Got a new cell phone. How do you manage your SIM card?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So after three years or so using a Nokia TDMA phone, I switched to a new Sony Ericsson GSM phone, which contains a SIM card. This is the second SIM card-based phone I’ve had, but it’s been a while, so I’m still trying to get used to it. My basic question is, how do you manage phone numbers between your SIM card and your phone’s internal memory? Here’s a run-down of the differences:

SIM Card:
[ul]
[li]Stores 250 numbers[/li][li]Allows fast dialing from numbers in the first 10 slots[/li][li]Can be searched by index number (type position on SIM card followed by #)[/li][li]Can be transferred to another phone[/li][/ul]

Phone Memory
[ul]
[li]Stores ~500 numbers[/li][li]Is harder to search (can only search by first letter of contact name)[/li][li]Can store email addresses[/li][li]Can be synchronized with my computer’s address book[/li][/ul]

My old Nokia only had one number storage system, so this was fairly easy. But now I have to decide where I want to store numbers. Should I store them in my phone’s memory and ignore the SIM card (except for the 10 speed-dial numbers?) Should I store them exclusively on the SIM card, foregoing the additional information the phone can store, and the ability to keep it sync’ed up with my computer?

I’m currently leaning towards keeping my phone’s memory and SIM card as closely synchronized as possible, with numbers that aren’t that important (customer service, etc) going in the part of the phone memory that won’t sync with the SIM card. This seems to me to be the best solution, but it’s a pain to ensure that the SIM card and phone are sync’ed.

Does anyone else have these issues with storing phone numbers? How do you deal with it?

(P.S. if it helps, I have a SE T637)

2

I have a SE T637 as well!
But I’m not sure if I’m of help to help you decide what to do. I imported my phone numbers from my old phone (also a SonyE) using the IR port, which placed it into the Phone Memory, then I synched with the SIM card to copy the numbers to the SIM card, then I had to reassign the speed dial numbers (assigning my home phone number as speed dial #1, my honey’s cell as #2, etc until #10).

Other than that, I’m not really sure what else there is to the joys of SIM card usage. I think whenever I add a new contact it gets stored to the Phone Memory, not the SIM, and if I re-synch to the SIM I might have to reassign speed dial #s again, but I’m ok with that. Though if there ever comes a day when I want to boot out my honey’s cell from the #2 speed dial to (Og forbid) make room for a brand new honey then I’d have no idea how to do that.

BTW, there’s a Forum at esato.com for SonyEricsson users that I’ve found quite helpful.

3

Sweet! I love the phone so far, except for figuring out how to deal with the contacts. Your solution sounds like what I’ll wind up doing. I guess I just won’t bother with the SIM card too much except for setting the speed dial numbers.