Lazybit

If you use Google's two-step verification feature, you will stumble upon an authentication error with SIM Manager, when attempting to synchronize your SIM with the online phonebook.

Two-step authentication is something that can easily slip out of your mind, so you may think that the problem is with your password, or with the software. After repeated attempts to synchronize your phonebook, you just give up (and maybe blame it on SIM Manager)

To fix this, you have to create an application-specific password in your Google account settings, and use that password with SIM Manager.

1. Log onto your Gmail account and click account settings

   

2. Edit your two-step verification settings

   

3. Click Manage application-specific passwords

   

4. Generate a password for SIM Manager

   

5. Use this password with SIM Manager

   

That's it. Have fun synchronizing your contacts!

p.s. the password in the screenshot has been changed, don't try to use it ;-)

Version 3.1 is about to go public, this story provides details about some of the entries in the changelog.

+ improved SIM card write speed, only updated records are written
+ the .manifest file is now embedded into the program
+ notifications about missing readers can be optionally disabled
+ automatically enable and start the smart card service, if possible
+ detect ActivClient and let people disable it, for it renders the reader unusable
+ gracefully handle AT&T cards that have incomplete USIM phonebooks (no email file)
+ added support for PTT (push to talk) records available on some 3G cards
- fixed the problem of pasting contacts to FDN sections
- addressed issue of a limited number of contacts copied from Google
- Facebook deprecated their contacts API, so the feature is removed

Full story »

SIM Manager can retrieve the address-book and SMS from the iPhone, via iTunes' backups.

Depending on the firmware version of your iPhone, you can get lucky and recover deleted SMS as well. Take a look at this video for more details:

This procedure does not require a card reader, so technically you can try it out for free - since the trial version of SIM Manager is fully functional during the evaluation period.

Here is a download link for the current release candidate of version 3.0: dl.dropbox.com/u/3258602/DKbeta/SIMManager3-a.exe

Backing up SIM cards and making copies of your contacts and SMS is the first thing you'd want to do if a SIM reader got into your hands.

However, there may be cases in which destroying data is more important than keeping them. In such cases it becomes a good idea to clear SIM card memory in order to prevent private information from getting into wrong hands. Here are a few examples:

• A distant friend visits you, you give them an old phone of yours and a spare SIM - such that they could keep in touch. You don't want them to look through your SMS or SIM contacts.
• The phone that you use is given to you by your employer, as you change jobs - you have to return the phone, but you don't want them to access your personal information (ex: the phone numbers of your family and friends, kept in the SIM phonebook, or the SMS you've been exchanging with your significant other).

In these circumstances, you should erase SIM card data before giving the card to anyone. This includes wiping SIM contacts, the SMS archive, the list of last dialled numbers, own numbers stored on the SIM card.

To clear SIM card memory, you have to manually go through each entry and delete it. This is a long and boring operation; besides that - there is a risk that you will accidentally miss some of the entries - simply because there are hundreds of records, and a monotonous operation that involves pressing buttons on a tiny key-pad of a mobile phone is error prone.

There is another risk - some phones do not delete the SMS, making deleted SMS recovery possible. So, when clearing a SIM card, the objectives are:

• erase all SIM card data (not just SMS or phone-book);
• wipe SMS, to make it impossible to restore deleted SMS;
• automate the process, to remove the possibility of human error.

The solution to this problem is SIM Manager's Clear SIM card feature, it does all of the above in a few clicks.

Besides that, with SIM Manager you can backup SIM cards before erasing them, thus you get to keep a copy of all the sensitive information from the SIM's memory.

Take a look at this video tutorial, which describes how to clear SIM card data without leaving a trace.

With SIM Manager you can recover deleted SMS. This guide explains the technical details of the SMS recovery process. The table below summarizes the default settings for various mobile phones and how they affect your chance to undelete texts.

If your phone is not listed, there are some rules of thumb that will be helpful:

• if the phone stores the SMS in its own memory, rather than on the SIM, recovering a deleted SMS is not possible;
• check your phone's menu, if there is an option to copy the SMS from the phone's memory to the SIM card, then SMS recovery may be possible (provided that it was deleted from the SIM, rather than the phone's memory);
• if the phone stores the SMS in the SIM by default, recovering a deleted SMS is most likely to be possible, but is not guaranteed.

Note for iPhone owners - Apple's iPhone keeps the SMS in its own memory, rather than on the SIM card; therefore conventional recovery methods won't work. You should give a try to SIM Manager's "import from iTunes" feature, take a look at How to import contacts from iPhone to SIM card

Contributions to this list will be greatly appreciated.

With SIM Manager you can copy the contacts from your SIM card to your Google account and vice-versa.

To do so, use the "Get contacts from Google" feature.

Once you enter your username and password, the contacts will be retrieved.

SIM Manager will copy the following address book details from Google:

• Name
• Second name
• Phone
• Additional Phone
• Category
• E-mail
• Group

You can write Google contacts to a SIM card, multiple cards or save them to a file for later use.

To upload contacts from a SIM card to Google, select the address book entries, right-click and choose "Send contacts to Google".

Here you can see the SIM card address book in Google contacts:

Naturally, you can do this with a SIM and a USIM, since SIM Manager supports both 2G and 3G SIM cards.

Future versions of SIM Manager will add the possibility to synchronize SIM card address books with Yahoo Contacts, Nokia Ovi and other similar services.

The program has many other interesting features, such as the SMS recovery or clear SIM contacts.

SIM Manager requires a PC/SC compliant SIM card reader, you can choose one from this list.

SIM Manager 2.5 has been released!

Apart from all the changes that have been mentioned on Lazybit.com earlier:

• 3G USIM extended phonebook support
• PLMN management
• Detailed reports

SIM Manager has taken a big step further, with more useful features and improvements.

First, let's take a look at the new SIM Manager 2.5:

You can see that the interface has suffered small changes. To the sidebar we've added 2 more commands to ease your navigation through SIM Manager: Info and Copy.

Info - offers you information about your SIM Card. It provides you with data like: SIM Serial Number, International Code and others.

Copy or SIM copy with batch processing as we refer to it - is something SIM Manager has been waiting for a long time. It is an improved and easy way to copy the data stored on your SIM Card or from a saved profile on your computer to any SIM Card you want.

You simply press the Copy button and a new message box appears which offers you more possibilities. You can select which sections to copy. As well you could erase the target SIM, only with a single checkbox.

A very important feature that has also been added along with the copy command is the Multiple copies feature. Only by filling a checkbox you will be able to create as many copies as you want, only with a single command instead of reiterating your steps for as much as a thousand times!

After you press Next you go to an other step where you select the SIM Card where to copy all the data

It's as simple as that, with just a few clicks your able to back up all your data or distribute all phone numbers of your employees to your fellow board members.

Apart from new features, one thing we have to mention is the improved prefix management for international phone numbers.

Now you don't have to find all over the Internet or type in the prefix of the country, but simply right-click on the contact and find Add prefix...

You will see a window where you will be able to select the country and SIM Manager will automatically add the prefix of that country.

So with all these new features and improvements we can firmly state that we have done the best SIM Manager yet. But this is surely not the last you've heard from us, stay tuned, since Dekart announces that the next major feature that will be added to SIM Manager is synchronization with online address book services. You definitely don't want to miss that.

SIM Manager 2.5 is available as a free update to SIM Manager 2.x users, so don’t hesitate and get yours now.