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Help Changing new sim card into old phone

S

spman

Android Enthusiast
Hello,

A. Can I use 5G SIM card in Samsung Galaxy Note8? Is it just insert 5G SIM card and it will work?

B. What data/apps/info/history will I lose when I switch from 4G (old card) to 5G (new card) SIM card?

C. What steps to do (backup) before my old SIM card deactivate so I will ensure I have all the same items when I use the new SIM card?

I will be receiving a new 5G SIM card and the 4G SIM card will be deactivated once the 5G SIM card activates.
I am currently using 4G SIM card in my Samsung Galaxy Note8.

Thanks
 
spman said:
Hello,

A. Can I use 5G SIM card in Samsung Galaxy Note8? Is it just insert 5G SIM card and it will work?

B. What data/apps/info/history will I lose when I switch from 4G (old card) to 5G (new card) SIM card?

C. What steps to do (backup) before my old SIM card deactivate so I will ensure I have all the same items when I use the new SIM card?

I will be receiving a new 5G SIM card and the 4G SIM card will be deactivated once the 5G SIM card activates.
I am currently using 4G SIM card in my Samsung Galaxy Note8.

Thanks
Click to expand...
A)yes it will work, but obviously you will not get 5G.

B)sim cards only has info about user identity, location and phone number, network authorization data, personal security keys, contact lists and stored text messages. it will not have info on your apps or its data.....that is stored directly on your phone or sd card.

C)you can have google sync your contacts and you can use sms backup to backup your text messages.....other than that your phone's data will not get erased.....however it is a good idea to backup whatever you can on your phone anyways. you can also backup some stuff using samsung's smart switch. you can even save a backup on to your pc.

https://www.samsung.com/us/apps/smart-switch/
 
ocnbrze said:
A)yes it will work, but obviously you will not get 5G.

B)sim cards only has info about user identity, location and phone number, network authorization data, personal security keys, contact lists and stored text messages. it will not have info on your apps or its data.....that is stored directly on your phone or sd card.

C)you can have google sync your contacts and you can use sms backup to backup your text messages.....other than that your phone's data will not get erased.....however it is a good idea to backup whatever you can on your phone anyways. you can also backup some stuff using samsung's smart switch. you can even save a backup on to your pc.

https://www.samsung.com/us/apps/smart-switch/
Click to expand...

After the old sim card is deactivated, can I still access the details inside the old sim card?
 
spman said:
After the old sim card is deactivated, can I still access the details inside the old sim card?
Click to expand...

No, don't waste your time trying. A SIM card isn't intended to be any kind of user storage media, its purpose is to simply authenticate the phone using your user account credentials to access your carrier's cellular network. The data in it isn't anything you'll find to be relevant nor useful. If you want more details about your user account, log into your account on your carrier's web site.

There is no need for you to focus on your SIM card so much, you're just making the whole issue more complicated than it needs to be.
Swap out the old 4G SIM with the new 5G SIM, and in most cases your Note 8 should automatically configure itself to the new card and you can just use your phone again. Restart your Note as a precaution.
 
How many messages do you have? SIM cards have very limited storage, so if you have a few thousand messages then most if not all of them will be on the phone. To be honest though I'll be amazed if an Android phone is storing messages on a SIM. The message storage is managed by a special system app (not your SMS app - that's how different SMS apps can access the same messages), and the message database is in the internal storage somewhere in /data/data (back when I rooted my phones I could have told you exactly where).

How you would check? My phone has no setting to tell it to store messages on the SIM. I don't know whether it can even read messages from the SIM since I've changed SIMs a few times in the last decade and a bit I've been using Android, so there are definitely no SMS on it. (SMS were stored on the SIM back in the 90s, but even my last couple of dumb phones could store them on the phone).

Do a backup of your SMS if you want to be sure. Then you have a backup that's definitely not in the SIM, and if you find any messages are missing you can just restore that. But I honestly don't think you will have any SMS on your SIM, or certainly none that you've received since you started using a smartphone.

It's also unlikely that you have any contacts on your SIM, but to make sure you can go into your phone's Contacts app and look for an option in the app's settings to import contacts from the SIM. That will tell you whether there are any, and if there are you can just import them to the phone and (if you save them to an online account) sync them so you have a backup.
 
Hadron said:
How many messages do you have? SIM cards have very limited storage, so if you have a few thousand messages then most if not all of them will be on the phone. To be honest though I'll be amazed if an Android phone is storing messages on a SIM. The message storage is managed by a special system app (not your SMS app - that's how different SMS apps can access the same messages), and the message database is in the internal storage somewhere in /data/data (back when I rooted my phones I could have told you exactly where).

How you would check? My phone has no setting to tell it to store messages on the SIM. I don't know whether it can even read messages from the SIM since I've changed SIMs a few times in the last decade and a bit I've been using Android, so there are definitely no SMS on it. (SMS were stored on the SIM back in the 90s, but even my last couple of dumb phones could store them on the phone).

Do a backup of your SMS if you want to be sure. Then you have a backup that's definitely not in the SIM, and if you find any messages are missing you can just restore that. But I honestly don't think you will have any SMS on your SIM, or certainly none that you've received since you started using a smartphone.

It's also unlikely that you have any contacts on your SIM, but to make sure you can go into your phone's Contacts app and look for an option in the app's settings to import contacts from the SIM. That will tell you whether there are any, and if there are you can just import them to the phone and (if you save them to an online account) sync them so you have a backup.
Click to expand...

What do you use to backup SMS?

Is there something that can backup SMS to store SMS files inside Windows 10 PC, then recover back to phone?
 
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