With the iPhone 5 starting to arrive for users who pre-ordered the handset, we find ourselves in the midst of a new SIM design, the nano SIM. Like micro SIM before it, you’d better believe that we’ll see an influx of adapters to get the smaller SIMs working on phones designed to accept larger cards. When playing around with such tools, though, be sure you have your wits about you, or you could be just a couple seconds away from ruining a brand-new phone.

CrackBerry’s Kevin was recently trying out a new BlackBerry Bold 9900, as he recounts in a post today, and he wanted to see how well his micro SIM adapter would fit in the handset, having run into some clearance problems before. As a bit of a dry run, he tried inserting the adapter without the requisite micro SIM already in place.

The problem is, without that SIM to push down on the phone’s connectors, the spring-loaded components popped-up into the void left by the micro SIM adapter. You can see where this is going: with no way to push those pins back down in order to give the adapter room to slide out, it was stuck in place. Kevin gave the good fight, trying to wiggle and pry and get that adapter loose, but it was just a matter of time before he had damaged the SIM connectors beyond repair; one brand-new smartphone, ruined.

So, for heaven’s sake, don’t mess around when using these kind of adapters, and do yourself a favor by remembering not to try anything without the SIM well in place.

Source: CrackBerry