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iD strange SIM behaviour on Samsung phone

Jasonm

ULTIMATE Member
Hi all,

I switched to iD mobile recently. Everything is going fine and I'm getting some good speed here in Leeds - but I did some further testing for fun (and because I also have a three payG SIM for trips to the US that I used for a comparison).

For some reason, I noticed that the signal strength icon on my Samsung S23 ultra (almost always) seems to show one bar less signal strength on my iD SIM than on my three SIM. Using apps like gmon-pro confirmed though that the signal strength should be identical and that I'm indeed connected to the same mast and band.

I wanted to test if that's maybe a Samsung issue and wanted to swap the SIM cards around so that they use each other's SIM trays.

I noticed that the iD SIM now absolutely doesn't want to activate in the SIM tray 2. I tested the SIM in different phones and different SIM cards in the tray... It seems to be an iD SIM + sim2 tray issue only?

The only thing I also noticed is that when I put my iD SIM in an older OnePlus phone, it gave me a chip like looking icon for the SIM (instead of the regular SIM logo like for other cards).

My question is therefore - is iD mobile using some special type of SIM? I read stuff about UICC SIM cards? Maybe iD installed some verification certificates on my Samsung phone that prevent me from using it in another SIM tray? I haven't tried resetting the network settings, yet - because I'm too lazy... But maybe that could help...

In any case, putting the iD SIM back into tray 1 and three back into tray 2 doesn't cause any issue...

Super weird behaviour from the SIM haha
 
Is VoLTE switched on ? I believe if it's not on you don't get band 20 signal, which is better for coverage (but also tends to be slower)
 
Is VoLTE switched on ? I believe if it's not on you don't get band 20 signal, which is better for coverage (but also tends to be slower)
Yes - it's on and the behaviour could be observed on various bands (incl. 700 MHz). Thanks for the reply :)
Some Googling revealed that it might have something to do with MIMO and/or interferences due to both SIMs using the same band on the same tower? Why is it always the iD SIM in tray 1 that has lower bars, though? Also, wenn I add another SIM (e.g., Lebara) into tray 2, it doesn't make any difference.
Perhaps the SIM card determines how many bars are displayed at a certain db level of signal strength?
 
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Yes - it's on and the behaviour could be observed on various bands (incl. 700 MHz). Thanks for the reply :)
Some Googling revealed that it might have something to do with MIMO and/or interferences due to both SIMs using the same band on the same tower? Why is it always the iD SIM in tray 1 that has lower bars, though? Also, wenn I add another SIM (e.g., Lebara) into tray 2, it doesn't make any difference.
Perhaps the SIM card determines how many bars are displayed at a certain db level of signal strength?
I think carriers can set the db level to number of bars as they wish, probably downloaded or set from carrier settings.
 
Yeah... It feels like the iD SIM really loads up a lot of carrier settings. When I put the SIM in my old OnePlus 7pro for testing, it didn't show a regular SIM logo (like it does for all other SIMs I used), but rather some processor like looking logo 🤔
 
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