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 authorization from Lyca. Guess what , since I was no longer a customer I was sent to hell by their customer support. Best joke that it was impossible to remove on my iPhone. It was part of the backup, a reset attempt did not solve it so I had to drive 200km to an Apple store to get a hard reset and the Apple genius advising me against restoring my data "otherwise it would retrieve the faulty ESIM back in your phone" !!!
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.
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.
Is the fact that you don't actually own a game you bought on steam, or a movie you bought on itunes (eg. if either of them went under, or you got banned) also "just semantics" and "implementation detail"?
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:
Yeah, eSIMs are built for high trust locations. I just use Google Fi and they’re pretty decent about it all. This whole “switching a carrier” business is kind of pointless busywork I don’t do any more.
The first time I heard about eSIM, I assumed it was a scheme to make switching phones and providers hard again, but I had no idea the situation was this dire.
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.
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 options. Most of them offer an app for management, but there are also standardized interfaces.
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.
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 the Android bug tracker.
> 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.
Gosh, that sounds pretty nuts if some $5 throwaway travel eSIM refused to be removed after a few days of use.
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 not be able to because I didn’t know it was off.
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
> 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.
By a _substantial_ margin, because the best bang-for-your-buck strategy with smartphones for a long time has been to buy used or refurbished popular flagships for the last one or two years. As much as I like what Xperias are doing with a headphone jack and an SD card slot, the used market for them is almost non-existent. Even if you somehow manage to get a good deal, it will be even more difficult to find a good case and accessories like a reliable magnetic wallet, the market is just isn't there.
I myself have settled on using a Pixel with a headphone jack DAC dongle and an external hard drive.
Do note that unfortunately any future devices by Sony are just phones by other manufacturers that are just Sony branded. Sony stopped their first party device manufacturing, so your mileage of the hardware might be wildly different in the future.
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 it for some reason.
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).
I get it, but the quality of headphones with cords has gotten so bad that the male jacks wouldn't last more than a few months. My son has gone through an untold number of corded headphones because his school iPad is too locked down to use bluetooth ones.
If you're so concerned about camera quality ... buy a dedicated camera.
A 32 MP+ point-and-shoot starts at about $40, though goes up from there (to several thousand dollars for top models). As a bonus, it has an expected life far exceeding that of a smartphone.
I've rocked pixels for a good while now, but the Xperia lineup has always been something I've really debated.
My largest concern is camera quality: obviously it is Sony, but if you wouldn't mind, could you elaborate on their camera 'stack' a bit (esp. in relation to pixel phones if you have first hand experience...).
I own an Xperia 5iii (so about four-and-a-half years old now), and I also own a Pixel 10.
The Pixel 10's camera is unequivocally better. The JPEG outputs are processed, 'Instagram-ready'. The output from the Sony camera even in JPEG mode is considerably more muted, neutral, and has less contrast. Note that this is not representative of newer Xperias' camera quality; I've heard they have improved considerably. I'm not too concerned because I hardly use my phone to take photos; I have a Nikon mirrorless for that.
Except 4G/5G does not work properly in Australia. :(
It is some carrier configuration bullshit or something like that. There may be a way to make it work, but it did not look guaranteed after reading dozens of pages on forums on the topic. I ended up retuning the Sony I tried whilst I could still get a full refund.
Phones used to be exciting. Now it is just frustrating because all the good features are gone. Headphone jack, sd card, fingerprint sensor on back, unlockable bootloader.
The way its bandwidth is too low to broadcast and receive at high quality at the same time meaning everyone calling into the zoom call with their fancy airpods sound like they're calling from the other side of the moon while my 5$ plug-in earbuds sound like a damn recording studio in comparison.
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.
The risk of losing one (or both) earbud is a real one. My ears don't tend to keep snug grip on the earbuds so they tend to get loose after I walk a little. With earbuds, this might just be my own singular piece but, there is also the chance that only one of the two would connect to your phone.
On the other hand, the cables get tangled together. I can't walk around with them because the cable gets stuck in the swing of my arms. Connecting them to the phone after a call had already started was a piece of cake though. With bluetooth, I never have my earbuds on when I actually need them and it's too much of a pain to take them out of my bag and connect them.
Whenever it is time to replace my current earbuds, I am gonna go for a neckband instead. It has basically the best of both, imo (I am not that sensitive to audio quality mostly) and the downsides aren't large enough (I'll think of the weight as a neck workout).
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 perpetrators
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.
LE Audio should fix the quality and latency problems. The latency is significantly lower and the bandwidth is twice Classic Bluetooth. There are new default codecs that are better, and there should be enough bandwidth for lossless. The other nice thing is enough bandwidth for bidirectional streams instead of low quality audio when use microphone.
The current problem is that LE Audio implementations are new with lots of headphones having them as beta.
Shouldn't it be the same thing? You either have the DAC on your phone convert the digital music file to an analog signal and send it over the aux cord to the speakers in the headphones, or have the digital file sent over Bluetooth and converted by a DAC in the headphones, right? It's not like you're plugging your headphones into a record player.
> have the digital file sent over Bluetooth and converted by a DAC in the headphones, right
This is not how Bluetooth wireless audio works. PCM audio is re-encoded on-device into any one of a few Bluetooth-capable codecs that is then streamed to the client device. This is a primary cause of latency.
One of my iPhone SE's died an untimely death because of failure of the lightning port, so I'm strongly sympathetic.
I also am a hardcore 3.5mm headphone user. Wireless headphones are garbage.
I did get my mind changed on USB-C DACs by way of inductive charging. Using an USB-C DAC and still being able to inductively charge seems at least somewaht reasonable to me.
On the newest round of phones for my wife and me I've tried to make sure we're inductively charging >90% of the time.
I think it just adds friction (for measure, I feel audio jacks are pretty good)
So the real response is, "what's wrong with most companies to not provide the 3.5mm itself?"
It's good that xperia's doing this though. I think I still have phones which have 3.5mm itself so there isn't much to worry about. I think there are a lot of new phones which do offer it, I think both of my parents phones have support for 3.5mm by itself.
In my experience the connection is much easier to accidentally break through movement (e.g., walking) with a USB-C adapter than straight-through 3.5mm.
I really miss having a 3.5mm output on my phone...
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.
If you’re in the low percent running cabled headphones, you probably are also running a headphone amp if necessary or not which uses more cell phone power.
Now you need a usb->usb + 3.5mm to keep it charged up or an add on battery.
It seems nobody recalls how bad it was back in the day. CDMA phones (Mostly carriers like Alltel, Verizon and sprint.) did not have sim cards until 4g/LTE. Before that to migrate phones you had to get customer support involved.
AT&T and other GSM based carriers had sim cards on their phones and it was so much nicer.
Nobody has been able to convince me that esim is not just going back in time 15+ years. We moved to sim cards for a reason.
My experience with eSIM has so far been quite negative. I’ve upgraded phone twice since being forced to use one by my carrier and it’s been a pain both times. The initial setup of scanning a QR code was nice, why is every subsequent SIM change a 10 step dance in an app (or worse a support call) rather than one phone showing the QR and the other scanning it?
Once this phone needs updating, I’ll be swapping carrier to one that has regular SIM cards.
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.
"No stuffing about with swapping physical hardware just because I've temporarily relocated myself."
That's exactly the use case for which the carriers offer roaming plans. The bonus is that you (as in your phone number) get to remain connected and accessible by your contacts, as no other phone number is involved at any point. One should not need to change the SIM unless is about one's phone change.
>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.
As the other comment said it's either airport wifi, prep beforehand, roaming data (if absolutely necessary), or (last resort) you go to a physical phone store usually in an airport and they will set it up for you.
I can download T-Mobile eSIM from Australia - Pay them $15, know what my +1 USA number will be, all before leaving the country. You just can't do this with classical sims.
I've found this as well; totally painless to add a destination data plan just before jumping on the plane. And even switching my local plan was pretty straightforward when a promo offer came in from a competitor.
That said, I'm sympathetic to the stance of the article's author. I recently had a scare with my iPhone 13's battery not being able to charge (it recovered itself eventually) and I realized it was going to be a hassle to switch to another phone if I couldn't get the old one powered on enough to run the esim transfer, much less the whole OS migration.
Note that if you just have a broken phone you don't need a new SIM, you just pop it out and pop it in the new phone. So 1min for a physical SIM vs 0-3 hours to create a new eSIM profile. I know which one will be faster. :)
The way telecommunications works needs a complete overhaul. IMHO it needs something similar to a domain name system where you register (and own) your phone number and control which provider your eSIM is pointing to (like DNS). But so many industries are rooted in control it would be nearly impossible to make any meaningful change.
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/model. The QR code was spent, my money gone and customer support nowhere to be found.
I've never had such issues with pSIMs in decade before. It's ridiculous.
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.
What country was this in? Quizzes and phone boxes sound.. odd. I've never heard of anything more complicated than rolling into your telco's nearest kiosk with your ID and them just provisioning a new one for you.
Lost phone was in Ukraine. We have both prepaid sim-cards and contract sim-cards. Contract would work like you've describes. Prepaid is more complicated.
Had a nightmare getting a holiday only e-sim in Australia
Couldn’t set up easily because no wifi
then I just simply could not cancel the damn thing… It required being in Australia, and like the article needed a SMS code and the support was only contactable Australian working hours… who wanted the SMS code again.
So once back in Blighty there was no way… had to cancel the credit card to stop payments
So you are at the mercy of the competence of the provider
I love e-sims for travel and easy switching, but I also switched my primary number back from an e-sim to a physical sim after I realised what a pain it is to use it in another phone (my provider requires a fresh QR code sent by post to my registered address in order to do the switch - huge pain when my phone went in for repairs so I had to switch twice within two weeks, switching to a secondary phone, and then back to normal phone once it was repaired).
One thing I realized about eSIM is your device needs internet access (either WiFi or another SIM) to get the new eSIM working. While that is usually not a problem, I imagine some people run into issues.
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 does that mean for the users? It means they're getting fucked.
esim.me, 9esim and "sysmocom eUICC for eSIM" are eSIMs in the SIM card form factor that you can load the SIM profiles onto and use them in any device with a SIM card slot (and of course transfer between devices). In my opinion, that's the best of both worlds.
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 phone, I needed the carrier to approve. But I was away from my home country and on roaming. So I tried to call them. They needed me to use a verification PIN they would send via SMS on the old phone, to verify the transfer to the new one. Impossible since the old phone is unusable.
Back in the day, I'd have just taken out the sim from the old phone and moved it to the new one. Easy peasy.
The only other option in this case now was to visit one of their stores thousands of miles away. Eventually just ended up doing that when I returned weeks later but during this time I could not access several services due to lack of access to my number plus 2 factor codes being sent there.
Moving a sim from phone to phone was seamless. Now the carrier needs to approve this swap. Even with two working phones sometimes it's a hassle and there will be delays while carriers decide to approve the move. There is a new feature that allows you to transfer eSIMs easily between phones but carriers seem to be holding onto their power in this regard and not every carrier will let their sims move so easily. This possibly requires regulators to step in and solve the issue - make it up to the user to move eSIMs. I would count on the EU to make this easier at some point.
On the plus side, eSIMs are nice to be able to signup and provision them through an app. Helps with travel and roaming. So there's that too.
“I’m across an ocean from any of my network’s stores and need to activate a different phone on my regular network and number right now, on the side of the road, without WiFi or a computer or a different, working phone already on my account” is to me the most obvious case where eSIM is weak. And having been in that situation before eSIMs, it was really easy - remove SIM, put in backup phone, use. Not so much now.
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.
> unless you opt in to cloud providers holding your data there is no easy way afaik to migrate your authenticator apps to another phone.
You could self-host Bitwarden/Vaultwarden, or something like that.
> 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.
I think they send 2FA to all supported devices on one's Apple account?
If what you say is true, why would Apple ever force a switch to eSIM? I’m now less likely to buy a new iPhone because I don’t want to deal with this eSIM fiasco. It’s to their detriment. If their goal is to sell more phones, they would want to eliminate all friction to switch to a new phone. So what you are saying doesn’t add up.
I recently bought a device through my carrier (secondary device, secondary carrier; luckily not my primary device) to replace my existing one.
Old device was still physical SIM new device only eSIM. I paid for it in a store, but it had to be shipped because they don’t have it in stock, even though it was in stock on their website (including after I left). It arrived late, the day before I was set to travel. The rep said I could just turn it on and follow the prompts and it would auto activated. It didn’t. Luckily it didn’t deactivate the old SIM. At least it didn’t until I called tech support and got their help. They said hang up, restart both devices, and the new one should work. Of course it didn’t work and both devices were now unusable. Had to go into a store and have them sort it out there.
On the flip side, being able to have a primary I never change and a secondary that I swap out for international travel has proven to be extremely valuable to me. So you take the bad with the good.
The funny thing is, I used eSIM on a Pixel 3, since it was the easiest way to activate on Sprint. Now, no big carrier will use a Pixel 3's eSIM.
But then on Sprint, they tried to copy the CDMA activation system on LTE whereas everyone else just used SIM cards directly. Sprint was very progressive on eSIM even if they were slow to VoLTE.
My Pixel 3 moved to a physical SIM due to switching to T-Mobile 3 months before the merger, and I've mostly used physical SIMs before the Pixel 10 Pro outside of international travel. I avoid MVNOs as my primary service because of the specter of eSIM-only phones, and that was pre-Pixel 10.
And yes, if my Pixel 10 Pro had a physical SIM card slot I'd use it.
I use eSIM a lot during travels. My last phone doesn't came with eSIM support and I bought an eSIM adapter. It's nice because you switch it to another phone like a normal chip.
My friend's eSIM experience with Tello was pretty good. Their kid got their first phone with an eSIM, and it was stolen a few months later. They were able to transfer the number to a new phone from the Tello website.
Verizon (and their MVNOs) eSIMs are the worst. Registration is tied to IMEI and enforced via the eSIM's EID. You can't use one if those "physical" eSIMs because if you give Verizon a donor IMEI during registration, the EID of the eSIM doesn't match and activation is rejected.
I was using Straight Talk prior to the Verizon acquisition and I've been holding-on to my one remaining pre-acquisition SIM like a rent controlled apartment. I've moved that SIM through a number of phones since I got it back in 2013. I absolutely hate that, moving forward, I have to get Verizon's permission to switch phones.
The only eSIM issues I’ve had have been in the US. Some carriers use single-use eSIM QR-codes. So you need a new one for every swap. In Europe and Canada I’ve always been able to reuse the eSIM QR I got initially. Have I just been lucky or has anyone had problems outside the US?
My colleague had a very hard time moving her European esim (Play) from one iphone to another, because by then she moved from the city where she registered it initially. She had to come back in person and even then it only worked after a second visit, because she had to bring basically all her documents to verify her identity to the operator.
Meanwhile I just swapped boring old plastic card in a minute, while staying at home. I will stay away from esim for a while, maybe processes will mature in a few more years. At least until dual-sim phones are available.
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 and I switched immediately upon hearing this person's story. Did I miss something?
I should have clarified that he dropped the phone in the river AND he did not attempt to get it back from the river, thus the SIM card is considered lost as well :)
> If he had an eSIM it would have quickly solved the problem for him.
Except many carriers have you jump through hoops to activate an eSIM on a new device. Here in the comments one person has to receive a new QR over snail mail.
FWIW, I dropped my phone in the Chicago River. Crossing a drawbridge, I pulled out my phone to check the time. It slipped and fell - right into the gap in the middle. I peered through the gap to see if was there, and was able to see the splash it made.
Neither SIM nor eSIM would have helped.
In that case, I waited to get home (I didn't live in Illinois) and got a new SIM by mail.
I tried using a work eSIM as a secondary SIM to my personal physical SIM on my iPhone in 2022 or 2023. I was taken aback by how poor the experience was, both on the iOS level and the eSIM technology level. At that time I reckoned it's probably like 10 years too early and I don't think I will be giving an eSIM (primary or secondary) a shot sooner than in the 2030s.
My wife and I recently switched from T-Mobile to Noble Mobile and it was painless with an eSim. I didn’t have to try to track down my sim slot key, I didn’t have to go to the cell store or wait for a sim card in the mail, I just followed their onboarding instructions and made the new eSim my default. It took about 5 minutes.
As a counter-anecdote, I've had far more trouble over the years swapping physical SIMs than eSIMs. You'd think that going between two phones that use the same size card would just work, but in practice that isn't (wasn't?) always the case.
Never saw an issue moving a SIM from one phone to another (living in Asia, Europe and the US). However last week I got a Airalo E-Sim and apparently it's not possible to transfer it to my new phone.
The problem with SIMs is that they aren't just credentials and config. They are full applications. Imagine if you needed to run a custom program to connect to every wifi network. It is bonkers. It is absurdly complex and insecure.
A "SIM" should just be a keypair. The subscriber use it to access the network.
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 devices as they see fit and that they can trust not to do malicious things.
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.
eSIMs are perfect for travel. The only downside is that many phones still allow only one or two active eSIMs. Would be great to have all of them active - be able to receive SMS and calls at least.
I transferred my number from Mint Mobile to Visible 8 months ago or so. I tried to at least. They initiated the number transfer before accepting payment from me. Their iOS app was bugged and their web app had no way to pay. I engaged support and they escalated to engineering. Still had no phone number or cell access for 3 days, with an upcoming trip planned. Ended up getting them to transfer it to US Mobile which has been fine. Probably works a lot of the time but it’s a shitshow.
On the other hand, international roaming has become so much cheaper now that swapping SIMs when you travel is no longer necessary. The legacy carriers still try to fuck you over, but MVNOs and dedicated travel SIMs offer amazing rates: I can get a year of roaming across 120 countries for around US$15.
I'm surprised there's no mention yet of carrier activation fees. Isn't that half the point for carrier's? They can bilk you for another $36 for the privilege of issuing a new eSim for your new phone.
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.
I just abandoned AT&T (finally) and transitioned to US Mobile (on VZW) in about 10 minutes thanks to eSIM. New iPhone's don't even work with a regular sim card any longer.
Seems like most of the complaints in here re: eSIM are around how a specific carrier deals with it and less about the technology itself?
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.
I upgraded from an iPhone 11 to a 17 and was dreading having to sign in to my carrier’s web site to get an eSIM QR code. I was surprised to see that the phone migration process took care of that - at the end I had the new phone with an eSIM and my usual number, and the old phone with a deactivated SIM card. Super convenient.
> I was surprised to see that the phone migration process took care of that - at the end I had the new phone with an eSIM and my usual number, and the old phone with a deactivated SIM card.
It's nice to know that you're on a telco that supports "eSIM Quick Transfer", but that's still a feature that telcos need to explicitly support.
Spending money to upgrade from model X-1 to the latest X is the well trodden happy path that big tech will actually make work. Author is describing less common workflows which do not receive the same attention and so become a mixed bag when the financial incentive is not so clear for the manufactures.
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 authorization from Lyca. Guess what , since I was no longer a customer I was sent to hell by their customer support. Best joke that it was impossible to remove on my iPhone. It was part of the backup, a reset attempt did not solve it so I had to drive 200km to an Apple store to get a hard reset and the Apple genius advising me against restoring my data "otherwise it would retrieve the faulty ESIM back in your phone" !!!
> 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.
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.
>the rest is just an implementation detail.
Is the fact that you don't actually own a game you bought on steam, or a movie you bought on itunes (eg. if either of them went under, or you got banned) also "just semantics" and "implementation detail"?
Eh, it's more like: a dog pooped on a lawn down my block, but it hasn't happened to me yet, so I'm not too worked up about it.
Given that this is a flag that the carrier has to explicitly set on the eSIM, you should blame the carriers that do this.
To be completely honest, if a hard reset removes the profile it should get reinstalled, it is actually not okay that a hard reset works.
Why is it like this? This is the way subsidized phones without physical sim work.
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:
I have used the AirAlo app to buy data-only eSIMs for so many international trips. It works well but I have only tried it on iPhones.
Yeah, eSIMs are built for high trust locations. I just use Google Fi and they’re pretty decent about it all. This whole “switching a carrier” business is kind of pointless busywork I don’t do any more.
The first time I heard about eSIM, I assumed it was a scheme to make switching phones and providers hard again, but I had no idea the situation was this dire.
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.
In theory, all carriers could do this.
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 options. Most of them offer an app for management, but there are also standardized interfaces.
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.
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 the Android bug tracker.
> 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.
Gosh, that sounds pretty nuts if some $5 throwaway travel eSIM refused to be removed after a few days of use.
Did "blaming the carrier" ever work for you when they were abusing you as a customer?
It's manufacturers (cough Apple) removing the option to use more user-friendly SIMs that don't give the carriers this lever of control.
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 not be able to because I didn’t know it was off.
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.
> 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.
>It might be more expensive than the competition
By a _substantial_ margin, because the best bang-for-your-buck strategy with smartphones for a long time has been to buy used or refurbished popular flagships for the last one or two years. As much as I like what Xperias are doing with a headphone jack and an SD card slot, the used market for them is almost non-existent. Even if you somehow manage to get a good deal, it will be even more difficult to find a good case and accessories like a reliable magnetic wallet, the market is just isn't there.
I myself have settled on using a Pixel with a headphone jack DAC dongle and an external hard drive.
Those magnetic wallets seem like a terrible idea.
Do note that unfortunately any future devices by Sony are just phones by other manufacturers that are just Sony branded. Sony stopped their first party device manufacturing, so your mileage of the hardware might be wildly different in the future.
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 it for some reason.
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).
I get it, but the quality of headphones with cords has gotten so bad that the male jacks wouldn't last more than a few months. My son has gone through an untold number of corded headphones because his school iPad is too locked down to use bluetooth ones.
Are the cameras as good?
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.
Same. I buy Motorola phones because they have 3.5mm headphone jacks, real SIM cards, and microSD cards.
I've rocked pixels for a good while now, but the Xperia lineup has always been something I've really debated.
My largest concern is camera quality: obviously it is Sony, but if you wouldn't mind, could you elaborate on their camera 'stack' a bit (esp. in relation to pixel phones if you have first hand experience...).
I own an Xperia 5iii (so about four-and-a-half years old now), and I also own a Pixel 10.
The Pixel 10's camera is unequivocally better. The JPEG outputs are processed, 'Instagram-ready'. The output from the Sony camera even in JPEG mode is considerably more muted, neutral, and has less contrast. Note that this is not representative of newer Xperias' camera quality; I've heard they have improved considerably. I'm not too concerned because I hardly use my phone to take photos; I have a Nikon mirrorless for that.
Except 4G/5G does not work properly in Australia. :(
It is some carrier configuration bullshit or something like that. There may be a way to make it work, but it did not look guaranteed after reading dozens of pages on forums on the topic. I ended up retuning the Sony I tried whilst I could still get a full refund.
Phones used to be exciting. Now it is just frustrating because all the good features are gone. Headphone jack, sd card, fingerprint sensor on back, unlockable bootloader.
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...
They've always had uncompetitive pricing. I'm not surprised sales are low.
what is it that keeps you loyal to xperia?
But why? What's wrong with Bluetooth?
The way its bandwidth is too low to broadcast and receive at high quality at the same time meaning everyone calling into the zoom call with their fancy airpods sound like they're calling from the other side of the moon while my 5$ plug-in earbuds sound like a damn recording studio in comparison.
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?
My 2c.
The risk of losing one (or both) earbud is a real one. My ears don't tend to keep snug grip on the earbuds so they tend to get loose after I walk a little. With earbuds, this might just be my own singular piece but, there is also the chance that only one of the two would connect to your phone.
On the other hand, the cables get tangled together. I can't walk around with them because the cable gets stuck in the swing of my arms. Connecting them to the phone after a call had already started was a piece of cake though. With bluetooth, I never have my earbuds on when I actually need them and it's too much of a pain to take them out of my bag and connect them.
Whenever it is time to replace my current earbuds, I am gonna go for a neckband instead. It has basically the best of both, imo (I am not that sensitive to audio quality mostly) and the downsides aren't large enough (I'll think of the weight as a neck workout).
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 perpetrators
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.
LE Audio should fix the quality and latency problems. The latency is significantly lower and the bandwidth is twice Classic Bluetooth. There are new default codecs that are better, and there should be enough bandwidth for lossless. The other nice thing is enough bandwidth for bidirectional streams instead of low quality audio when use microphone.
The current problem is that LE Audio implementations are new with lots of headphones having them as beta.
Shouldn't it be the same thing? You either have the DAC on your phone convert the digital music file to an analog signal and send it over the aux cord to the speakers in the headphones, or have the digital file sent over Bluetooth and converted by a DAC in the headphones, right? It's not like you're plugging your headphones into a record player.
> have the digital file sent over Bluetooth and converted by a DAC in the headphones, right
This is not how Bluetooth wireless audio works. PCM audio is re-encoded on-device into any one of a few Bluetooth-capable codecs that is then streamed to the client device. This is a primary cause of latency.
Interesting, thanks
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"
Adapter causes unnecessary wear on the charging port.
Recently had a phone go bad when the thunderbolt port stopped working due to the same port being used repeatedly for charging and for audio adapter.
So when I updated the phone I grudgingly decided to get a BT earbud.
One of my iPhone SE's died an untimely death because of failure of the lightning port, so I'm strongly sympathetic.
I also am a hardcore 3.5mm headphone user. Wireless headphones are garbage.
I did get my mind changed on USB-C DACs by way of inductive charging. Using an USB-C DAC and still being able to inductively charge seems at least somewaht reasonable to me.
On the newest round of phones for my wife and me I've tried to make sure we're inductively charging >90% of the time.
> what's wrong with a usb-c to 3.5mm adapter
I think it just adds friction (for measure, I feel audio jacks are pretty good)
So the real response is, "what's wrong with most companies to not provide the 3.5mm itself?"
It's good that xperia's doing this though. I think I still have phones which have 3.5mm itself so there isn't much to worry about. I think there are a lot of new phones which do offer it, I think both of my parents phones have support for 3.5mm by itself.
> "what's wrong with a usb-c to 3.5mm adapter"
I want to charge and listen to music at the same time.
You can get adapters that support charging. An example is linked below.
Note: I have not tried this. It is simply offered as an example to show they are available.
https://www.amazon.com/Headphone-Charger-Charging-Earphones-...
Doesn't any such cable/adapter violate the USB-C spec? https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/10xj74r/why_d...
> what's wrong with a usb-c to 3.5mm adapter
In my experience the connection is much easier to accidentally break through movement (e.g., walking) with a USB-C adapter than straight-through 3.5mm.
I really miss having a 3.5mm output on my phone...
> but the real response is "what's wrong with a usb-c to 3.5mm adapter"
Easy. You can't charge and listen to your headphones at the same time.
> "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.
If you’re in the low percent running cabled headphones, you probably are also running a headphone amp if necessary or not which uses more cell phone power.
Now you need a usb->usb + 3.5mm to keep it charged up or an add on battery.
What wrong with a lossy signal?
In my experience, wired earphones/headphones are better for latency in rythm games.
It seems nobody recalls how bad it was back in the day. CDMA phones (Mostly carriers like Alltel, Verizon and sprint.) did not have sim cards until 4g/LTE. Before that to migrate phones you had to get customer support involved.
AT&T and other GSM based carriers had sim cards on their phones and it was so much nicer.
Nobody has been able to convince me that esim is not just going back in time 15+ years. We moved to sim cards for a reason.
I agree, although two counterpoints. One is that carriers would just lock the phones in the US anyway. Second is that eSIM is easier while traveling.
My experience with eSIM has so far been quite negative. I’ve upgraded phone twice since being forced to use one by my carrier and it’s been a pain both times. The initial setup of scanning a QR code was nice, why is every subsequent SIM change a 10 step dance in an app (or worse a support call) rather than one phone showing the QR and the other scanning it?
Once this phone needs updating, I’ll be swapping carrier to one that has regular SIM cards.
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.
"No stuffing about with swapping physical hardware just because I've temporarily relocated myself."
That's exactly the use case for which the carriers offer roaming plans. The bonus is that you (as in your phone number) get to remain connected and accessible by your contacts, as no other phone number is involved at any point. One should not need to change the SIM unless is about one's phone change.
>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.
As the other comment said it's either airport wifi, prep beforehand, roaming data (if absolutely necessary), or (last resort) you go to a physical phone store usually in an airport and they will set it up for you.
I can download T-Mobile eSIM from Australia - Pay them $15, know what my +1 USA number will be, all before leaving the country. You just can't do this with classical sims.
You can get the app and provision the esim in your home country, or use airport wifi?
I've found this as well; totally painless to add a destination data plan just before jumping on the plane. And even switching my local plan was pretty straightforward when a promo offer came in from a competitor.
That said, I'm sympathetic to the stance of the article's author. I recently had a scare with my iPhone 13's battery not being able to charge (it recovered itself eventually) and I realized it was going to be a hassle to switch to another phone if I couldn't get the old one powered on enough to run the esim transfer, much less the whole OS migration.
I guess I'm lucky enough to only have had providers where it would take 0-3 hours to create a new eSIM profile. Compared to 3-7 days for a new SIM.
Note that if you just have a broken phone you don't need a new SIM, you just pop it out and pop it in the new phone. So 1min for a physical SIM vs 0-3 hours to create a new eSIM profile. I know which one will be faster. :)
The way telecommunications works needs a complete overhaul. IMHO it needs something similar to a domain name system where you register (and own) your phone number and control which provider your eSIM is pointing to (like DNS). But so many industries are rooted in control it would be nearly impossible to make any meaningful change.
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/model. The QR code was spent, my money gone and customer support nowhere to be found.
I've never had such issues with pSIMs in decade before. It's ridiculous.
> 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.
What country was this in? Quizzes and phone boxes sound.. odd. I've never heard of anything more complicated than rolling into your telco's nearest kiosk with your ID and them just provisioning a new one for you.
Lost phone was in Ukraine. We have both prepaid sim-cards and contract sim-cards. Contract would work like you've describes. Prepaid is more complicated.
It's "call us" which is interesting to do without a working SIM. :)
(The carrier is a M NO so they don't really have physical customer support either.)
Had a nightmare getting a holiday only e-sim in Australia
Couldn’t set up easily because no wifi
then I just simply could not cancel the damn thing… It required being in Australia, and like the article needed a SMS code and the support was only contactable Australian working hours… who wanted the SMS code again.
So once back in Blighty there was no way… had to cancel the credit card to stop payments
So you are at the mercy of the competence of the provider
What did you need to cancel though? Most travel eSIMs are pre-paid and time limited, not subscriptions.
(Not that that doesn't suck; I'm just surprised at having a subscription in the first place.)
Might have been a local provider eSIM perhaps -- rather than one of the 'Gloabal' eSIM poviders.
I love e-sims for travel and easy switching, but I also switched my primary number back from an e-sim to a physical sim after I realised what a pain it is to use it in another phone (my provider requires a fresh QR code sent by post to my registered address in order to do the switch - huge pain when my phone went in for repairs so I had to switch twice within two weeks, switching to a secondary phone, and then back to normal phone once it was repaired).
One thing I realized about eSIM is your device needs internet access (either WiFi or another SIM) to get the new eSIM working. While that is usually not a problem, I imagine some people run into issues.
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 does that mean for the users? It means they're getting fucked.
esim.me, 9esim and "sysmocom eUICC for eSIM" are eSIMs in the SIM card form factor that you can load the SIM profiles onto and use them in any device with a SIM card slot (and of course transfer between devices). In my opinion, that's the best of both worlds.
It's good, but they're expensive as fuck for what they are.
The best option would be a software-only eSIM with full transfer support, IMO. But we don't have that, because GSMA says we can't have nice things.
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'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 phone, I needed the carrier to approve. But I was away from my home country and on roaming. So I tried to call them. They needed me to use a verification PIN they would send via SMS on the old phone, to verify the transfer to the new one. Impossible since the old phone is unusable.
Back in the day, I'd have just taken out the sim from the old phone and moved it to the new one. Easy peasy.
The only other option in this case now was to visit one of their stores thousands of miles away. Eventually just ended up doing that when I returned weeks later but during this time I could not access several services due to lack of access to my number plus 2 factor codes being sent there.
Moving a sim from phone to phone was seamless. Now the carrier needs to approve this swap. Even with two working phones sometimes it's a hassle and there will be delays while carriers decide to approve the move. There is a new feature that allows you to transfer eSIMs easily between phones but carriers seem to be holding onto their power in this regard and not every carrier will let their sims move so easily. This possibly requires regulators to step in and solve the issue - make it up to the user to move eSIMs. I would count on the EU to make this easier at some point.
On the plus side, eSIMs are nice to be able to signup and provision them through an app. Helps with travel and roaming. So there's that too.
“I’m across an ocean from any of my network’s stores and need to activate a different phone on my regular network and number right now, on the side of the road, without WiFi or a computer or a different, working phone already on my account” is to me the most obvious case where eSIM is weak. And having been in that situation before eSIMs, it was really easy - remove SIM, put in backup phone, use. Not so much now.
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.
> unless you opt in to cloud providers holding your data there is no easy way afaik to migrate your authenticator apps to another phone.
You could self-host Bitwarden/Vaultwarden, or something like that.
> 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.
I think they send 2FA to all supported devices on one's Apple account?
Google authenticator lets you move accounts easily using a QR code + phone camera.
Probably one most people never ask, though should be obvious to those on this forum.
If what you say is true, why would Apple ever force a switch to eSIM? I’m now less likely to buy a new iPhone because I don’t want to deal with this eSIM fiasco. It’s to their detriment. If their goal is to sell more phones, they would want to eliminate all friction to switch to a new phone. So what you are saying doesn’t add up.
I recently bought a device through my carrier (secondary device, secondary carrier; luckily not my primary device) to replace my existing one. Old device was still physical SIM new device only eSIM. I paid for it in a store, but it had to be shipped because they don’t have it in stock, even though it was in stock on their website (including after I left). It arrived late, the day before I was set to travel. The rep said I could just turn it on and follow the prompts and it would auto activated. It didn’t. Luckily it didn’t deactivate the old SIM. At least it didn’t until I called tech support and got their help. They said hang up, restart both devices, and the new one should work. Of course it didn’t work and both devices were now unusable. Had to go into a store and have them sort it out there.
On the flip side, being able to have a primary I never change and a secondary that I swap out for international travel has proven to be extremely valuable to me. So you take the bad with the good.
in some countries (ex china) local carriers won’t provision esim for nonlocally made phones. including iPhone not specifically made for their market.
The funny thing is, I used eSIM on a Pixel 3, since it was the easiest way to activate on Sprint. Now, no big carrier will use a Pixel 3's eSIM.
But then on Sprint, they tried to copy the CDMA activation system on LTE whereas everyone else just used SIM cards directly. Sprint was very progressive on eSIM even if they were slow to VoLTE.
My Pixel 3 moved to a physical SIM due to switching to T-Mobile 3 months before the merger, and I've mostly used physical SIMs before the Pixel 10 Pro outside of international travel. I avoid MVNOs as my primary service because of the specter of eSIM-only phones, and that was pre-Pixel 10.
And yes, if my Pixel 10 Pro had a physical SIM card slot I'd use it.
I use eSIM a lot during travels. My last phone doesn't came with eSIM support and I bought an eSIM adapter. It's nice because you switch it to another phone like a normal chip.
My friend's eSIM experience with Tello was pretty good. Their kid got their first phone with an eSIM, and it was stolen a few months later. They were able to transfer the number to a new phone from the Tello website.
Verizon (and their MVNOs) eSIMs are the worst. Registration is tied to IMEI and enforced via the eSIM's EID. You can't use one if those "physical" eSIMs because if you give Verizon a donor IMEI during registration, the EID of the eSIM doesn't match and activation is rejected.
I was using Straight Talk prior to the Verizon acquisition and I've been holding-on to my one remaining pre-acquisition SIM like a rent controlled apartment. I've moved that SIM through a number of phones since I got it back in 2013. I absolutely hate that, moving forward, I have to get Verizon's permission to switch phones.
The only eSIM issues I’ve had have been in the US. Some carriers use single-use eSIM QR-codes. So you need a new one for every swap. In Europe and Canada I’ve always been able to reuse the eSIM QR I got initially. Have I just been lucky or has anyone had problems outside the US?
My colleague had a very hard time moving her European esim (Play) from one iphone to another, because by then she moved from the city where she registered it initially. She had to come back in person and even then it only worked after a second visit, because she had to bring basically all her documents to verify her identity to the operator.
Meanwhile I just swapped boring old plastic card in a minute, while staying at home. I will stay away from esim for a while, maybe processes will mature in a few more years. At least until dual-sim phones are available.
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 and I switched immediately upon hearing this person's story. Did I miss something?
If you damage your phone, as opposed to completely loosing it, the sim card is almost never damaged.
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 should have clarified that he dropped the phone in the river AND he did not attempt to get it back from the river, thus the SIM card is considered lost as well :)
> If he had an eSIM it would have quickly solved the problem for him.
Except many carriers have you jump through hoops to activate an eSIM on a new device. Here in the comments one person has to receive a new QR over snail mail.
Indeed I became aware thanks to this thread!
For me it was 10 mins through my provider's app (and I was also doing it internationally)
> For me it was 10 mins through my provider's app (and I was also doing it internationally)
What verification processes did you have to go through?
If it's simple username/password, that could mean that your number could be trivially hijacked by a determined enough attacker.
A colleague of mine was in a similar situation except he had an eSIM. It didn’t help because AT&T would not provision him a new eSIM internationally.
As another anecdotal data point, I was able to switch phones internationally using a physical SIM by just putting it in the new phone.
FWIW, I dropped my phone in the Chicago River. Crossing a drawbridge, I pulled out my phone to check the time. It slipped and fell - right into the gap in the middle. I peered through the gap to see if was there, and was able to see the splash it made.
Neither SIM nor eSIM would have helped.
In that case, I waited to get home (I didn't live in Illinois) and got a new SIM by mail.
I tried using a work eSIM as a secondary SIM to my personal physical SIM on my iPhone in 2022 or 2023. I was taken aback by how poor the experience was, both on the iOS level and the eSIM technology level. At that time I reckoned it's probably like 10 years too early and I don't think I will be giving an eSIM (primary or secondary) a shot sooner than in the 2030s.
Fwiw you can buy phones with both physical SIM + eSim. Personally I wouldn't go without that in a new phone as it gives you the most flexibility.
My wife and I recently switched from T-Mobile to Noble Mobile and it was painless with an eSim. I didn’t have to try to track down my sim slot key, I didn’t have to go to the cell store or wait for a sim card in the mail, I just followed their onboarding instructions and made the new eSim my default. It took about 5 minutes.
> I didn’t have to try to track down my sim slot key,
This made me laugh.
Why? Because you can use pretty much any slim pointy object you can find?
Most small paperclips work, I think.
I was even offered paperclips to keep at airport SIM counters before.
Yeah, pretty much.
As a counter-anecdote, I've had far more trouble over the years swapping physical SIMs than eSIMs. You'd think that going between two phones that use the same size card would just work, but in practice that isn't (wasn't?) always the case.
Never saw an issue moving a SIM from one phone to another (living in Asia, Europe and the US). However last week I got a Airalo E-Sim and apparently it's not possible to transfer it to my new phone.
The problem with SIMs is that they aren't just credentials and config. They are full applications. Imagine if you needed to run a custom program to connect to every wifi network. It is bonkers. It is absurdly complex and insecure.
A "SIM" should just be a keypair. The subscriber use it to access the network.
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 devices as they see fit and that they can trust not to do malicious things.
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.
eSIMs are perfect for travel. The only downside is that many phones still allow only one or two active eSIMs. Would be great to have all of them active - be able to receive SMS and calls at least.
I bought my parents their first smartphones back in 2023. I got unlocked iPhone SE3's w/ physical SIMs. I was quite pleased.
My father recently had a problem w/ the phone showing SIM-related error messages. He called the carrier and they "helpfully" switched him to an eSIM.
The best laid plans... >sigh<
There must be some axiom about how corporations will eliminate every form of useful removable media, making customers more beholden and enslaved.
I transferred my number from Mint Mobile to Visible 8 months ago or so. I tried to at least. They initiated the number transfer before accepting payment from me. Their iOS app was bugged and their web app had no way to pay. I engaged support and they escalated to engineering. Still had no phone number or cell access for 3 days, with an upcoming trip planned. Ended up getting them to transfer it to US Mobile which has been fine. Probably works a lot of the time but it’s a shitshow.
On the upside, your phone can be thinner now and the down time gives you, the chance to admire its aesthetic without distraction.
Same as passkeys
On the other hand, international roaming has become so much cheaper now that swapping SIMs when you travel is no longer necessary. The legacy carriers still try to fuck you over, but MVNOs and dedicated travel SIMs offer amazing rates: I can get a year of roaming across 120 countries for around US$15.
> I can get a year of roaming across 120 countries for around US$15.
Which plan is this? That sounds pretty awesome to have handy at all times. I'm assuming it's probably just 1GB or so though.
I've also found this a big plus. Being able to get a data only SIM for whatever country you happen to be in within 5 mins is very convenient.
I'm surprised there's no mention yet of carrier activation fees. Isn't that half the point for carrier's? They can bilk you for another $36 for the privilege of issuing a new eSim for your new phone.
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.
I just abandoned AT&T (finally) and transitioned to US Mobile (on VZW) in about 10 minutes thanks to eSIM. New iPhone's don't even work with a regular sim card any longer.
Seems like most of the complaints in here re: eSIM are around how a specific carrier deals with it and less about the technology itself?
> New iPhone's don't even work with a regular sim card any longer.
Many countries still sell iPhone 17 series with physical SIM slots.
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.
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.
Main as traditional sim, esim for travel.
eSIMs are another way for big tech and government to track and identify you. Gone will be the days you could pop into a shop and get a burner.
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.
I upgraded from an iPhone 11 to a 17 and was dreading having to sign in to my carrier’s web site to get an eSIM QR code. I was surprised to see that the phone migration process took care of that - at the end I had the new phone with an eSIM and my usual number, and the old phone with a deactivated SIM card. Super convenient.
> I was surprised to see that the phone migration process took care of that - at the end I had the new phone with an eSIM and my usual number, and the old phone with a deactivated SIM card.
It's nice to know that you're on a telco that supports "eSIM Quick Transfer", but that's still a feature that telcos need to explicitly support.
Spending money to upgrade from model X-1 to the latest X is the well trodden happy path that big tech will actually make work. Author is describing less common workflows which do not receive the same attention and so become a mixed bag when the financial incentive is not so clear for the manufactures.