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Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM

arstechnica.com

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Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM

#51

Post by ufmace »

I disagree with the overall point of the article.

I guess maybe they're worse for professional phone reviewers, who switch phones all the time, but I'm not one. In my experience, I think about two-thirds of the time I've gotten a new phone and wanted to switch to it, the SIM card size had changed, so I needed to get a new one anyways, which could only be done by mail order, so took a few more days. And about half of the time the same SIM card did physically fit, something else went wrong, like the APN names wrong, carrier didn't want to let it activate, RCS failed to work, all of which are virtually impossible to troubleshoot. IMO, the dream of universal SIM card portability has been dead for at least a decade, if not longer, and started long before eSIMs came out.

The eSIM on my current phone Just Worked as far as activating. I haven't tried switching to a new phone with it yet, so I guess I'll have to see how well it works when that happens.

Clearly there are cases when both are better. eSIMs are nice for being able to switch carriers immediately, get set up in a new country you're visiting smoothly, and recover the number from a physically lost phone. Physical SIMs are nice if you want to try out a different phone model, assuming they support the same SIM size and you can find the little tool. And also if your phone is seriously damaged but not physically lost. So not everyone necessarily loves them, but I don't think it's a case of the big bad big tech companies are enshittifying everything.

Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM

#52

Post by forty »

What I don't get is that if he wants a physical sim and microsd card, why does he purchase a phone without those? By doing so you are confirming the phone manufacturers choosing to remove the physical sim cards that they made the right choice.

Personally I chose to purchase phones with physical sim card and microsd slots.

Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM

#53

Post by Elfener »

backwardsponcho wrote: post #21
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #9

> 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.

TIL that the Xperia line is still alive and kicking. Sweet phones!

Unforunately they're "downscaling" their operations in Europe, so I guess they're having trouble competing with other phones: https://www.gsmarena.com/is_sony_pulling_its_smartphone_busi...

Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM

#54

Post by coderatlarge »

ashray wrote: post #10
ACCount37 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'll post an example for the parent just in case they are honestly confused about use cases. Here is one that happened to me. I had an eSIM on my iPhone. My iPhone broke (screen became somewhat unusable, and the phone was stuck in a restarting loop). It was an older model phone so I checked the repair cost and thought I'd rather buy a new one. Bought a new phone. Now, to transfer my eSIM from the old phone to the new…

this carrier approval to move esim problem is more generalized on modern “smartphones”. unless you opt in to cloud providers holding your data there is no easy way afaik to migrate your authenticator apps to another phone. and a host of other authentication/authorization data is tied to the device in an opaque way. don’t get me started on apple’s unpredictable model of sending 2fa to some other “trusted” device which means tou never know what tou need to bring with you.

Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM

#55

Post by parliament32 »

izacus wrote: post #43

My telco requires that I receive an SMS on my eSIM to move it to new phone so... yeah. It's amazing if the phone for whatever reason doesn't work and that then requires a long customer support call that might not work. The direct phone-to-phone transfter the devices offer is also blocked on the carrier. Another issue I had was (travel) eSIMs failing to provision because the carrier didn't whitelist my phone brand/mod…

> requires that I receive an SMS on my eSIM to move it to new phone

So there's no CS path for lost/stolen/destroyed phones? That doesn't make sense, I'm sure it's a very frequent occurrence.

Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM

#56

Post by jerlam »

forty wrote: post #52

What I don't get is that if he wants a physical sim and microsd card, why does he purchase a phone without those? By doing so you are confirming the phone manufacturers choosing to remove the physical sim cards that they made the right choice. Personally I chose to purchase phones with physical sim card and microsd slots.

The author works for a tech blog, and has to review new phones.

Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM

#57

Post by [deleted] »

forty wrote: post #52

What I don't get is that if he wants a physical sim and microsd card, why does he purchase a phone without those? By doing so you are confirming the phone manufacturers choosing to remove the physical sim cards that they made the right choice. Personally I chose to purchase phones with physical sim card and microsd slots.

[deleted]

Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM

#58

Post by x0x0 »

walidthedream wrote: post #32

I am quite annoyed by the people who don't see the issue with eSim because "they never had an issue" with it. It's like having one murder down your block and stating that you don't see the issue because nobody attempted to murder you so far. ESim are backed up as part of iCloud backups, had one dodgy carrier in Europe (Lyca) who never activated my eSim so I switched back to a new carrier but I had to get a transfer a…

I occasionally buy travel data, and 3 of probably 8-ish instances had me on the phone with support for at least 20 minutes (and once an hour) to make an esim work. Perhaps the problem is android. But I've never had that experience with a physical sim. :shrug:

Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM

#59

Post by Yizahi »

parliament32 wrote: post #55
izacus wrote: post #43

My telco requires that I receive an SMS on my eSIM to move it to new phone so... yeah. It's amazing if the phone for whatever reason doesn't work and that then requires a long customer support call that might not work. The direct phone-to-phone transfter the devices offer is also blocked on the carrier. Another issue I had was (travel) eSIMs failing to provision because the carrier didn't whitelist my phone brand/mod…

> requires that I receive an SMS on my eSIM to move it to new phone So there's no CS path for lost/stolen/destroyed phones? That doesn't make sense, I'm sure it's a very frequent occurrence.

When I lost my phone with a physical sim, I had to go to the operator' office and answer a quiz about which three different numbers I've called and received and when exactly did that happened. Apparently I've failed and they demanded that I would bring a phone box with IMEI sticker on it (yes, the one which all "influencers" tell us we don't need to keep) and then they restored me my sim card. I imagine the same process would be required for the lost esim.

Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM

#60

Post by hakfoo »

Elfener wrote: post #49
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #9

> 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.

Most phones that cost less than ~300 USD still have a headphone jack and microSD slot. I've never understood spending more than that on a phone anyway, you can't exactly use all that processing power on a phone operating system. Unfortunately some of the bad features from expensive phones have been moving down to the cheaper ones, like the destroyed screen that's missing its corners and has a hole for the camera in i…

I just bought a newer phone and was surprised to see even the ~$200 Samsungs were lacking a headphone jack. That threw them right out of contention, so I ended up getting a 2024-model Motorola (the 2025s were $50 more and reviews said they offered no meaningful performance boost).
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