how do i save contacts to iphone sim? - i know it can be done!

Question

how do i save contacts to iphone sim? - i know it can be done!

hi there

i have an iphone 3gs and before everyone rushes to tell me that iphones don't save contacts to sim - they do! my old iphone got dropped in some water. i put the sim into a spare 3gs, performed no restores or anything, yet immediately most of my contacts appeared like magic. lots of more recent ones were missing however. i have seen one post on the net suggesting that iphone saves the first 250 contacts to sim and nothing thereafter.

i find the whole backup/restore process a pain, for reasons i won't bore you with.

so my two questions are:

1) is there any way i can deliberately save each new contact to sim, if there is enough space?

2) if not, will the phone do it automatically once i delete below 250 contacts?

any ideas from you iphone geniuses out there would be much appreciated!

many thanks

iPhone 3GS

Posted on Jul 3, 2013 10:22 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Jul 3, 2013 10:35 AM in response to techno-luddite

No, iPhones don't save contacts to the SIM. Most likely, you had saved the contacts to that spare SIM from another phone.

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Answer 2

cheonweb

Level 4

3,479 points

Jul 3, 2013 10:35 AM in response to techno-luddite

iPhone stores no data in SIM card. The old Contacts that you see was from your previous phone.

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Answer 3

Jul 4, 2013 5:29 AM in response to cheonweb

Nope, the old phone belonged to someone else who could not

have had access to my personal contacts. What's more, there is even a button

Called 'import sim contacts to phone' under settings, mail/contacts/calendars. So clearly the iPhone

3GS (can't speak for later models) has the capacity to store data there! The question is how to ensure future contacts get

Stored on there as per my previous question...

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Answer 4

Jul 4, 2013 5:32 AM in response to techno-luddite

The iPhone has the ability to import numbers from a SIM card that were saved to that card by another device. It does NOT have the ability to store them there.

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Answer 5

tonefox

Level 6

9,362 points

Jul 4, 2013 5:41 AM in response to techno-luddite

Here's Apple's take on it, if you want to argue with them as well.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4994?viewlocale=en_US

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Answer 6

roaminggnome

Level 10

106,365 points

Jul 4, 2013 5:52 AM in response to techno-luddite

Still no

Iphone stores nothing at all on the SIM card - nothing, nada, zip, zilch

Iphone can import FROM Sim card TO iphone.

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Answer 7

Jul 4, 2013 6:15 AM in response to IdrisSeabright

ohhh.....thank you Meg and others. I guess it must have been a SIM that predated the iphones. thanks for clearing that up - i'm just gonna email myself all my new numbers as well, much prefer that to the backup/restore method.

cheers everyone!

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Answer 8

Jul 4, 2013 6:23 AM in response to techno-luddite

Glad it got straightened out!

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Answer 9

Oct 23, 2013 8:54 PM in response to techno-luddite

You can backup contacts from iPhone via the iTunes backup when you lost your iPhone. iTunes can automatically back up your iPhone contacts and update it every time when you sync it. So you really have a big chance to recover contacts from iTunes backup.

If you don't synced, you can directly scan and recover deleted contacts from your iPhone.

Solution 1: Scan and extract iTunes backup to recover iPhone contacts (without iPhone)

Step 1: Scan the backup file

Step 2: Recover your iPhone contacts

Solution 2: Directly scan and recover contacts from iPhone 5/4S/4/3GS

Step 1: Connect your iPhone to the computer

Step 2: Enter the device's scanning mode and scan it

1) Hold your device and click the "Start" button.

2) Pressing the "Power" and "Home" buttons at the same time for exact 10 seconds.

3) Then release the "Power" button, but keep holding "Home" for another 15 seconds until you get

Step 3: Preview and recover iPhone contacts

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Answer 10

Feb 5, 2016 2:14 PM in response to techno-luddite

I feel your pain... Regardless of what the experts below are saying, I too "know" its possible that the iPhone can write contacts to the sim card. I have an iPhone 5s. Its new. I added my Gmail contacts to the phone. I accidently set , or did not verify that GMail was the default for contacts. I clicked the import button, and the contacts that I had added the previous day were imported to the device and now show in iCloud. These are the only contacts in iCloud. They were written to the SIM... Imported to the device/iCloud.

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