sim cards and new cell phones

March 19, 2020 2:02 PM

I broke my phone; new one is on the way. Do I need to transfer my old sim card in order to retain all my info.

This is an android, LG G8X 30+. I was told on the phone that everything should be saved in the cloud and I don't need to transfer my old sim card to the new phone, but the last time, lots of the stuff was NOT saved on the cloud. It was transferred over at the store.

So, do I have to put my old sim card in my new phone? CAN I?

I am not able to go into the store because I have been having flu-like symptoms, so am self-isolating. New phone is supposed to arrive tomorrow.

posted by bearette to Technology (8 answers total)

None of your "info" is stored on the SIM card. Why don't you want to put your old SIM in it?

Anyway your "info" is in the phone not the SIM. How much of that is "in the cloud" is entirely dependent on how you set your cloud up.
posted by humboldt32 at 2:09 PM on March 19, 2020

Best answer: If you think of your phone like a computer, the SIM card is like the modem since it allows your phone to connect to the cellular network. Your personal info is stored in the internal memory of the phone (like the computer hard drive) and/or on the microSDXC card in the phone (like a thumb drive) and/or in the cloud. It is easy to confuse a SIM card with a microSDXC card since your model can have two SIM slots and use one of them for a microSDXC card, but they are two different things. The microSDXC should have some print on it that tells you how big it is in GB, while the SIM card is likely to have the carrier's name on it.

Do you have a computer in the house that you can plug the phones into? Is your old phone usable enough to plug in and back up to a computer?
posted by soelo at 2:20 PM on March 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: It's not that I don't want to put my old SIM card in- I was told the new phone was arriving with a new SIM card in it. I thought the SIM card stored the info that was on the phone, so I was wondering how I can retain that info. The only way is if it was all backed up to the cloud?

I know my questions are dumb- i'm not tech savvy.
posted by bearette at 2:22 PM on March 19, 2020

Response by poster: @Soelo- good explanation, thanks! is the microSDXC something that can be taken out and put into a new phone in order to restore information?

I do have a laptop, and am trying now to see if I can plug my phone into it to transfer files.
posted by bearette at 2:35 PM on March 19, 2020

Best answer: Years ago contacts were stored on SIM cards sometimes, so if you've had a cellphone for a long time you might be remembering experiences with that.
posted by needs more cowbell at 2:40 PM on March 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

You can remove the microSD card. Your new phone will come with a tool for opening the SD card tray that you ought to be able to use on your old phone too. Things like straightened paper clips and pins can work too. Not all phones have microSD slots though so you'd want to make sure your new one does. Also, depending on what was saved on the card it might not be as straightforward as popping the card into the new phone in order to get whatever was saved on it.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:05 PM on March 19, 2020

Your questions aren't dumb. I was simply answering them.
posted by humboldt32 at 7:45 PM on March 19, 2020

I just did this!

First, try to transfer what you can to your computer. Files, photos, videos, etc. If you use Whatsapp, turn on the backup feature and back it up to the cloud.

For backing up apps and app data, you can back up a lot of your things natively on Android, instructions here. After turning on the backup option I recommend waiting 24-48 hours before transferring your information to make sure that everything is backed up properly.

I don't believe the Google backup above backs up your text messages--so use this app to back up all your texts and contacts. Set it up to back up to your Google Drive. This may take a long time to finish backing up, but you're waiting 24-48 hours for the full phone backup anyway so that's fine.

You can just switch out the SIM cards but that's not going to save all your data.
posted by Anonymous at 3:47 PM on March 20, 2020