The home PC, once looked upon as a revolution in the concept of customisation, is now considered oversized and outdated, even the laptop seems to be bulky too at times. The palmtop, a possible answer to this, has not been developed enough yet, and has some inherent design oriented drawbacks. The mobile phone, on the other hand, is on its way to become the most compact personal office system for those on the move.

The mobile phone uses a removable digital storage media known as the SIM card for storing important information in it. One can say that the SIM card's role is like the hard disk's inside a computer. This is where people keep their address and phone number ?books?, text messages, video and audio files, video or picture messages, software to connect to the internet and check one's mail, games, and all other peripheral activities that can be done with a cell phone. Even the cheapest phones have contact information section, message section, games, alarm clock, ring tones, and a section for managing the settings. For phones like the famous Blackberry, an entire office computer is carried in the SIM. In brief, the SIM card is the most important part of our mobile phones, as it contains all the data that matters to us.

Having data, by default, also opens the ground for incurring data loss. The beauty of digital data is that it gives us a lot of space within very slim confines, where we may store our data in the best possible order. Unlike paper, this gives us the assurance that it will remain intact forever. This is one of our basic fallacies. We are usually unaware as to what causes data loss, so when it does happen, we are clueless as to what went wrong and why, and this ignorance becomes a serious impediment on the way to recovery.

The reasons behind data loss from SIM cards may be broadly divided into two groups ? hardware and software related faults.

What can be done if you suffer SIM card data loss? There are two ways of dealing with it ? you can either download and use DIY software ? or call for a professional data recovery firm. The latter is a safer but much more costly option. For everyday users, DIY is best, but for any important data, call a firm.