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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

#421

Post by smileybarry »

Isthatablackgsd wrote: post #340
nojito wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should because of how easy it is to brick phones with crappy USB cables/chargers these days.

IMO, this is on manufacturers. If they stop messing around with the USB standard and stop the hybrid approach with USB and propriety crap along with it, then we would have this issue minimized as possible. Nintendo did with their USB-C propriety thing and it blew up on their face. Because they changed the internal (which is not in compliance with USB standard) and ended up multiple consumers have their Switch bricked…

One of the reasons USB-PD has active power negotiation is because of all the terrible $1-to-make chargers that flood phone stores and degrade your battery capacity over time. The kind that either: (A) charges your battery in pulses, (B) tries to force-send more current than the phone can handle for "faster charging", or (C) improperly protects the connected device from power grid spikes.

USB-PD then makes power negotiation a protocol rather than a dance of resistors, forces the device to have a dedicated charging circuit (regulate current), and allows for a device to say "please send less power now" or shut off charging if it overheats.

Manufacturers change the ports and occasionally you have a Nintendo that wants to reuse a port with their own mini-spec, but most of the blame lies with those outright malicious chargers.

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

#422

Post by sschueller »

mschuster91 wrote: post #145
hulitu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finaly OTA. What can go wrong when everybody can program your SIM remotely ?

> What can go wrong when everybody can program your SIM remotely? That's bollocks. An eSIM module is exactly the same chip as in a normal SIM card - right down to the electric specifications and communication protocols, so you can hook up a provisioned eSIM module to a phone or a SIM card to a device using an eSIM chip and it will Just Work (tm). The only difference is that the eSIM module is allowing the baseband ch…

Yes exactly, thank you.

A lot of phones already support eSIM. Apple will claim they invented it and some will copy the no Sim slot but there are still carriers that don't support eSIM so I don't see this taking off like removing the headphone jack.

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

#423

Post by ubercow13 »

aorth wrote: post #382
sandworm101 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> For instance, if I'm traveling I can just buy a SIM card at a kiosk and pop it in That is exactly what apple doesn't want you to do. They don't want users making deals with local ISPs for service. They want in on that transaction. Virtual SIMs, controlled by phone manufacturers, will allow them to exercise a degree of control over wandering users. If you are a local ISP, you better be part of the program if you wa…

I don't understand. I can get an eSIM from my telecom provider and scan it with a QR Code to activate it in Android. I've done this with Telenor in Europe and Zain in the Middle East. It works great. I can even switch between them on the fly! How does the phone manufacturer have anything to do with it? My only wish is to support multiple eSIMs, as now I only have one physical SIM slot and one eSIM.

Apples eSIM is not the same as that open eSIM standard. eSIMs that work with iPhones have to be supplied via a direct agreement with Apple as far as I understand.

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

#424

Post by avianlyric »

sandworm101 wrote: post #393
aorth wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. I can get an eSIM from my telecom provider and scan it with a QR Code to activate it in Android. I've done this with Telenor in Europe and Zain in the Middle East. It works great. I can even switch between them on the fly! How does the phone manufacturer have anything to do with it? My only wish is to support multiple eSIMs, as now I only have one physical SIM slot and one eSIM.

You can get one today. Tomorrow, after a "security update", apple could just decide that it doesnt like certain ISPs and reject thier virtual sims. Rejecting hardware sims is much more difficult and is likely a violation in many jurisdictions.

They pretty much used to do that physical SIMs. For the longest time Apple wouldn’t accept network profiles many MVNO in the U.K. which mean the phone would completely ignore the config on SIM and stuff like internet wouldn’t work.

You could still get everything working by manually configuring the phone, and carriers like GiffGaff had support articles explaining how, but it was a total pain in the arse and stuff would occasionally break in subtle ways.

Additionally the eSIM is separate physical chip within the phone attached to baseband radio. Once configured with a profile, the host OS has as much access as it does to a normal SIM, I.e. not much. The entire standard is kinda a hack, which basically boils down to “what if we embedded a normal SIM card chip in the phone, and let the phone flash a new carrier profile every now and then?”. Remember these SIMs are fully fledged computers, like their normal removable counterparts, that can ignore host OS commands, and issue instructions directly to the baseband processor without the host OS knowledge.

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

#426

Post by ubercow13 »

mrcode007 wrote: post #416
NullPrefix wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>working on my own eSIM implementation Please tell me you are serious about this. Tried looking into this earlier and found out that eSIM is extra proprietary, which means no hobby devices, like those 3G/4G/GSM connectivity Arduino modules.

I don’t know where you’re pulling these claims out from but here are the specs: https://www.gsma.com/esim/esim-specification/ In addition you can get ST micro data sheets for full blown electrical and mechanical data sheets for free

Apple doesn’t use this eSIM spec, they have their own proprietary one.

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

#427

Post by smileybarry »

vmception wrote: post #192

The current and last several iphones have been dual sim, one physical and one eSim. I'm wondering if they keep an eSIM-only model as having two eSIMs. The dual sim implementation is very weird, like its clear they only imagine that someone is popping in a different SIM for travel, as opposed to just having two numbers they use all the time like I do. Even most of the support is catered to travellers with a temporary…

And if you buy a Chinese market iPhone, you can have dual physical SIMs!

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209086

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

#428

Post by ubercow13 »

rosndo wrote: post #324
sandworm101 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> For instance, if I'm traveling I can just buy a SIM card at a kiosk and pop it in That is exactly what apple doesn't want you to do. They don't want users making deals with local ISPs for service. They want in on that transaction. Virtual SIMs, controlled by phone manufacturers, will allow them to exercise a degree of control over wandering users. If you are a local ISP, you better be part of the program if you wa…

> If you are a local ISP, you better be part of the program if you want to sell your services to apple's devices eSIMs aren’t some apple run “program” you have to take part in.

Yes they are: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/109874

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

#429

Post by avianlyric »

ubercow13 wrote: post #423
aorth wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. I can get an eSIM from my telecom provider and scan it with a QR Code to activate it in Android. I've done this with Telenor in Europe and Zain in the Middle East. It works great. I can even switch between them on the fly! How does the phone manufacturer have anything to do with it? My only wish is to support multiple eSIMs, as now I only have one physical SIM slot and one eSIM.

Apples eSIM is not the same as that open eSIM standard. eSIMs that work with iPhones have to be supplied via a direct agreement with Apple as far as I understand.

What are you basing that assertion on? All the eSIMs I’ve ever used have come direct from the carrier, and in some cases those carriers have very small presence and aren’t know for being at the front of Apple queue for services.

Then there’s the dozens of companies in the App Store like https://www.dentwireless.com/ who all provide eSIMs for international travel. I find it hard to believe they all have agreements with Apple, it normally costs far to much to deal with Apple for bottom dollar companies to make any money.

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

#430

Post by avianlyric »

wodenokoto wrote: post #254
sandworm101 wrote: post #245

No headphone jack. No SD slot. Soon no charging port (wireless). Now no sim car. How soon before there are no plugs whatsoever? Once everything is wireless then apple, through software, can finally take absolute control over how and what is connected to their phones. Want to communicate with or even charge an iPhone? You better be running approved and licensed software. Then the phone can be physically locked like a…

It’s not like that kind of control isn’t possible with the ports installed today. The Bluetooth can ask what devices it’s connected to, the SIM card reader can read which SIM card is inserted and the lightning port can ask what’s at the other end of the cable.

Famously Apple used to prevent iPhones from being charged with “non-lienced” lighting cables.

They seemed to have slackened of since then, but for a while there was a 50/50 odds of a cheap 3rd party cable causing iOS to throw up an error message and refuse to charge.

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