everyone is scared to drop their $1000USD phone.
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"And who is using an iPhone in China without a case (because it represents such a huge investment)?"
Nobody in real life, but TV show and movie characters will continue to do it. Apple apparently pays well for product placement.
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I'm wondering the opposite: Who still uses cases for their phones?
I don't. The phones are pretty tough. Cases and screen protectors detract from user experience.
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I 100% agree with you - but Apple presumably has a pretty good idea of what the selling points are for their products.
I don't particularly like them moving exclusively to eSIM either, but they don't ask me for product advice.
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I don't particularly like them moving exclusively to eSIM either, but they don't ask me for product advice.
That began in the USA with the iPhone 14 series. It probably annoys people who do that whole getting a local SIM while they travel internationally thing, but as close as I get to that is visiting World Showcase at Epcot.
Re: Who wants this? (Score:1)
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Actually it makes it easier to get a local sim before you even get to the country you are visiting.
And of course if you visit the USA, you probably have to get an entire new handset because their GSM network and carriers are so weird. In the mid-2000s, it was easy. Now it's really hard.
Form over function (Score:3)
Engineers are also struggling with battery placement and thermal management in the slim design, the report added.
That's right - to hell with actual physics, the thing needs to be as close to paper thin as possible! COURAGE!!
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This comment is copypasta from 2001 when people were complaining the Nokia 8220 was too thin and we'd never have anything thinner. The reality is that physics isn't the issue, it's an engineering problem to solve.
Despite 100 years of neighsayers we have made everything successfully smaller and thinner. Except American cars.
Let me get this straight... (Score:2)
...Apple wants regulators in China to change a rule to enable Apple to gain an advantage over Chinese brands? That's not how things work in China.
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No...Apple wants regulators in China to change a rule to prevent Chinese spyware sim-cards from being used in the phone. That's REALLY not how things work in China.
Who cares how stupidly thin it is? (Score:2)
Consider that
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Obviously, people don't want a brick, but 6 vs 8 mm, is not something people can honestly care about and defend. What is the point of making a phone 2mm thinner? ...
Because that's what it takes to sell phones in Asia. People over there want high tech, retro/nostalgia tech does not sell. Consumers in Asia are very sensitive to what kinds of bells and whistles any high tech device has (cars included), if any are missing your device just does not sell and this is just one of the bells and whistles you have to include in your phone's feature list for it to sell.
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I'll take your word about that, it just seems so pointless, that I can't grasp how anyone could or would care.
Maybe, but Asian consumers don't understand why you want a 15 mm thick phone with a 12 Megapixel camera, a tablet that can't make phone calls without being tethered to a phone or a car where you get a 360 degree parking camera, AI parking, electric seats in the base version when these bells and whistles make your life easier. It's just what happens when you have actual and intense completion in a market instead of a bunch of faceless megacorps who've divided the market into private fiefdoms where competitio
Re: Who cares how stupidly thin it is? (Score:2)
Interesting point of view.
Dear Apple: I don't want it *thinner!* (Score:2)
I don't want a thinner phone, I want one with outstanding, nay, ridiculous battery life.
Do what it takes to accomplish that, and leave the being thin for the fashion-conscious.
The last skinny iphone i had (8 plus?) was a total disaster, a flexy, breaky, no-battery-life piece of shit.
My 13 pro is much more along what I expected.
Re:Dear Apple: I don't want it *thinner!* (Score:4, Insightful)
You want functionality over style? Then you don't want Apple!
Well duuuh .... (Score:2)
Apple's upcoming slim iPhone model faces potential sales obstacles in China due to design limitations that prevent fitting a physical SIM card tray, which is mandatory in the Chinese market.
This is not quite as hilarious as Ford's CEO Jim Farley making the 'shocking discovery' that on a business trip to China last year that the Chinese are about to run over the entire US/EU ICE car industry like a 70 ton tank crushing a Ford 150 but it's close. You'd think that a device manufacturer of Apple's size and caliber would have factored this into their design work, China is after all one of their biggest markets. This being said, I don't think it will take Huawei, Vivo and the rest of the Chinese pho
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This being said, I don't think it will take Huawei, Vivo and the rest of the Chinese phone makers very long to start using eSIMs which will trigger a regulation change
I don't think you understand how Chinese (or worldwide) regulations work. If the regulatory body having jurisdiction says "There will be a SIM tray," then that's the way phones will be sold. Period.
Oh, and there will be a USB-C port. Get over yourself, Apple.
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This being said, I don't think it will take Huawei, Vivo and the rest of the Chinese phone makers very long to start using eSIMs which will trigger a regulation change
I don't think you understand how Chinese (or worldwide) regulations work. If the regulatory body having jurisdiction says "There will be a SIM tray," then that's the way phones will be sold. Period.
Oh, and there will be a USB-C port. Get over yourself, Apple.
CCP or not, the Chinese tech market moves at speeds you don't seem to comprehend. They have a level of competition over there that would scare most western tech companies to death and the CCP for all its faults is pretty good at supporting their tech sector by amending policy. The Chinese may come up with their own standard for eSIMs but it will happen, Apple will use it and this will become a non-issue. The Chinese market currently looks like this (Q3, 2024): Huawei (8%), Honor (15%), Xiaomi (15%), OPPO (
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You can incorporate an eSIM if you want*. But if China wants to retain control of their subscriber market (and I suspect that the CCP really does) they won't be handing out subscriber accounts without having people physically show up and present their national ID. Nothing as easily hackable as eSIMs.
*There exist some dual SIM phones. I could imagine an sSIM/removable model existing.
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Bullocks.
Cheap-ass manufacture in China works for things like iPhones and Androids because they're small, relatively cheap, and built by the millions. And if something slips through QC, Apple or Google or whoever will usually simply swap the defective phone out for a new one and send you on your way fully functional when you bring it into the store. Over the years, Apple has done that for me twice with iPhones and once with an Apple Watch. But no one is going to do a no-questions-asked swapout like that
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Bullocks.
Cheap-ass manufacture in China works for things like iPhones and Androids because they're small, relatively cheap, and built by the millions. And if something slips through QC, Apple or Google or whoever will usually simply swap the defective phone out for a new one and send you on your way fully functional when you bring it into the store. Over the years, Apple has done that for me twice with iPhones and once with an Apple Watch. But no one is going to do a no-questions-asked swapout like that with big-ticket products like cars. And no way would I, for one, ever trust Chinese build quality for something that will not be immediately replaced if there are issues.
"Cheap-ass manufacture in China ...", ... Have you been in a coma since 1998? Go drive a Chinese EV. I did, I also drove a bunch their Western and Asian competitors and there's no comparison. Most of these cars drive and feel like anything from a VW and up to Audi level. Whether it's cars, phones or something else, Chinese tech products are no longer low quality, they are in many cases better than anything the West, or the Koreans, or the Japanese can make at the moment and the sooner you wake up to that a
I still can't figure out eSIM (Score:2)
I never understood how someone can arrive to a design as bad as eSIM. While the intent (get rid of SIM card) was good, the result is so bad.
1. Even if my phone has 128 GB of storage, somehow it isn't enough to store "eSIM" profiles. It requires a dedicated eUICC chip. Why?
2. What's wrong with username + password, and why can't it be used to connect to phone networks? Or certificate or whatever... but not a dedicated chip, please.
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
4. Mobile carriers still have control on eS
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Every shitty thing carriers can do with eSIMs, they can also do via IMEI pairing. Moving a physical SIM on Metro by T-Mobile's service doesn't work until you've had the carrier pair the new IMEI, and if you go in to a store or speak with customer service to do it, there's an associated fee. So yeah, some carriers are going to do their usual sleazy cash grabs, but that's always been on the table from the beginning. The only thing you can really do is not give them your business.
The main thing that really
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The main thing that really sucks about eSIMs is that there doesn't seem to be any cross-platform standard for transferring them from phone to phone.
That's not the main thing at all. This is a consequence from bad design choices. If we step back a bit, there is no use for an eSIM. We could only have username and password and use it on any phone. Just like we do on enterprise WiFi. The carrier would be responsible to block the use of the same username on two phones at the same time if they want to. It could be by disconnecting the previous phone.
I should be able to use one phone in the morning, and another phone in the evening, without having to "transfe
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Every shitty thing carriers can do with eSIMs, they can also do via IMEI pairing.
They can't do this to a high assurance, since the IMEI number could possibly be cloned to a new phone, and then the new phone would be "paired". The carriers can't actually trust that the hardware maker does not design a phone to make the IMEI easily changeable to an arbitrary value. There is no cryptographic material to authenticate the IMEI itself.
All the cryptography keys required to actually authenticate a phone and the
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The carriers can't actually trust that the hardware maker does not design a phone to make the IMEI easily changeable to an arbitrary value.
It never had to be perfect, just good enough that most people are just going to pay the fee. IMEIs have already been used for quite some time to enable customer-hostile carrier behaviors which break the swapping functionality of a physical SIM. Plus, on an iPhone or Samsung phone (which are combined about 80% of the market in the US) it's non-trivial to alter the phone's IMEI and that absolutely is good enough for a carrier to enforce various sorts of cash grab policies by linking your device to a specifi
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It requires a dedicated eUICC chip. Why?
Since the purpose of the chip is to provide the A3/A8 symmetric keys used with the GSM protocol and authenticate the subscriber.
It contains sensitive data materials which must not be deposited on storage accessible to apps running on the phone, and also must not be accessible to the phone's operating system.
What's wrong with username + password, and why can't it be used to connect to phone networks? Or certificate or whatever
A username+password is not secure. A
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The cellular providers definitely want a "Something you have" factor for authentication in order to minimize the chance the access credential can be cloned.
Too late. The programming s/w is already out there "in the wild". And eSIM keys need to be transmitted from a cloud somewhere. No more needing to obtain a hardware chip by showing up with ID and getting your smiling face on a security cam. Back alley phone cloners can work from anywhere.
The Mobile carriers are Not going to issue credentials to use their network to a Type of SIM card that does not provide them the same if not more control and security assurances as a SIM.
Like I said earlier: Whoops. Too late.
only if (Score:2)
Only remotely interesting if they can get thickest part of the phone down.
I have 15 right now and the camera package is proud of the back of the phone. It is not even centered so if you just lay the phone down on a hard surface you cant use the screen without it rocking, WTF who thought this was good idea and why.
Oh right 'everyone has their phone is a case' -ok so we are back to 'thin really install that important is it?
I miss my iphone 8, but it was going to get updates anymore. I would have got an SE b
Camera Bump Out (Score:2)
Just make a SIM bump-out next to the camera. Claim thickness of phone not including bump-out. Done.
Physical SIMs are a perfect spying device (Score:2)
I can see why the Chinese government wants to keep physical SIMs. Physical SIMs provide a perfect way to completely control and monitor wireless phones without the user ever knowing.