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Apple said to be preparing for iPhones without SIM card slot in 2022

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Re: Apple said to be preparing for iPhones without SIM card slot in 2022

#161

Post by jacob019 »

jwr wrote: post #66

I am very worried about this. While I love (and sometimes use) eSIMs, the physical SIM has a huge advantage in that it gives me freedom. It's the revolution that GSM brought: just take your SIM and move it to a different phone. No permission required. Arguably we've become slaves to ecosystems of either Apple or Google at this point, as pretty much nobody uses a phone as "just a phone", you need to have an account wi…

You don't need a google account to use an android phone, there are fantastic open source apps on f-droid, and you can even access the play store without a google account using aurora store. If you have root you can fully degoogle (PITA but gratifying), even without it's a big privacy upgrade to just disable the google apps and log out of google.

Re: Apple said to be preparing for iPhones without SIM card slot in 2022

#162

Post by cute_boi »

aboringusername wrote: post #130
toomanybeersies wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a reasonable assumption that if you own an iPhone, you have access to the internet.

Owning a device that can connect to the internet doesn't mean it can at that moment . We need to stop assuming humans can connect to an endpoint over a network 24/7 365. There are times when you may not be able to, for all sorts of reasons, make a HTTP request at a given moment. Networks fall over, riots happen, dictators just shut it off. Dangerous precedent to set.

Yea and many authoritarian government can simply block websites and if it happens to be apple asn? I think there should be fallback otherwise its going to be debacle.

Re: Apple said to be preparing for iPhones without SIM card slot in 2022

#163

Post by zinekeller »

Nextgrid wrote: post #155
mrtksn wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those SIM engineers should build other unhackable systems too! Anyway, it's not only social engineering but even if it was it simply means that it's useless for security. Just yesterday, a friend of mine got a fringe hacking incident or a bug. We are not still sure if it was hack but somehow the SIM card in her phone identified as another number from another carrier. Who knows what happened, her SIM wasn't swapped it…

> Those SIM engineers should build other unhackable systems too! They did - see EMV payment cards for example. > it simply means that it's useless for security. It's not - SIMs close one attack vector where credentials can't be stolen by malware/bruteforced. Current SIM-swap attacks don't scale well; imagine how worse the problem would be if any Android malware could silently take over your number even after you've w…

> They did - see EMV payment cards for example.

To drive the point home - this is a SIM card: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Thuraya_... (although you can remove the mini-sim in this revision, originally they were exactly like modern EMV cards).

Again, if you're skeptical of the government itself and allowing them to tap your communication lines, then I understand your hesitation here (although 2FA won't protect you against warrants), but outside of that it's actually simple incompetence of the carriers - SIM swap fraud attacks are common in North America but surprisingly fewer outside despite having the exact porting capabilities, probably because there's a waiting period (usually 48 hours) enforced where the current holder of the SIM card gets warnings about the impeding deactivation in other countries. Annoying if you lost your SIM card, sure, but is much better than having an unauthorised person getting a shiny new SIM card without warning.

Re: Apple said to be preparing for iPhones without SIM card slot in 2022

#164

Post by headmelted »

jwr wrote: post #66

I am very worried about this. While I love (and sometimes use) eSIMs, the physical SIM has a huge advantage in that it gives me freedom. It's the revolution that GSM brought: just take your SIM and move it to a different phone. No permission required. Arguably we've become slaves to ecosystems of either Apple or Google at this point, as pretty much nobody uses a phone as "just a phone", you need to have an account wi…

I'm actually more worried about a different problem - I don't care about removing the physical SIM slot but I'm really concerned about halving the amount of numbers someone can have on a single device.

Phone numbers are an utterly terrible system. Having to give a single number out to everyone is a stupid beyond belief design that we just tolerate year after year. That SIM-based 2FA exists makes this even worse.

Apple has already shone a light on this and basically shown their customers that having a single primary-key-for-contact circulate to everyone is insane - which is why they now have the private relay for e-mail. I have my own reservations about the relay, but we really should move to single-number-per-contact and make that the norm.

And yes, I realise this wouldn't be supported by the current phone networks, which is why Apple/Google need to be the people to introduce a vendor-agnostic system as a layer above the current phone networks (akin to a private relay for phones).

This is not unprecedented - they've collaborated on a lot of standards before (matter is a recent example that comes to mind).

Re: Apple said to be preparing for iPhones without SIM card slot in 2022

#165

Post by [deleted] »

mrtksn wrote: post #107
jwr wrote: post #66

I am very worried about this. While I love (and sometimes use) eSIMs, the physical SIM has a huge advantage in that it gives me freedom. It's the revolution that GSM brought: just take your SIM and move it to a different phone. No permission required. Arguably we've become slaves to ecosystems of either Apple or Google at this point, as pretty much nobody uses a phone as "just a phone", you need to have an account wi…

I share your concerns but at the same time I think, why would we even need a SIM? Isn't it simply a device for accessing account on someones system? We don't have SIMs for ADSL or Fiber internet? We don't have SIMs for Reddit ot Twitter? Why would we have SIMs accessing GSM networks? There's no fundamental reason why we simply don't sign in into these networks like signing in to HN. Surely, it adds a layer of anonymi…

[deleted]

Re: Apple said to be preparing for iPhones without SIM card slot in 2022

#166

Post by izacus »

CraigRood wrote: post #160
izacus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Switzerland eSIMs are actually massively worse - you can't swap them around on most operators without calling (!) their support line to manually release and regenerate the eSIM token. Meaning that swapping between phones now requires calling, possibly expensive, support lines and you better hope your phone issue didn't happen during holidays. And that you have a working backup phone. And you're not in a forei…

If a sim is digital, couldn't Apple put the eSim into your 'wallet' for example? I appreciate that it's not currently designed like that, but given we are just talking bits, just because it's not a fully baked system yet, it can't be?

How is an Apple proprietary wallet an improvement over a tiny chip that works in every phone brand?

You're looking for a solution created for a problem that doesn't need to exist.

Re: Apple said to be preparing for iPhones without SIM card slot in 2022

#167

Post by causality0 »

First they came for the bootloaders, but I did not speak out because I did not desire to block ads.

Then they came for the memory card slots, but I did not speak out, for I streamed all my media.

Then they came for the headphone jacks, and I did not speak out, for I did not play games on my phone.

Then they came for the SIM cards, and there was no one left to speak out.

Re: Apple said to be preparing for iPhones without SIM card slot in 2022

#168

Post by teeray »

arthur_sav wrote: post #140
jwr wrote: post #66

I am very worried about this. While I love (and sometimes use) eSIMs, the physical SIM has a huge advantage in that it gives me freedom. It's the revolution that GSM brought: just take your SIM and move it to a different phone. No permission required. Arguably we've become slaves to ecosystems of either Apple or Google at this point, as pretty much nobody uses a phone as "just a phone", you need to have an account wi…

Realistically when was the last time you switched your SIM card? I only change it when i change phones.

Travel. It’s dramatically cheaper to get a local SIM. Some even come with extra benefits, like a pass for use on local mass transit.

Re: Apple said to be preparing for iPhones without SIM card slot in 2022

#169

Post by rchaud »

jdavis703 wrote: post #103
jwr wrote: post #66

I am very worried about this. While I love (and sometimes use) eSIMs, the physical SIM has a huge advantage in that it gives me freedom. It's the revolution that GSM brought: just take your SIM and move it to a different phone. No permission required. Arguably we've become slaves to ecosystems of either Apple or Google at this point, as pretty much nobody uses a phone as "just a phone", you need to have an account wi…

There’s still IMEI locks. A lot of prepaid carriers in Europe won’t or can’t sell you a SIM card for a US phone (one man claimed it was due to carriers trying to reduce phone theft). Note, my phone was fully paid for, and therefor unlocked.

With my Samsung Android phone I had to call my carrier's customer support and obtain the unlock code from them. So it wasn't unlocked automatically after it was fully paid for. When I traveled to Europe I just bought a local carrier SIM from a vending machine at the airport.

Re: Apple said to be preparing for iPhones without SIM card slot in 2022

#170

Post by dijonman2 »

PebblesHD wrote: post #158

I (before COVID…) travel somewhat regularly and have a collection of SIM cards from my most frequently travelled destinations making just arriving and going about my life a nice straightforward process. I haven’t seen anything to indicate eSIMs have anything close to this experience and I feel like losing the option to do so for some perceived modernness is a bit disappointing.

I’m still traveling and find swappable sims to be a fantastic advantage. I have yet to find a country that offers eSims for prepaid. European phones commonly have dual sim slots..

Just more reasons to avoid smartphones.

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