What can you find out in the phone if the SIM card is missing? This is what everyone is wondering about after the seizure of the Milan prosecutor’s office Leonardo La Russa’s mobile phone.
In the era of smartphones, the role of SIM cards is greatly exaggerated. That little card to which our phone number is linked, which over the years has become increasingly smaller, until it becomes a “Nano”, which will soon disappear in favor of eSims, virtual cards, that allow the phone to use the cellular network to make calls and send SMS. And it has a small memory to save other phone numbers.
In the past, when mobile phones were not yet “smart” and, above all, did not have a memory capable of holding tens of gigabytes, people were already used to storing their contacts on the Sim, which served as an “address book”. We changed phones, we simply swapped the SIM card from the old one to the new one… Numbers, after all, are all we need.
However, today it is much easier to find our phone book on the device we are using. Because this is where the new numbers are stored by default, unless you choose to change this setting in favor of your Sim. In fact, over the years, people have started transferring from one phone to another not only their numbers, but also photos, videos, email addresses, and chat history of instant messaging apps like WhatsApp. In short, the phone book has simply become part of the digital archive that accompanies us from one device to another. In short, the smartphone knows everything about us, sim or non sim.
Furthermore, the Sim is no longer necessary to make calls. Wi-Fi is enough for today. You can connect to any network and you can also make calls through WhatsApp. Or with Telegram, an increasingly popular messaging app.
WhatsApp and Telegram continue to work on your smartphone even when there is no SIM card in the phone. Precisely thanks to the wi-fi connection that ensures the reception and transmission of data over the Internet. Sim, in the case of these instant messaging apps, actually only matters when you sign up for the service. It is no longer required after that. If it is missing, your conversations, including past ones, will still be accessible. And you can do anything: from searching for messages – using a keyword – to multimedia content such as photos and videos.
Even the most popular apps like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter will still be available if the SIM card is removed from the phone. In this case, it is enough to connect to wi-fi. Just like you would a tablet without a phone card slot.
Moreover, without a Sim Card, if you are using an Android phone, you can still use Google Maps to review all the movements we have made in the past. This special feature, activated when location history is enabled in settings, allows you to go back in time and remember the places we visited on a particular day. We’ve talked about it at length here.
