Rumor: Next iPhone will use nano SIM card

The successor to the iPhone 4S would use a nano SIM card, the smaller version of the micro SIM card in the iPhone 4. That is what business newspaper The Financial Times claims. Providers would be hoarding nano-SIM cards.

The nano SIM card, designed by Apple itself, was declared the new standard earlier this year. Since the standardization was not finalized until June, it seemed that Apple would not yet install the nano SIM card in the next iPhone. Anonymous sources, however, tell business newspaper The Financial Times that the ‘iPhone 5’ would already have a nano SIM card.

One of the strongest indications for this is that carriers are sourcing nano-SIM cards on a large scale. If the new iPhone does indeed no longer have a micro-SIM slot, but only for a nano-SIM, carriers should have a nano-SIM for every new iPhone they want to sell. In the last quarter of last year, when the iPhone 4S came out, Apple sold 37 million iPhones. The vast majority of these were copies of the latest model, iPhone 4S.

The next iPhone is rumored to be coming out in September or October. This one would have a bigger screen than previous iPhones; the diagonal would be around 4″, while the resolution is rumored to be increased to 1136×640 pixels. The iPhone 4 and 4S have a resolution of 960×640 pixels.