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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

#91

Post by digitalPhonix »

Sargos wrote: post #87
abigail95 wrote: post #17

Totally different experience. Especially when traveling for work, being able to just show up in a country, download an app, and have a working local number within minutes is fantastic. I have 6 eSIMs on my iPhone, two are active. No stuffing about with swapping physical hardware just because I've temporarily relocated myself.

>being able to just show up in a country, download an app This seems like a "draw the rest of the owl" situation. If I arrive in a new country with no phone data (which is why I need a sim in the first place) then how do I download an app? Being able to walk up to a guy at the airport and within seconds slide in a SIM solves that data problem.

You can get the app and provision the esim in your home country, or use airport wifi?

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

#92

Post by AlexandrB »

spwa4 wrote: post #77
waweic wrote: post #16

Technologically, eSIMs are pretty nice. The electrical interface between the phone modem and the eSIM is the same as with a real SIM card, and the eSIM can run the same applications as a real SIM card, so at this point you can buy smartcards that can be swapped between devices and run eSIM applications. esim.me, 9esim and the "sysmocom eUICC for eSIM" (seems to be the most open/friendly at this point) are some of the…

The spec allows carriers to disallow removal of an eSIM, to allow for subsidized phone business models (in other words: this change was demanded by the carriers). So you should blame the carrier, not the manufacturer that simply implements the spec. It might be nice if manufacturers implement a HUUGE LOUD warning when enabling an eSIM that requires carrier authorization to remove though. Someone should put that in th…

It's manufacturers (cough Apple) removing the option to use more user-friendly SIMs that don't give the carriers this lever of control.

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

#93

Post by digitalPhonix »

kevincox wrote: post #84
digitalPhonix wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more complicated because it has to include logic about which network to connect to and how to tunnel back to the original provider (or partner) while roaming. So it’s more like: which network to connect to, keys, fallback network selection logic and tunnel logic to get authorisation on a non-home network

That's a good point. That is what I meant by "and config" in my first sentence. IIUC if the keypair was a certificate with a few other fields foreign networks could give you some basic communication with your provider and decided if you should be allowed to use this network and if/how to tunnel you back to the home network. But the main point is that it should just be data that the user can port around to different d…

It’s not just config though (unless you consider logic to be config). When you’re roaming, the sim applet has to generate a path back to its home network based on request/responses with the networks it can see and their partners (and their partners’ partners etc.)

It’s effectively multi-hop peer discovery and I don’t think you can encode the general case logic for it as just config.

Edit: as a (rather niche) example, FirstNet sims run a different applet to AT&T sims despite nominal running on the same network because they have special logic to use more networks if they are in an emergency area.

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

#94

Post by bxparks »

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.

Same. I buy Motorola phones because they have 3.5mm headphone jacks, real SIM cards, and microSD cards.

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

#95

Post by AlexandrB »

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

Bad for travel if you swap phones when you travel and have a plan that already provides data in other countries.

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

#96

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

anonymars wrote: post #33
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse quality, latency, potential to lose one (or both) earbuds, having to faff with batteries and charging and cases (and charging the charging case) when I can just... plug it in, bam, music in my ears. The knotting is a small price to pay for the improved quality and convenience in every other way. What's wrong with analogue audio?

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 experience common enough to be turned into a joke in the show.

I don't think there's much correlation between 3.5mm jack availability and using a phone's speaker output in public.

"Simple" as you've used it is open to interpretation. I personally held on to wired headsets longer than most of my friends and family. You know what I don't miss, now that I've preferred wireless for a few years? Untangling the cable. Accidentally catching the cable on something and having an earbud ripped out. Picking lint out of the jack. Staying conscious of the length and positioning of the cable in the context of my own movements.

Other than the BT connection process, which is only complicated if you're fortunate enough to own multiple devices and headphones/sets to connect to them, wireless can be a lot "simpler" in actual usage.

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

#97

Post by AlexandrB »

coderatlarge wrote: post #54
ashray wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google authenticator lets you move accounts easily using a QR code + phone camera.

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

#98

Post by ssl-3 »

pxx wrote: post #28
worldsavior wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? What's wrong with Bluetooth?

latency is absolute killer. then there's also the fact that splitting the output is difficult, pairing (especially multi-pairing) is finicky but the real response is "what's wrong with a usb-c to 3.5mm adapter"

> "what's wrong with a usb-c to 3.5mm adapter"

Hidden inside of a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter is an entire DAC with a power amplifier for driving headphones. They're complex little things.

And like any other bit of active, plug-in electronics: They're not all the same.

Some of them are wonderful (Apple's adapter sounds great and don't cost much), but and some of them are terrible.

And there's compatibility issues. The combination of an Apple headphone adapter on an Android produces a volume control bug that prevents a person from turning it up even to normal line level output voltages that normal audio equipment expects.

And there's functional issues: Want to play some lossless audio in the car or low-latency audio on headphones, and charge your phone at the same time? Good luck with that! (Yeah, there's adapters that have USB C inputs for power, too. They're a mess. And I once popped one as soon as my phone negotiated a 12VDC USB PD mode instead of the 5VDC that the adapter must have been made for. (And no, wireless charging isn't a solution. It's a bandaid for the deliberately-inflicted footgun incident that brought us here to begin with.))

And it's complicated: For a "simple" audio output, we've got USB 2 with a signalling rate of 480Mbps and a power supply, when all we really want is 20Hz-20KHz analog audio with left, right, ground, and (optionally) microphone.

And then: It often doesn't work. When I plug the USB C headphone adapter I have into my car and go for a drive, it disconnects sometimes: I observe no physical change, but the device resets, the music stops, and the phone rudely presents a prompt asking me which voice assistant I'd like to use (the answer is, of course, "None" -- it's always "None", but it asks anyway). And then I get to figure out how to make it play music again, which presents either a safety issue or a time-suck issue while I stop somewhere to futz with it. (Oh, right. Did I mention that the electronics in these adapters also include support for control buttons? I guess I glossed over that.)

Forcing the use of USB C headphone adapters and their complexities represents a very Rube Goldberg-esque solution to the simple problem of audio interconnection that had already been completely solved for as long as any of us reading this here have been alive.

Except: While Rube Goldberg contraptions are usually at least entertaining, this is just inelegant and disdainful.

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

#99

Post by flowerthoughts »

pxeboot wrote: post #78
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…

> 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.
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