Re: What is the life expectancy of a SIM card

SIM Cards, like Memory cards, USB sticks and the like, use a technology called EAPROM or Electronically Alterable Programmable Read Only Memory (what a mouthful eh?) Anyway, they are small silicon chips programmed with the phone data and a copy of your address book amongst other stuff. They can technically last forever but are susceptible to damage through spikes of electricity or large Electro-Magnetic Forces (EMF) such as microwave energy.

In normal operation, they, like USB and other memory cards have a Read/Write lifespan of approximately 1 million (R/W) actions. As they require an electrical charge to be used to change the state of one of the memory cells, they can break down and fail. So don't rely entirely on the SIM for your phone address book, back it up to the phone's memory and also to your computer - see your phone's manual for instructions.

I would also suggest never relying entirely on a USB or other memory card as your one and only backup, use two or even three devices to backup data you don't want to loose. I had a friend whose daughter kept all her Uni work on a USB stick but it failed and she lost the lot. That was meant to BE the backup but she got fed up with copying files back and forth and just kept it all on the stick.

Hope this helps somewhat though is probably a little OTT.