11–20 of 292 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would be the use case for that?
What would be the use case of being able to transfer a SIM card from one device to another at will, you mean? What kind of question is that.
I learned from this experience that maybe eSIM is a good idea and I switched immediately upon hearing this person's story. Did I miss something?
Some random person I met dropped their phone in a river, just after arriving in a foreign country. He bought a new phone, but getting back to his phone number was not easy or possible for him (while in a foreign country). If he had an eSIM it would have quickly solved the problem for him. Instead he had to wait until he got home to pop in a new SIM card. I learned from this experience that maybe eSIM is a good idea a…
So changing phones can be done without any customer support or web forms or calls to service provider etc.
Actually, every phone I ever had eventually got replaced this way, I am still using the original sim card from years ago.
I had zero issue upgrading my iPhone from one eSIM device to the next. In fact, I even forgot that I had to do anything, it just did it.
SIM cards have always been secure elements that the provider trusts. With an eSIM, you can already own that secure element and the provider can provision it with their application. You can even have the applications from multiple providers on the same physical secure element.
The major advantage is now that the expensive and time-consuming part of provisioning a new mobile service (sending out a physical SIM card) can be replaced with a few standardized API calls. This is cheaper (which makes the extra cost some providers charge for an eSIM look quite silly) and a lot quicker, which enables new business models for short-lived cell connection services.
A world where all cell service providers offered eSIMs would be slightly nicer. But manufacturers removing the option of swapping the secure element is very annoying at the same time.
I have 6 eSIMs on my iPhone, two are active. No stuffing about with swapping physical hardware just because I've temporarily relocated myself.
Title should read "I had to switch to eSim [...]" well yeah, of course esim is shitty, as is everything imposed by big tech monopolies to their users without consulting or caring about what they really want. Did you think they were here for your wellbeing and not the money ?
eSIM is specifically designed to deny user freedom. They are impossible to transfer from device to device by design, for one. Every single "transfer" has to be approved and signed off by a cellular provider in an online mode. They can deny it at will, or just neglect implementing it, and you can do nothing at all. It's pretty clear that when GSMA talks of "security", they mean "security of the business models". What…
> We gave up the headphone jack. We gave up the microSD card. Some people might have given it up. I personally own a Sony Xperia phone, and intend to buy another Xperia next year, which will almost certainly still have both. In fact Sony is the one manufacturer that returned to a headphone jack after having removed it for a while. It might be more expensive than the competition, but this is my voting with my wallet.