SIM Card Readers for Mac OS X?

Discussion:

(too old to reply)

Cell MacPhone

2006-09-21 21:18:25 UTC

I want to copy SIM card phonebooks from one SIM card to another.
(Two different phone numbers and SIM cards, but I want to them to
have the same phonebook entries.)

I know that some SIM card readers are Mac OS X compatible but
they only claim to operate as USB flash drives. All of the
software seems to be PC only. (There is one OS X Universal SIM
card editor listed on versiontracker but it's very outdated.)

In order to synch or copy phonebooks between two SIM cards, do
I need a special kind of editor? Can I just "drag and drop"
the right files using a Mac compatible SIM card reader?

I really have no idea what the SIM card phonebook file is:
binary? spreadsheet? flat text?

No immediate need, but can Macs handle the copying of ringtones
and graphics just by drag and drop or does that need special
software, too?

THANK YOU.

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Tia_Maria

2006-09-22 05:05:24 UTC

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I am no expert, but can you not copy the sim to the phone directory, then
swap the sim and then re-write the contents back to the new sim..
most of the more recent ones can do this.

If your phone does not support this, maybe ask around your friends and see
if someone has a phone that can, rather than spending money on a once off
use product... unless you plan to use it frequently.

I have a serial port copier and the usb, and believe it or not the usb is
sloooower than the serial, may just be the software, but I hardly use the
usb one anymore, and the format for exporting in both devices is 'csv'
which you may or may not know can be used in excell or read in a normal
text editor (not being assumptious or derogatory in any way)..
as for the Mac, I cant offer any comments re the ringtones etc.

hth

Maria.

Post by Cell MacPhone
I want to copy SIM card phonebooks from one SIM card to another.
(Two different phone numbers and SIM cards, but I want to them to
have the same phonebook entries.)
I know that some SIM card readers are Mac OS X compatible but
they only claim to operate as USB flash drives. All of the
software seems to be PC only. (There is one OS X Universal SIM
card editor listed on versiontracker but it's very outdated.)
In order to synch or copy phonebooks between two SIM cards, do
I need a special kind of editor? Can I just "drag and drop"
the right files using a Mac compatible SIM card reader?
binary? spreadsheet? flat text?
No immediate need, but can Macs handle the copying of ringtones
and graphics just by drag and drop or does that need special
software, too?
THANK YOU.

Bill

2006-09-22 13:29:33 UTC

Permalink

Post by Tia_Maria
I am no expert, but can you not copy the sim to the phone directory, then
swap the sim and then re-write the contents back to the new sim..
most of the more recent ones can do this.
If your phone does not support this, maybe ask around your friends and see
if someone has a phone that can, rather than spending money on a once off
use product... unless you plan to use it frequently.
I have a serial port copier and the usb, and believe it or not the usb is
sloooower than the serial, may just be the software, but I hardly use the
usb one anymore, and the format for exporting in both devices is 'csv'
which you may or may not know can be used in excell or read in a normal
text editor (not being assumptious or derogatory in any way)..
as for the Mac, I cant offer any comments re the ringtones etc.
hth
Maria.

In general any USB flash drive shows up on the Mac desktop as an
external drive, and you can then copy files to and from it, simply by
drag ad drop. You do not need any special software to do that.

If you want to synchronize files from one drive to another, then you
need special software. "Synchronize" means automatically examine each
file on each drive, and copy only those that are new or newly changed
from one drive to the other. There is software for doing that.

iSync, which comes with Mac OS X, works for synchronizing iCal and
Address Book data, but apparently not for general synchronization of all
types of files between devices. There are various application programs
for doing that. The one I use is SilverKeeper, which came with my LaCie
external firewire drive.

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Bill Collins

Cell MacPhone

2006-09-24 17:02:52 UTC

Permalink

Thanks, everybody, for the suggestions.

Post by Bill

I tried something like that. I made sure that my phonebook was saved to
memory in Phone-1. Then, I put the new SIM (SIM-2) into the old phone
(Phone-1) and copied ALL to SIM (without deleting anything).

I put the new SIM (SIM-2) with the copied info into the new phone (Phone-2).
I see a lot of duplicate entries that I think I can fix by finding the
right combination of "use SIM", "use Phone" or "use Both" for viewing
the Phonebook.

However, the unfixable thing is that everything was truncated in the
copying phase. NO e-mail addresses or other info was copied from
Phone-1 memory to SIM-2. Names longer than a certain number of
character were truncated, e.g., "LongFirstName LongLastName" got
copied as "LongFirstName Lon" or whatever the character limit is.

Every Name that had more than one phone number seems to have a
separate duplicate entry in Phone memory. I.e.,

Name #1, #2, #3, e-mail (one phonebook entry on old phone)
becomes three separate entries in the new phone:
Name-1 #1
Name-2 #2
Name-3 #3

I now have to scroll through many more entries to get what I want.
(I used to do, maybe, a single letter "X" to get to the first X entry
and then "down" a couple of times to get what I wanted. Now, it's
a lot more "down arrow" clicks for many names.

Maybe I was supposed to do it the opposite way: put the OLD SIM (SIM-1)
into the new phone (Phone-2) and copy from the SIM to the Phone. But
it seems that the Phone would still have truncated info and split
entries as well.

That's why I think I want SIM-to-SIM copying of the phonebook.

Post by Bill

Post by Tia_Maria
I have a serial port copier and the usb, and believe it or not the usb is
sloooower than the serial, may just be the software, but I hardly use the
usb one anymore, and the format for exporting in both devices is 'csv'
which you may or may not know can be used in excell or read in a normal
text editor (not being assumptious or derogatory in any way)..
as for the Mac, I cant offer any comments re the ringtones etc.

That's something I didn't know. Phonebooks are "csv" and readable in
Excel. So maybe drag-drop-edit will work?

Post by Bill
If you want to synchronize files from one drive to another, then you
need special software. "Synchronize" means automatically examine each
file on each drive, and copy only those that are new or newly changed
from one drive to the other. There is software for doing that.

I didn't necessarily mean auto-Synch as you describe, but just an
easier way to update one phone from the other. Just plain old copying
the most up-to-date phonebook to the less up to date phone would
be fine by me.

THANK YOU.

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Ian Oliver

2006-09-26 03:48:59 UTC

Permalink

I just did that - sort of. I used Bluetooth. Easy if both telephones
have it - or if you've got another device (like a Powerbook) to store
things temporarily.

If you can't do that, can you copy contact information to your
telephone's memory, swap cards and transfer to the new card?

Good luck,

Ol.

Stan Horwitz

2006-09-23 00:52:34 UTC

Permalink

I doubt it, but check http://www.markspace.com who makes all sorts of
interesting sync software for Mac OS X. Mark Space might have a solution.

João Silva - [WWW.COMPRA-A-MIM.COM]

2006-10-04 15:40:35 UTC

Permalink

There are also portable readers writers for SIM cards..

Check this out :
http://rede-gsm.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=889&language=en

Why not try this one ?
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