This is what Steve Jobs wanted in the first place, it seems

May 13, 2022 18:20 GMT  ·  By

We’ve known for a while that Apple was working on an iPhone without a SIM card, and according to people familiar with the matter, this could happen sooner rather than later.

After all, half of this mission has already been accomplished, as Apple already launched iPhones with eSIM, so the only natural step would be dropping the physical SIM entirely.

And according to former iPod VP Tony Fadell, an iPhone without a SIM would perfectly make sense in the first place.

This is because this is exactly how the iPhone was supposed to launch from the very beginning, as Apple co-founder Steve Jobs wanted to make the device without a SIM card slot.

Possibly coming later this year

In an interview with Joanna Stern, Fadell said Steve Jobs wanted to launch the iPhone exclusively with CDMA, something that eventually happened on the Verizon network. Fadell, however, says he specifically discussed this strategy with Jobs, as he tried to explain to the boss that launching such a device would have made little sense given the adoption of CDMA.

In other words, Fadell believed, and he was right, at the low adoption of CDMA would have prevented the iPhone from becoming a hit.

Now Apple is believed to be planning a SIM-free iPhone starting in 2022, though for the time being, there’s a chance the Cupertino-based tech company isn’t ready to go all-in on this strategy. In other words, maybe Apple will just ship a single iPhone with this configuration before the lineup is expanded with more models beginning with 2023.

But of course, it’s important to keep in mind that this idea hasn’t yet been confirmed by Apple, so it’s better to take everything with a healthy dose of skepticism until it actually happens, either this year or in 2023.