The latest build of iPhone OS 2.0 (5a258f), now available to developers who have been accepted into Apple’s $99 iPhone Developer program, includes a feature dubbed “Import SIM Contacts” that presumably does as its name implies, extracting contacts stored on the SIM and copying them to the iPhone’s internal storage. Theoretically, this would allow SIM cards pulled from other phones to have contact information transferred to the iPhone permanent — assuming the cards came from the same carrier.

This task could previously be accomplished with some jailbreak applications like “SIMport,” though with mixed results.