Important to know when you want to use your old SIM in a new phone

[Dario]

Hi everyone,

 

I don't know if anyone has ever written about this common problem: you have a SIM card with a number you have used for years. You have added many, many new contacts, but they all went into the memory of your phone. Now you want to replace your old phone with a new one and use your old SIM with your old number, because all your friends and business contacts know your number. Here is where the problem starts.

 

A few days ago I changed at our True shop my ageing Samsung J2 for an Oppo A3s: better camera (13 MP front and 8MP back), much, much better battery comes with a attractive promo contract, free calls to True users, 0.65 Baht to others. Cost: 2'970 Baht. I don't want to make a commercial for Oppo, neither for True, I just want to describe my situation.

 

I left the TRUE shop excited with my new phone and tried to call one of my friends. Well, well, no contacts at all, they're all on my old phone! Now, I want to buy the same phone for my wife (they're selling out fast) but she has 459 contacts on the memory of her phone. Quite a work to all read them and put them manually on a text file in order to put them later on her new phone.

 

How to do it easier?

 

Well, Google is your friend, better Youtube. I found a video which described how to transfer your phone contacts to your SIM card, easy and fast. Download the app called "Copy2SIM" and install it on your phone. It will show you all your contacts 1) on your SIM and 2) on your phone. Go to options and hit "Transfer contacts to your SIM card". It took a few minutes to copy. In my wife's case all her 459 Contacts from the phone memory are now on the SIM card.

 

Good to know. Just wanted to help others.

 

 

[puchooay]

Contacts menu has the function already there. No need to download apps.

[Dario]

3 minutes ago, puchooay said:

Contacts menu has the function already there. No need to download apps.

Cannot find this function on the Samsung J2.

[janclaes47]

2 minutes ago, Dario said:

6 minutes ago, puchooay said:

Contacts menu has the function already there. No need to download apps.

Cannot find this function on the Samsung J2. 

Maybe try to look up a youtube about a function that every smart phone has?

[tifino]

1 minute ago, Dario said:

Cannot find this function on the Samsung J2.

The 'Import/Export Contacts' menu item at the top 

 

But still... the old symbian Nokia way of treating Contacts was much friendlier...

[puchooay]

[kekalot]

if you are smart you use a Google account to login to your phone. (or Apple account, whatever)

the contacts are saved in this case on https://contacts.google.com (try it)

 

IE: if your phone doesn't do that, don't get it from the bargain bin.

 

[sungod]

4 minutes ago, kekalot said:

if you are smart you use a Google account to login to your phone. (or Apple account, whatever)

the contacts are saved in this case on https://contacts.google.com (try it)

 

IE: if your phone doesn't do that, don't get it from the bargain bin.

 

By far the best and most user friendly solution, you will ever lose a contact ever again

[Ctkong]

Copy2SIM is for android phones only. iPhone do not support contacts from phone to sim only from sim to phone. Correct? 

[kekalot]

1 minute ago, Ctkong said:

Copy2SIM is for android phones only. iPhone do not support contacts from phone to sim only from sim to phone. Correct? 

if you have an iphone you should save your contacts to icloud

 

https://www.icloud.com/contacts

[ignis]

On the other hand if not very good at this, just ask the shop,  'True' put all my contacts on the 'sim' for me 2 years ago or that is what they said they did.. 

[2008bangkok]

One big flaw in your cunning plan, Sim card only holds basic information like Name and Number so if you have any extra data like contact photo, address, second phone number etc it will be lost.

Much easier as other posters say is to save all to google and when you get new phone just like magic they there again.

[Dario]

Thank you for all the answers! Great community. Well my wife picked up her new phone this morning and all contacts are there. She never put anything more than phone number and name, so all is back. But in the future we will all put to Google, makes sense. Thank you all. Strangely, her SIM card is now locked for one year, so we will see how that works to put her new contacts on the SIM card.

[Dario]

20 hours ago, 2008bangkok said:

One big flaw in your cunning plan, Sim card only holds basic information like Name and Number so if you have any extra data like contact photo, address, second phone number etc it will be lost.

Much easier as other posters say is to save all to google and when you get new phone just like magic they there again.

How right you are! The SIM card is very, very limited in space. Only a small portion of  the names show up, same when you punch in a name on a SIM card. If you want to add Mr. Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, you will end up having only Wolfesc showing up on your SIM.

Edited November 24, 2018 by Dario

[janclaes47]

19 hours ago, Dario said:

But in the future we will all put to Google, makes sense. Thank you all. Strangely, her SIM card is now locked for one year, so we will see how that works to put her new contacts on the SIM card. 

A SIM card can not be locked from adding new contacts or connecting to Google, it is locked to a certain carrier,

[2008bangkok]

How right you are! The SIM card is very, very limited in space. Only a small portion of  the names show up, same when you punch in a name on a SIM card. If you want to add Mr. Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, you will end up having only Wolfesc showing up on your SIM.

Those were the older v3.4 sims newer v4.0 and above you will get Wolfeschlegelstein - still not ideal but an improvement non the less.

[Dario]

7 hours ago, 2008bangkok said:

7 hours ago, Dario said:

How right you are! The SIM card is very, very limited in space. Only a small portion of  the names show up, same when you punch in a name on a SIM card. If you want to add Mr. Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, you will end up having only Wolfesc showing up on your SIM.

Those were the older v3.4 sims newer v4.0 and above you will get Wolfeschlegelstein - still not ideal but an improvement non the less.

Thanks for another piece in the puzzle. I dunno when TRUE started distributing v4.0. I guess mine is quite old, my wife's even older definitely v.3.4. Thanks for your post!