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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

#191

Post by anonymars »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #96
anonymars wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I read recently which I think is interesting food for thought: Did ditching the headphone jack increase the number of people in public who just play their music / talk on speakerphone, because now the alternative is much more complex and expensive compared to simple 3.5mm wired headset? Before proclaiming that Bluetooth is in fact simple and cheap, consider how your situation may differ from that of the per…

My own memory and current experience on this point is that it used to be far more common than it is today. I remembered there was a South Park episode where Cartman was being a stereotypical self-absorbed person walking around with their phone on speaker. I looked it up, and that episode came out in 2013. At the time, most phones on the market had a 3.5mm jack. Yet people not using headphones/headsets was an experien…

I appreciate the counterpoint. The Cartman example is a good one. Also it's probably difficult to factor out the seemingly broken post-Covid social norms

One point I'll make is simplicity comes in many forms. Wired headphones can be dirt-cheap, they don't run out of battery, and I don't think they're as prone to getting lost

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

#193

Post by a456463 »

flowerthoughts wrote: post #99
pxeboot wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ESim are backed up as part of iCloud backups You can’t actually backup an eSIM. If you could, they would be easy to clone. I know Apple uses that terminology, but that isn’t what is happening in the background. Same with transferring an eSIM. A new one is issued each time.

Isn't that just semantics? It's tied to the same phone number, and I assume the generation of a new eSIM invalidates any old one (as happens with my carrier.) It's essentially backed up, even if it's just a (carrier, number) pair. If the Lyca account is trashed, the rest is just an implementation detail.

NO. IT IS NOT. If it is a backup, then you should be able to restore it verbatim without involving a middle man 3rd party

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

#194

Post by a456463 »

thiht wrote: post #168
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…

> 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 Yeah over exaggerations are probably not helping the cause. I’ll stick with eSim

Proving the OP's point. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean somebody else doesn't

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

#195

Post by a456463 »

expedition32 wrote: post #171
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…

So don't do business with dodgy telcos and stick to the big ones? And as a bonus the established players even have their own stores in every mall!

Where when I go to cancel stuff, I am told, I would need to call for support to India for that.

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

#196

Post by bartilg »

ufmace wrote: post #51

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…

Most of the issues you described, such as carrier registration issues, are just as likely with eSim as they were with physical SIM cards. The difference is that you can't swap out the eSim physically, which was a pretty reliable way of getting around misconfiguration. This isn't really an indictment of eSim as a technology, but the reality is that Telco's are incredibly slow and inefficient, and by removing a workaround for their incompetence, it can make the problem worse.

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

#197

Post by Marsymars »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #72
maipen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the major advantage for consumers is being able to securely ensure their cards never breaks and device restarts make their sim always available, no need for pin. Even if someone steals your phone they can’t disable your SIM card unless you don’t have a pincode. I’ve had a SIM card constantly fail and require me to put my pin to unlock it multiple times in the same day. If someone wanted to call me they would…

eSIM is also great for travel. There's a lot of competition on price and it's easy to check esimdb to find the cheapest carrier that meets your needs for a given trip. Download the eSIM in advance and you're good to go as soon as your plane lands

Unfortunately there's not much competition on providing low-latency data connections, so most travel esim providers don't advertise where their connections route through. It's not great when you're travelling and all your connections to local sites get routed through and geo-located to a different continent.

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

#198

Post by a456463 »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #72
maipen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the major advantage for consumers is being able to securely ensure their cards never breaks and device restarts make their sim always available, no need for pin. Even if someone steals your phone they can’t disable your SIM card unless you don’t have a pincode. I’ve had a SIM card constantly fail and require me to put my pin to unlock it multiple times in the same day. If someone wanted to call me they would…

eSIM is also great for travel. There's a lot of competition on price and it's easy to check esimdb to find the cheapest carrier that meets your needs for a given trip. Download the eSIM in advance and you're good to go as soon as your plane lands

What are you even talking about? eSIM for travel requires to be connected to internet and in the country when provisioning. With a SIM you just pop it in. It is however nice to be able to buy an eSIM without having to wait in line at the airport, but you get what you pay for. The airport SIM is better than the eSIM from generic provider, depending on your use case, like making calls in some countries

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

#199

Post by a456463 »

Youden wrote: post #144

For what it's worth, this is entirely a carrier problem and has little to do with the technology. Various people and the article have outlined some bad experiences but to give a contrasting example: Digital Republic, a local MVNO here in Switzerland, allows you to replace your eSIM by simply logging into their web portal with TOTP-based 2FA and clicking a button. No SMS, no contact with support, no reidentification.…

Apple force removed SIMs.

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

#200

Post by Marsymars »

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…

Budget phones are going to have different missing features for different people - for me the problem are that budget phones are all too large, full of software bloat, and receive poor software support.
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