Put WiFi on your cell phone’s SIM Card!
Have you ever wanted to surf the web from your laptop using the internet connection on your cell phone without connecting any wires, and with no hassle goofing around with software? Well guess what, for you happiness is close at hand!
Today Sagem Orga made a press release that raised my eyebrows. They have a new SIM card (the identification chip in your GSM cell phone) that has WiFi capability right on the chip. This is exciting, because it would enable otherwise ordinary cell phones to be used as WiFi internet gateways, running both WiFi and 3G data connections at the same time.
This is something that most phones simply can not do. The ones that can do it require that a software program must be running on the phone to make it into a router that can relay WiFi signals over the web through a 3G data connection over the cell phone network. Getting this on a Blackberry, for example is a huge nuisance, if your service provider supports it at all.
Well, that nuisance may be a thing of the past once the new “SIMFi” technology hits the market. Imagine just plugging in the snazzy new card into your phone, joining its WiFi network from your laptop, and accessing the internet from practically anywhere. How cool is that!?!
There has been a discussion on Slashdot about this. One of the interesting commentary was about the need for a 2.4 GHz antenna, which can actually fit fine on the SIM card itself, as long as it’s bent around a bit. An obvious question with any WiFi product is “what’s the implication on battery life?”. It will definitely be shorter. Hopefully this device will have some sort of a tunable transmit power adjustment for the WiFi signal so power consumption can be kept to a minimum. After all, your laptop and your cell phone will only be an arm’s length apart when you are using this setup anyway, so range is not a major concern.
Yes, I do love technical gadgets. The thought of where this could go is very exciting. I’ll be the first on the waiting list for this!
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Now we are talking! This is a concept that I have been waiting to hear more about… I mean really why couldn’t you use your phones wifi to connect with your computer. Just another great feature that the new cool cell phones of the future hold, Thanks!
hello, i wanted to ask you that i have a cell phone without wifi (samsung star) , is it possible to put wifi service in my cell ? and how?
As of today, there is not. The idea with this upcoming technology is that you could do HSPA right on a modified SIM card, so from your phone’s perspective it would not need to know what the underlying data connectivity was. This would be one possible way to get what you are asking for… essentially WiFi enabling all 3G phones. We’ll have to wait and see if it turns out to meet that promise.
how do i do to put wifi on my samsung cellphone?????
Today you can’t. This should be available in the future though.
how do i do to put WiFi on my Nokia E71 cellphone.
how do i do to put WiFi on my blackberry that doesnt have a sim card
You can’t. You need a new phone, sorry.