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| Click on one of the following questions to jump to the corresponding answer: | |||
| Q: Are all mobile phones SIM Toolkit compatible? | |||
| Q: Is the SIM Toolkit support the same in every mobile phone? | |||
| Q: How is the mobile phone user experience affected? | |||
| Q: What about the power consumption? How is the battery life affected? | |||
| Q: What type of memory card does the Turbo Adapter use? | |||
| Q: Isn't the size of the memory cards too small? | |||
| Q: Is it possible to use a Turbo designed for one mobile phone model in another model? | |||
Q: Why is the “Twofish” cipher used? Wouldn't “AES” be a better choice? |
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| Q: How are the applications loaded? | |||
Q: Can all mobile phones upload applications via a data cable? |
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| Q: What can be done with the SIM Toolkit? | |||
| Q: What applications are the SIM Toolkit good for and what is the comparison to mobile Java? | |||
Q: What doesn’t the SIM Toolkit provide? I.e.: What it is not good for? |
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| Q: Why isn’t the SIM Toolkit more popular between independent developers? | |||
A: Turbo was a working project name. We could not come up with anything better. |
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| A: The precise term is SIM Application Toolkit (SAT), but we use the more common abbreviation of SIM Toolkit (STK). It refers to the technology used to store and run applications on the SIM card and describes how such applications must communicate with mobile equipment (phone) - as defined by the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standard Institute) standard: GSM 11.14. Historically, it is the oldest and the most widespread technology for applications on mobile phones. An example is the popular GSM banking and bill payment applications employed by several European companies. | |||
| Q: Are all mobile phones SIM Toolkit compatible? | |||
| A: According to SIMallinace all mobile phones produced since 1999 are SIM Toolkit enabled. | |||
| Q: Is the SIM Toolkit support the same in every mobile phone? | |||
A: No, SIM Toolkit is being actively developed and offers more and more new functionality. That means that older phones may have limited STK support. It is also vendor dependent – usually the smaller vendors have better STK support then the big names. (Nokia supports the bare minimum). |
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| Q: How is the mobile phone user experience affected? | |||
A: Turbo works as a middle man between phone and SIM, i.e. all communication between them takes twice as long. Such delays are not noticeable in the case of phones using high speed communication with SIM (e.g. all Nokia models) and appropriate SIM (all new SIM cards produced). In the case of slow SIM cards the phone reaction time to SIM card operations is (very slightly) slower. |
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| Q: What about the power consumption? How is the battery life affected? | |||
| A: Turbo has minimal power requirements; the battery life is only about 10% shorter. The consumption depends on the mobile phone type and usage itself. In general the highest power consumption is related to memory card operation (e.g. storing SMS on memory card). | |||
| Q: What type of memory card does the Turbo Adapter use? | |||
A: Turbo Adapter uses DataFlash memory cards in MMC package. Atmel, the producer of these cards, currently offer them in 2, 4 and 8MB sizes. We have chosen these cards because Turbo applications need a file system that supports many small files and standard MMC card file systems do not fit this criterion. Other reasons were: no license fees, no royalty fees and open documentation. There are plans for standard MMC cards to be supported in the future. |
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| Q: Isn't the size of the memory cards too small? | |||
| A: It depends on the usage, Turbo applications focus mainly on work with SMS, shorter structured texts and localization information. For such usage the capacity is enough - on 2MB card about 7000 SMS can be stored. For larger data (e.g. encyclopaedias), we are working on support for standard MMC cards. | |||
| Q: Is it possible to use a Turbo designed for one mobile phone model in another model? | |||
| A: Yes, it is possible. The only limitation is the mechanical solution of SIM connector (physical SIM locking method) of given mobile phone. As for firmware – it is possible that some functionality is optimized for the original mobile phone, but firmware can be upgraded - reflashed. | |||
| A: To upgrade/flash a new firmware the Turbo Programmer is required. The firmware file itself is freely available on our website. | |||
Q: Why is the “Twofish” cipher used? Wouldn't “AES” be a better choice? |
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| A: The cipher Twofish was an AES candidate, but eventually the Rijndael was chosen. Twofish is a very strong cipher and provides key lengths of 128 to 256 bits. Turbo products use Twofish by default because it requires less memory, but you can always use AES in your applications (port is available). | |||
| Q: How are the applications loaded? | |||
| A: There are two ways to upload applications into the Turbo products - either via the memory card (on the Turbo Adapter) or by using a phone data cable. To upload an application on the memory card the Turbo Programmer or phone data cable can be used. | |||
Q: Can all mobile phones upload applications via a data cable? |
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| A: The data cable upload method can only be used on phones supporting the SMS manipulation AT commands: AT+CMGW, AT+CMGR and AT+CMGD. | |||
| Q: What can be done with the SIM Toolkit? | |||
| A: The SIM Toolkit offers enhanced functionality for the mobile user interface - from displaying data and text insertion to adding menus. But the real strength lies in the SMS handling, location information and in general lower level system functions. SIM Toolkits can provide many more functions to make the most out of any phone e.g. timers, networking or pictures. All they need are the applications to be written that exploit them. | |||
| Q: What applications are the SIM Toolkit good for and what is the comparison to mobile Java? | |||
A: SIM Toolkit is good mainly for low-level applications - SMS handling, localization, etc. J2ME is on the other hand targeted mainly at games. Most J2ME implementations are limited more to the multimedia area - screen and sound, while SMS support or localization are problematic for J2ME. So the SIM Toolkit and J2ME relationship is more complementary than competitive. |
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Q: What doesn’t the SIM Toolkit provide? I.e.: What it is not good for? |
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A: Sim Toolkits are not usable for multimedia; it does not implement dynamic graphics or sound effects. See above FAQ. |
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| Q: Why isn’t the SIM Toolkit more popular between independent developers? | |||
A: Until the Bladox Turbo range came along, the SIM Toolkit has been limited to development and deployment by the operators only. And they could only upload their applications on the SIM cards provided by them. Operators kept this control tight and it is, in fact, impossible to deploy your own application directly on the SIM Card. That’s why the Bladox Turbo range is so useful – it allows ayone to develop and deploy their own SIM Toolkit applications and unlock the true potential of mobile phones! |
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If you have any further questions, please direct them to:
Or you can ask them in the Bladox Forum |
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