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SIM cards, those tiny slivers of silicon that carry your identity inside a cell phone or connected device, are once again poised to get smaller as Giesecke & Devrient introduces the nano-SIM. And if adopted, smaller SIM cards could mean thinner, sexier devices or more room for useful things such as larger batteries.

The nano-SIM is a third smaller than the micro-SIM, which can be found inside Apple’s iPhone 4 and 4S (s aapl), and it is 60 percent smaller than the SIM cards found inside many of today’s GSM handsets. It’s also 15 percent thinner. The nano-SIM could find its way into the first mobile devices as early as next year.

G&D, a Munich-based company, produced the world’s first SIM card, and like Apple, it is seeking to shrink the form factor as far as it will go. In May Apple submitted a nano-SIM standard to the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute). G&D says the organization aims to standardize the nano-SIM by the end of the year, and an adapter will make the nano-SIM backwards-compatible with older devices.

Carriers seem amenable to the idea, so it could soon become that much easier to lose your SIM card. Happy hunting.