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 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 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
Well, my carrier’s app isn’t super shitty, actually. No ads, no bloat, just account management.
But… You get a new phone, you install the app and login to get your esim, then uninstall. Not exactly a difficult problem.
How do you how shitty it is or not? Have you examined their code? Do you trust them blindly to let them run arbitrary code on your device? They are preferring to shove their app into our devices for many many reasons that non of them are for our benefit.
And uninstalling right after is closing the gate after the horses are long gone
Edit typos
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.
So I have Xfinity and your supposed to be able to do this via web. I was riding my dual sport deep in the woods and lost my phone. Tried my damnest to activate an s21+ I had in a drawer and it kept kicking it back. I go to store and they cannot activate it as it’s “not supported by their network”. They try to sell me a new phone. I’m frustrated and on like day 3 no phone so I said fuck it I’ll buy the cheapest Motorola on the shelf, but under one condition. I refused to buy the phone or continue my contract unless they would give me a physical sim (they tried pushing the esim HARD). I got home, took the sim out of my Motorola, popped it into my “unsupported phone” and it worked fucking fine. Esims are just another complication and way to get tech illiterate into the store. As long as I can I will never let go of my physical sim ever again.
Fucking duh.
Carriers fucking suck in every metric possible, you have to be insane to want to get their shitty support and shitty apps involved in anything more than the strictly necessaryAll 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
Absolutely love Airalo. Simple, painless and really good prices for their data plans (in Europe at least)
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.
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!
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.
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eSIM is really hard to change device in Taiwan due to government (NCC Department) “instructions” (that carrier sometimes misinterpreted it):
- Can not transfer by yourself, you need to go to carrier to transfer.
- 300 NTD (~10 USD) per move (can be waived under some cases)
- Might deny if you move too often recently.
And now (actually start few days ago), you need to show proof of purchase (or gift) of the target device. Carrier can deny if you fail to do so, and they’ll say they’re following government instructions.NCC said it should not be applied to eSIM as it’s one-time use only, but such rule already executed for few days and caused troubles for some people.
So physical SIM is more flexible here. (For now)
EDIT: NCC Department said the instructions are just suggestions, carrier should do KYC properly, but how all major ones do the same annoying stuff is beyond me…
EDIT 2: NCC Department clarified the new KYC instructions. (Chinese) 媒體揭露KYC指引相關報導恐有誤解，NCC今日邀集三大電信業者溝通說明，持續滾動因應實務情形
