Rick's b.log - entry 2022/10/11

Bweeg SIM hack

This time, I decided to find my mother's phone. A little Samsung thing that can barely send text messages, all carefully written using that awful nine-key method. Because mom wasn't interested in any sort of smartphone, even though I could get a basic one she could use for about €40, or recycle one of my old ones... She wanted to send/receive messages and make/answer phone calls and..... that's it. She considered a "phone" to be a phone, as opposed to me who thinks a "phone" is a multimedia computational device that, once in a blue moon, makes calls. But, then, if we compare "time I've spent talking to people" with "time I've spent watching Netflix" (or, worse, "time I've spent on either ROOL's forums or TVTropes"), then I'm afraid the actual-talking part is a mere fraction of the error margin of the other.

Anyway, found mom's phone. Extracted the regular sized SIM from it. Decided to drop it into my Mi 10T.
Yeah.
That's not going to work. The Xiaomi is a modern smartphone. It wants a nano SIM.

Bweeg's website is, actually, worse than useless. It's as if the pay-as-you-go stuff is an afterthought. Try to find assistance, it takes you to the main site. But you cannot connect there, as your credentials are for a prepaid device, not a contract.
These things used to be together. I remember the customer service people used to refer to themselves as "Woobies" (which I thought was hysterical - go look up "woobie" on TV Tropes), but somewhere along the way (about five years ago?) they split off the prepaid stuff to a site that, basically, allows you to buy credit and... uh... yeah, that's about it.

There's a rather sad tale that can be found. A 65 year old bloke who was going in and out of PET scans and such needed an nano SIM for a new phone. After several attempts at getting a response, he finally got one and it seems that the only option may well be to cancel the line and get a new one. Which would mean a new number, not to mention all the farting around proving who you are.

In other words, it would seem as if Bweeg is a total loss if you need to downsize your older SIM to fit into a modern phone.

Luckily for me, I have scissors. ☺

Even more luckily for me, I had a compatible SIM. Look at the number of metal bits. If it's three connections at each end with one connected to the middle part, then you're good to go.
If, however, you have a really old SIM with four connections, it's too big.

One hand-crafted nano SIM.

Now, the basic warning is simple. DO NOT CUT THE METAL BITS. The chip is buried under there, with the metal pads being the contacts to it.
The entire rest of the SIM card is just a bit of plastic. Nothing to hurt there.

Make a note of which side of the SIM has the little piece missing. Then carefully cut around the sides and the bottom of the chip (metal pads).
Finally, cut across the top, but leave a little bit of extra plastic.
Then clip off a corner to give it a piece missing in the same orientation as it was before.

Pop it in, boot the phone, it should appear and be active.

Connected to a mobile network.

By the way, my €5 (that expires at the end of the day) bought me 3.6MB of mobile data and 11 minutes of talking to another mobile.

Your comments:

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John, 11th October 2022, 20:30

I was (in desperation) recently watching a US program about the Bermuda Triangle - well, the Florida bit of it - and was amazed to hear the US participants referring to buoys as "boo-ees".    Reading of your French pronunciation tips for Bouygues, something I've never even attempted to pronounce, makes me wonder if they use a French pronunciation, perhaps dating back to Napoleon and the Louisiana Purchase, an event I only recently learnt about when it appeared in the granddaughter's homework one time.    This leads me to postulate that we must all have huge gaps in our knowledge and understanding of the world!

Anon, 11th October 2022, 22:45

Yes... I remember having to cut a full-sized SIM (remember them? The size of an actual credit card?) down to mini-SIM size to use in a different phone. Nowadays they just pop out a bit like Russian dolls.    Also I can confirm that a USIM (which is a SIM but 3G or newer) will pop straight into an older 2G phone and work perfectly.

Anon, 11th October 2022, 22:47

And also... "Bweeg" sounds a bit like a guest character from Red Dwarf.

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