Learn me some SIM card contact saving!

[Android Central Question]

So I have two BLU phones - an outgoing Vivo XL2 running 7.0 and a incoming Vivo xi+ running Android 8.1. I've had the same SIM (and phone number!) since 2005 and have been hopping from phone to phone using it with no problems about once every 2 or so years.

Until now, when I cannot find the option to display SIM contacts or save a contact to SIM anywhere. In fact I could only *see* my SIM contacts at all by importing them to the device.

Doing a little bit of reading showed me that more people have had this problem recently and that saving contacts to SIM is now ancient history. Which is sad, since I really liked popping the card in and out to try different models.

I'd like to clarify if this is a 1. Android 7 to 8 issue where the support has finally been dropped, or a 2. BLU factory image issue like they disabled it, or more.

Usually I see people say "just back up the device to Google!". If I do not Trust The Cloud for both personal reasons and professional requirements, can anyone recommend a third-party app which may let me keep this functionality?

For now I can see import/export .VCF juggling being a fine workaround, but am sad it's no longer automatic!

 

[hallux]

I don't know if this can be classified as a core OS developer concern, manufacturer software development concern or as a hardware concern. No matter which way you classify it - this has been on the way out for a while. As contact info has gotten more dynamic (and would require more space) it's become less possible to save contacts to the SIM card. SIM card capacity may have also shrunk as cloud backup of contacts became more common.

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[chanchan05]

SIM cards border on the useless nowadays in terms of saving contact details. You can only keep a very limited number of contacts, and multiple contact details per contact eats one slot each. Unlike other available methods where one contact can have multiple numbers, email addresses, etc. SIM cards can't do that. You'll be limited to at most 300? entries, and if a person has 3 numbers, that counts as three entries.

You need to find phone models that supports phone only contacts and can export the contacts to a VCF file into the SD card. That way you can pop the SD card and import into a different model.
Samsungs can do this.