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Thursday, March 29, 2018

Sim card stuck in wrong smartphone slot. How to extract easily?


It's embarrassing for an electrical engineer to admit, but I'm useless at phones. It's not my interest, not my generation, and it's a solved problem.

So what happens when you are smartphone illiterate and you attempt to install a sim card in a brand new phone you don't understand? Right, hilarity.


There are two slots on this Samsung A5 ( yes, it's not even new, and I don't really care); one for sim card and one for Micro SD.   Guess which one I attempted to use for the sim card?

This phone is water resistant, so the slots have longer rails and grooves so there is enough friction and purchase that the loaded card holders slots fit snugly.

Long story short I thought it was a loading tray and I placed the sim card in - only to watch as I couldn't replace the tray!

I tried dental picks first, shoving them in the slot till I thought I had enough friction. Useless.


Then I found a video online suggesting using loctite and a custom cut slotted key. This method worked with ONE PULL. Brilliant!

Here is what you need: a credit card or one of those loyalty program cards for your keychain.  I used a 2012 RONA card.  Scissors, and loctite.

I cut a key slot longer than the hole. I glued only the edge of the slot that would hit the stuck sim card.  I glided it into the hole and made certain it would rest against the sim card.  I waited 30 minutes for the glue to be dry.


As you can see, it sealed against the card very nicely, only a little glue exceeded the interface.

There was enough locked surface to transfer most of my pulling force axially.  Worked with one pull.