Gadgetory

what's up guys Lew here and today I'm going to be showing you how to cut a sim card I've done this a couple of times in the past and you guys have requested this kind of a video to show you exactly how it's done in this case I'll be taking a standard sim and cutting it down to nano SIM form factor for the iPhone 5 but the process would be the same if you want to go down to a micro sim size for previous iPhones or other phones that are on the market like for example my Nexus 4 which uses micro SIM so you need a couple of things to actually complete this procedure you're going to need a template this template here I'll link down in the description so you don't have to go looking for one but if you google micro sim or nano sim template you'll find it as well but like I said before there is a link in the description you're also going to need a little bit of sandpaper because a nano SIM is actually thinner than a micro or mini sim so you're going to need some of this to actually adjust the thickness you're also going to need a little bit of tape which i've got over here that's just so you can tape down the sim card to the template draw your lines prior to making your cut you want to have lines on the card in order to guide your cuts so that you don't mess it up you need to get the exact fit for it to work in the SIM card tray on the latest generation iPhone I've also got a card just as standard what is this gift card in order to draw my lines even straighter and you'll need a pen and the last thing you're going to need is a fairly sharp pair of scissors usually kitchen scissors work the best because they're generally a little bit stronger and sharper than your regular arts and crafts scissors so anyways let's go ahead tape down the sim card and then go ahead and draw our lines I'll probably do that off camera right now and then I'll come back and show you what the finished product looks like so as you can see here I've gone ahead and drawn my lines onto the full-size or what they call mini sim card and these lines here once I cut across them that will result in a nano sim as you can see right here it will require cutting very close or even in this case a little bit over top of the metal contacts you do need to be pretty careful to get a nice straight cut across those areas in order as I said before to get that precise fit so I've taped down this card I'm going to remove it from the tape now and then I'll go ahead and make my precision cuts so when you're cutting all the way down to a nano-sim like this you're basically just cutting around the contact point the metallic portion of the card there's really no plastic left when you're finished and when you're looking at your diagram the innermost square this little tiny portion in here is what you actually need to end up with and as you can see here with my cut it fits in there perfectly or maybe you can't see that but anyway it fits in there perfectly so as far as the lateral cuts go you want to go right along the edge of the metallic portion removing the plastic sides I've got a bunch of scraps over there which wouldn't tell you much at this point but basically you want to follow the inner square on the diagram from the mini sim to nano-sim portion in order to get down to this nano sim right here now the next step actually requires a little bit of sanding because the last thing that needs to happen is you need to decrease the thickness of the actual card a mini sim is slightly thicker than a nano sim so you need to go onto the backside where the poor the plastic is and grind up some of the plastic not very much you just want to rub it you know just a gently and then go into the tray after you have that there yet here here's the tray and you want to put the SIM card into the tray and you know trial and error see if it fits and then keep taking off a little bit more until you've got a nice snug fit you don't want to over sand you definitely don't want to be seeing the contact points from the back and so as I said the best way to do it is to take off a little bit of plastic using the sandpaper put it in the tray and then keep trying till you've got a snug fit I'm going to go do some sanding right now and then we'll check out the fit afterwards so as you can see now I've got an iPhone 5 on the Left it hasn't been activated yet it's brand new unlocked and to my right is where my SIM card and the tray is and I'm going to try and show this to you I've sanded down the back to the point where you can sort of barely start to see the shadow of the metallic portion of the SIM card underneath that means you're close enough you don't want to go any further than that and you want to also make sure that you've got a flush fit on the top side of the tray that means it's good to so at that point you're ready to insert the card and then go ahead and use your phone this card is not activated yet it needs to be activated via phone call or the web so you're not going to see your service jump up right away in this particular case but if you're coming from a sim card that is activated at this point you will see your service jump in so anyway as you can see a good fit perfect fit here on the iPhone 5 so that's a little tutorial I just want to mention real quick guys that you do this at your own risk you don't want to be messing around if you're scared of ruining your sim generally there are about 20 bucks or less so if you don't mind if you're not too paranoid then you can go ahead and attempt this yourself so anyways you can see now that rather than saying no sim instead it says no service let's wait for the camera to focus there hopefully again it says no service now because the sim is not activated but it is reading the sim as being there so we've got a good cut in this case so if you guys go ahead and do this good luck and if you enjoyed this content if you found it helpful or maybe you'll be helpful in the future make sure to leave a thumbs up down below it does help out a bunch and thanks as always for your viewership I'll catch you guys on the next one later