Vodafone, Qualcomm, and Thales joined forces to demonstrate a working smartphone featuring iSIM. It is a new technology enabling the functionality of a SIM card to be integrated into a device’s main processor.

This milestone paves the way for the commercialization of the technology, which could be rolled out in a host of new devices that will use iSIM to connect to mobile services. The iSIM is allowing for greater system integration, higher performance, and increased memory capacity. This technology is the latest evolution of SIM technology in which ‘eSIMs’ are embedded into devices.

However, eSIM requires a separate chip: with iSIM, this is no longer necessary and removes the need for dedicated space assigned to SIM services. iSIM technology is a significant evolution on existing eSIM solutions and delivers wholesale benefits to both consumers and telecommunications operators, further paving the way for mobile services to be integrated into devices beyond the mobile phone, taking the mobile experience to laptops, tablets virtual reality platforms, IoT devices, wearables, and more.

A proof of concept (POC) demonstration took place in Europe, as one of the highest global smartphone penetration regions. The POC illustrates the technology’s commercial readiness and efficiency working on existing infrastructure, leveraging Vodafone’s advanced network capabilities. In the demonstration, the fully operational proof of concept device used on Vodafone’s network was based on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 5G powered by a Snapdragon® 888 5G Mobile Platform, which features a built-in Qualcomm® Secure Processing Unit running the Thales iSIM operating system for this demonstration. This proof of concept took place in Samsung’s R&D labs using Vodafone’s advanced remote management platform.