Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 292 posts

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

#221

Post by mikepurvis »

mbirth wrote: post #210
mikepurvis wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that was the situation for me exactly, that basically if I lose or break my phone, I obviously have other devices that can access 1Password and my email, but I'm locked out of anything that requires SMS or an authenticator app to 2FA. Definitely made me feel that at the very least I should be getting a yubikey so that I can have authenticator codes across multiple devices.

Back when eSIM was relatively new, while upgrading to a newer iPhone, my wife’s eSIM didn’t get transferred over but still got deactivated on the old phone. And the T-Mobile Germany portal to download a new eSIM required authentication via SMS to that now deactivated number. That was fun. (As they didn’t have an alternative procedures to provision eSIMs in place, we had to go visit a store to get a new physical SIM f…

That's interesting that you can "convert" them. I kind of thought the whole point was there was some non-replicable internal secret that the carrier puts in there and that's why it had to be running on their hardware for so long, since they didn't trust your hardware to do that job.

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

#222

Post by viraptor »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #217
andrewinardeer wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did this yesterday on Android when arriving into Indonesia. While my wife waited in immigration, I used the Smart Gates. I downloaded an eSim via Airalo in just 90 seconds, providing me with enough data to send her a "good luck" message and let her know I'd see her at the hotel if she cleared immigration.

So you left your wife behind at the airport to fend for herself? Wow.

Turns out women can be independent and don't need 24/7 supervision. If you fly often, there are situations where it's easier to stick together and situation where it's better to go independently. Especially if one of you can take the kids the faster way.

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

#223

Post by p_ing »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #179
dredmorbius wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're so concerned about camera quality ... buy a dedicated camera. A 32 MP+ point-and-shoot starts at about $40, though goes up from there (to several thousand dollars for top models). As a bonus, it has an expected life far exceeding that of a smartphone.

Yes because I really want to carry around two devices including a crappy phone. The latest version of iOS supports iPhones from 2019 and Apple is releasing security updates farther back than that.

I picked up a dSLR because the iPhone 15 Pro (and now 16 Max) camera was/is so bad.

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

#224

Post by olyjohn »

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!

Seems kind of pointless to have an eSim if you have to go to the goddamn mall. At least my dodgy carrier will mail me a physical card next day.

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

#225

Post by olyjohn »

a456463 wrote: post #198
Rebelgecko wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I like that my current phone can do both, and I'll hold onto it as long as I can. Why can't we just have both options? Why do we need to keep removing features to save 2mm of space inside the phone? Oh right, it's not really so much to save space, it's to make an extra $0.01 per phone they sell.

RIP Headphone Jack RIP SD Card Slot RIP SIM Card Slot

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

#226

Post by shibapuppie »

Zak wrote: post #89
secondcoming wrote: post #79

My min spec requirements for a phone are 5G, physical dual SIM support, and a 3.5mm audio jack

I'm curious as to why 5G is on the requirements list. 3G made web browsing viable. 4G made streaming video viable. I haven't seen any new applications enabled by 5G on end-user smartphones.

Latency and throughput from a multi-thousand (literally, in the age of IOT and M2M) user network, massive MIMO and beamforming that LTE doesn't support, etc.

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

#227

Post by cromka »

ValentineC wrote: post #103
flowerthoughts wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But it's not, because some carriers explicitly don't allow eSIM transfers, or reuse of the initial QR code, or even the forced generation of a new eSIM without either customer support manually revoking the previous one, or deleting it yourself from the old device. I think the problem here is: there's no consistent regulation on how a replacement eSIM can be provisioned on a new device.

True. Made a mistake of removing eSIM, need to visit a brick and mortar location for them to issue a new one. Crazy stuff.

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

#228

Post by cromka »

viraptor wrote: post #222
ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you left your wife behind at the airport to fend for herself? Wow.

Turns out women can be independent and don't need 24/7 supervision. If you fly often, there are situations where it's easier to stick together and situation where it's better to go independently. Especially if one of you can take the kids the faster way.

Sure, but not when traveling together to a new country. Where women’s rights are… optional.

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

#229

Post by cromka »

Marsymars wrote: post #197
Rebelgecko wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Esimdb does list the endpoint location, I got burned so many times by not paying attention that now this is the first thing I check.

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

#230

Post by okr »

cromka wrote: post #228
viraptor wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out women can be independent and don't need 24/7 supervision. If you fly often, there are situations where it's easier to stick together and situation where it's better to go independently. Especially if one of you can take the kids the faster way.

Sure, but not when traveling together to a new country. Where women’s rights are… optional.

Well, if its related to the original poster, then how do you know it is their first time in indonesia? :)) Most likely, :)), it is Bali, and for sure, you can leave wifey alone.
Post reply on HN