Free tool · TS 102 223
Terminal Profile explorer
When a SIM meets a device: Reset → ATR → Terminal Profile. Paste the profile the handset declared and read the bits a SIM Toolkit applet is allowed to assume.
Reading it
Reset → ATR → Terminal Profile
The modem resets the card. The SIM answers with an ATR (Answer To Reset). Then the terminal sends its Terminal Profile: what it claims it can do. That third step is what this tool parses. Why an applet reads it · Source on GitHub
What the bits are good for
- Applet design. Establish what proactive commands are safe to issue on this terminal before issuing them.
- Estate analysis. Collected across a card population, the profile distribution shows the real capability spread of the handset base — which is what decides whether a campaign or an applet feature is viable.
- Device classification. Modems, IoT modules and full handsets declare visibly different profiles, without relying on a declared identity.
- Fault diagnosis. An applet that misbehaves on one device class is often declaring an assumption the terminal never supported.
Questions
- What is a Terminal Profile?
- It is the capability list a handset or modem sends to the card at start-up, one bit per feature. It tells a SIM Toolkit application what the terminal claims it can do — display text, set up a call, send an SMS, report location, handle events — before the applet tries to use any of it.
- Why does an applet need it?
- An STK applet that issues a proactive command the terminal does not support gets an error rather than a user. Reading the profile first is the difference between an applet that behaves consistently across a handset base and one that works on the test device only.
- Can it identify the device?
- Not by model, and it is not an IMEI substitute. What it gives you is a capability fingerprint, which is often enough to separate classes of device — a full-featured handset from a bare modem, for example — without trusting anything the device declares about its identity.
- Is anything sent to a server?
- No. Parsing happens entirely in your browser. You can load this page, disconnect, and it still works.
- Why are the later bytes not expanded?
- The early octets carry the bits that matter for most applet work and are stable across releases. Later octets have grown across successive releases of TS 102 223, and the specification is the authority for them rather than a summary table.
Why this exists
Terminal Profile work is applet work
Reading the profile is the first thing a serious SIM Toolkit application does. Applet design, Terminal Profile handling and the OTA campaign that installs the applet are delivered as SIM engineering work.