The screen died on my wife’s iPhone, fine I have other spare iPhones aplenty she can switch to. But at some point she had accepted a prompt on the iPhone to switch to eSIM so we couldn’t just move a physical SIM over, you had to go through the “transfer eSIM” menus, which we couldn’t do because the screen was dead. The only option the carrier gave us was going to a physical store.
I’m never switching my main carrier to eSIM, what a PITA for absolutely no upside.
(they’re great for throwaway travel SIMs though)
Your carrier is the problem. I just login to my carrier’s app on the new phone and boom new esim.
What a sane person would want to install a shitty carrier app just for that? There should be a way to do it via their web ui in the least
That’s not a solution. There is no other carrier that has the coverage I need.
The problem with eSIM as a concept is that it puts too much responsibility on the carrier, and there are way too many shitty carriers out there, and with the cost of building a network and the limited amount of spectrum, mobile carriers are not a functioning free market.
That doesn’t mean that your carrier isn’t the problem.
Just like the person you replied to, I to can just log in to my carriers app on a new phone and get eSIM fixed there if my old phone is in an unusable state.
I don’t think a physical SIM is a guarantee that the phone number remains intact. The SIM is a token in the system that links a piece of hardware to a phone number and that link is maintained by the carrier. My phone spontaneously stopped being able to make calls and receive SMS. I went through the usual steps to rectify it but no dice. The carrier had to manually reconnect my number because it had become a victim of their periodic cull of disused numbers. Took quite a few calls over a period days to achieve this. ‘yes I have turned it off and on…’ ad nauseum.
The mvno that I use allows me to switch between T-Mobile, Verizon and att. I can do it online quickly. eSIMs are great.
All of the bad parts of esim are the fault of the carriers in my experience. I’m on a MVNO that created their own method of generating a new esim and moving the number via their website and app and it is painless for the most part.
They only let you do it 4 times a billing cycle though without talking to customer service. Which I suspect is the fault of the upstream carrier somehow.
I don’t use eSIM most of the time but when I travel and I don’t want roaming, damn it’s nice. I just go on Airalo or Saily, pick a destination, pay something like 20 bucks and get the data. I load it up on my phone, travel, land and voila, works right away while I’m still on my way through customs. No WiFi needed, no “quick” trip to a random shop or a large provider that’ll try to upsell whatever. I just land, connect, use my VPN and voila.
Also if your phone doesn’t support eSIM you can use https://jmp.chat/esim-adapter
Used Saily while on vacation. Loved it. Switched on thee same day (where I was going there is a 3 day wait on SIM activation I believe), and the connection was pretty good.
Absolutely love Airalo. Simple, painless and really good prices for their data plans (in Europe at least)
For me the main benefit of eSIMs is they allow multiple numbers on a single phone which is super handy.
Reading the article though, and I think the described problem is entirely the fault of the carrier and not the design of eSIMs. The carrier should have allowed alternative verification methods (email, online account, in-person at store) other than just sending a text to the disabled number.
It’s like everyone forgot what a pain in the ass it used to be when Verizon was cdma and didn’t use sim cards.
I’ve actually just had my eSIM decision backfire on me.
I switched months ago and hadn’t had an issue until I got ready to go to an airport last week. I figured I’d be able to switch off the eSIM and switch on Airplane Mode so my phone could essentially be an offline iPod, but when I landed and tried turning it back on it didn’t work. I then found people discussing the same issue on their phones (GrapheneOS + Pixel 7) and really regretted messing with it.
My carrier’s account login hilariously requires an SMS 2FA to the phone number that’s been yeeted from existence and since I’ve been staying with in-laws this Christmas I’m not willing to sit on hold for however many hours to recover my account till I get home.
I don’t blame the technology here but the implementation or the scenario
- the article makes it clear they understand it’s an uncommon scenario to have to switch number so many times
- wtf is the carrier doing requiring text 2fa to get a new eSIM? Thats just dumb
- Apparently android needs some work?
I have the opposite anecdote: eSIM has been more reliable than physical SIM. It just works on my iPhone. I like never having to goto a physical store. When i got my new phone this fall it transferred the eSIM so smoothly I barely noticed. It just worked.
Meanwhile from previous phones it always seemed about half the time I got a bad SIM and had to goto my providers physical store to get a new one. What a pain!
I think I’d be fine if I had to use eSIM (when I get a new phone every few years, I touch the SIM exactly once to move it to the new phone and then forget it even exists until the next phone).
I still like having a physical SIM though and haven’t converted it, even though I could. I like the idea that, if my phone dies, I can easily switch it into a new phone (even someone else’s). I don’t think I’ve ever done that, at least not since the days of dumb phones with limited/expensive plans, but I like to know I could. The only downside is that I have to enter the SIM PIN if I restart my phone.
what’s worse: none of my trusty backup phones support eSIM. so when my eSIM phone dies, i’m pretty much fucked until i buy a new one. :/
You can buy an eSim adapter online for ~$15 off sites such as AliExpress.
Such adapters are open source, and can support up to holding and swapping between 20 eSim cards, which makes phones with physical sim cards strictly dominate those without them.
i see, TIL.
on the other hand, this doesn’t solve the hassle when my primary phone dies and I’m unable to log in to my carrier’s self care to generate the new eSIM QR code.
unless… it’s somehow possible to do that beforehand – “preload” the new eSIM in the backup phone and activate it only when the main phone dies.
