- cross-posted to:
- hackernews
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews
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The screen died on my wife’s iPhone, fine I have other spare iPhones aplenty she can switch to. But at some point she had accepted a prompt on the iPhone to switch to eSIM so we couldn’t just move a physical SIM over, you had to go through the “transfer eSIM” menus, which we couldn’t do because the screen was dead. The only option the carrier gave us was going to a physical store.
I’m never switching my main carrier to eSIM, what a PITA for absolutely no upside.
(they’re great for throwaway travel SIMs though)
Your carrier is the problem. I just login to my carrier’s app on the new phone and boom new esim.
That’s not a solution. There is no other carrier that has the coverage I need.
The problem with eSIM as a concept is that it puts too much responsibility on the carrier, and there are way too many shitty carriers out there, and with the cost of building a network and the limited amount of spectrum, mobile carriers are not a functioning free market.
That doesn’t mean that your carrier isn’t the problem.
Just like the person you replied to, I to can just log in to my carriers app on a new phone and get eSIM fixed there if my old phone is in an unusable state.
Fucking duh.
Carriers fucking suck in every metric possible, you have to be insane to want to get their shitty support and shitty apps involved in anything more than the strictly necessaryI don’t think a physical SIM is a guarantee that the phone number remains intact. The SIM is a token in the system that links a piece of hardware to a phone number and that link is maintained by the carrier. My phone spontaneously stopped being able to make calls and receive SMS. I went through the usual steps to rectify it but no dice. The carrier had to manually reconnect my number because it had become a victim of their periodic cull of disused numbers. Took quite a few calls over a period days to achieve this. ‘yes I have turned it off and on…’ ad nauseum.
The mvno that I use allows me to switch between T-Mobile, Verizon and att. I can do it online quickly. eSIMs are great.
Care to share?
This is almost certainly US Mobile. They have some really interesting plans at surprisingly reasonable prices. But ultimately if you just want the cheapest cell service then they’re not the carrier for you.
All of the bad parts of esim are the fault of the carriers in my experience. I’m on a MVNO that created their own method of generating a new esim and moving the number via their website and app and it is painless for the most part.
They only let you do it 4 times a billing cycle though without talking to customer service. Which I suspect is the fault of the upstream carrier somehow.
I don’t use eSIM most of the time but when I travel and I don’t want roaming, damn it’s nice. I just go on Airalo or Saily, pick a destination, pay something like 20 bucks and get the data. I load it up on my phone, travel, land and voila, works right away while I’m still on my way through customs. No WiFi needed, no “quick” trip to a random shop or a large provider that’ll try to upsell whatever. I just land, connect, use my VPN and voila.
Also if your phone doesn’t support eSIM you can use https://jmp.chat/esim-adapter
Used Saily while on vacation. Loved it. Switched on thee same day (where I was going there is a 3 day wait on SIM activation I believe), and the connection was pretty good.
Absolutely love Airalo. Simple, painless and really good prices for their data plans (in Europe at least)
I love eSIM because one day on the bus I was tired of AT&T speeds being shit in my commute, so I decided to switch carriers. By the time I walked home from the bus, I was done releasing my number and setting up my new eSIM to my new carrier and immediately got faster speeds. It just worked.
I completely understand if you’re changing numbers all the time it could be annoying, but it was just a simple activation for me.
For me the main benefit of eSIMs is they allow multiple numbers on a single phone which is super handy.
Reading the article though, and I think the described problem is entirely the fault of the carrier and not the design of eSIMs. The carrier should have allowed alternative verification methods (email, online account, in-person at store) other than just sending a text to the disabled number.
There’s also a thing called dual sim. Which is standard in the Asian market and used to be common in Europe.
Wanted one of those so bad, but couldn’t find ones with US bands support at the time
Still using dual SIM in Europe. While EU policies made it so that you can use a European number throughout Europe with basically no real added costs, country specific numbers are still required for a bunch of bureaucracy
Was also quite common in Brazil, dunno how new phones are handling it
Motorola and Xiaomi are still releasing Dual SIM phones over here, it works as expected.
Nice to see another feature getting removed to make phones slimmer which is necessary because of uhh… 'Cuz the uh… You know that thing that uh…
eSIM just makes more sense. Why do you need a card just to store some random bits of data when your phone can store hundreds of gigabytes of data?
In a world of corporate control over everything, I’ll take my globally defined, physical interface standard thank you.
You realize that it doesn’t physically do anything, right? Like it just has some bits on it
Yes I know what’s on a SIM card. But if it’s physical I can move it to another phone in a flash. With an eSIM I had to ask pretty please of the phone companies.
What control are you losing by going with esim? They already had you by the balls with the physical sim. Now its just more convenient and esim is also globally defined/accepted.
I can move my phone number to another phone in 2 minutes without involving the phone company. The same is definitely not true with an eSIM.
The ability to swap it to a new device without carrier approval is a big one for me.
This sounds like a your carrier problem, not an eSIM problem.
I’ve swapped eSIMs between devices 3 times this year at my own leisure, no involvement from the carriers, no back and forth calls or visiting a store.
From what I can tell reading these comments, people don’t actually have an issue with eSIM (it’s literally just like your regular SIM card and the spec absolutely allows you to move it between devices with zero friction), they have an issue with how some carriers implement them, in particular how some lock down how you can move an eSIM to a new device.
Seems like carrier implementation should be more standardized.
I would agree to an extent, but I dislike another step or dependency to change phones. With a physical sim I don’t need to login to a carrier site for it to function, don’t need to call their support, don’t need to wait for activation times, only their towers gotta be working.
With an esim I need to change identifiers linked to the account, which takes time to propagate through the network, and also needs authentication either by a text message, login or calling support to change the account.
The path of least resistance is clear. Swap a physical sim? or authenticate and change the esim, and wait for it to sync. No brainer for me.
“This sounds like a your carrier problem, not an eSIM problem.”
This is true, and we the consumer have no control of the carrier decisions. With a physical SIM, we have at least a little.
Phone companies lost touch with what we actually want over a decade ago.
Seriously, does anyone know a single person that’s excited about getting a new phone when they just bought one a year or two earlier (assuming it’s not broken or cracked)?
Yeah but how do make money? Is the few cents saved per unit worth it? Like I know that saving 1€ over a million units is 1M€ saved but still.
That really is how these companies think.
I’ve seen car companies selling $100,000+ cars sweating over whether we use a $0.10 more expensive part that would last 3x longer than the cheaper one
This isn’t just cheaping out though, this is removing a feature. Surely no one will be glad to put in additional effort for no advantage? Or are there advantages to eSIMs that I don’t know about?
When traveling you can pre-purchase an E-SIM and already have it loaded to your phone in advance of landing - avoiding the whole airport SIM purchase shuffle, or the holding off on using your phone until you get to a convenience store, etc.
I use an E-SIM for my personal plan, saving the physical SIM for a work line.
When I travel I pre-purchase an eSIM and it’s just ready to turn on when I land
Somebody can’t steal your phone and pull the SIM card out so that it can’t be tracked.
As long as you don’t have the ability to enable airplane mode or disable cellular data from your notifications shade, you can’t stop it from being tracked if it’s stolen unless it’s physically powered off. And as soon as it’s physically powered on again, it’s immediately trackable.
There’s a thing called the power button. You can’t track a phone that’s turned off
If the phone is in China, what are you going to do about it
Yes, eSIMs are much more convenient plus phones can have multiple. While I’ve never tried the multiple eSIM feature, I find it so much nicer to set up a new eSIM online than to have to deal with a physical SIM from a physical store. It’s also more convenient when getting a new phone, at least for iPhone. The setup can just transfer the eSIM from one phone to the next so your number gets moved with no effort on your part
From the phone manufacturer, it’s fewer traces and less mechanical design work.
From the carrier side, it requires you to have their spyware installed to register the Sim
From a user perspective, someone can’t just steal your Sim and put it in another phone
Except that’s not true, I neither need to install any apps nor give my data to my service provider.
Then you are using a feature phone, or a standard Android/iOS device with their tools preinstalled
If you try to use it with a free operating system, it’s not possible.
Here are the instructions for installing the bridge code on Graphene: https://grapheneos.org/usage#esim-support
I’m betting the mechanical component of a sim card tray is more expensive than the chip.
And to answer your second question:
It’s consumer demand!
Shareholder demand
Because we have to force “features” that no one asked for.
Right but you gotta make money somehow. The 3,5mm jack was removed to sell wireless headphones. The SD card slot is gone to force you to buy a phone with more soldered storage. Why this? Can’t be data collection, they have it all already.
Because they save money in manufacturing.
Bonus is if you have to go in to move your phone - there’s a chance you buy something.
When a mobile carrier needs to verify your identity for an account change, they all do the same thing: send a text message. And what happens if you don’t have a working SIM? That’s right—nothing. Without access to my account or phone number, I was stuck with no way to download a new eSIM. The only course of action was to go to a physical store to download an electronic SIM card. What should have been 30 seconds of fiddling with a piece of plastic turned into an hour standing around a retail storefront.
This is a problem for somebody reviewing phones, but how much of a problem is it actually for the average user who will change phones once every few years? And will probably be doing so at a phone store where they can support it.
I haven’t been to a phone store in 15 years
Last time I went into a store was 3 years ago, specifically looking for an iPhone 13 mini as an upgrade to my iPhone XR. They didn’t have any in stock, attempted to sell me a few different, more expensive devices, then just told me to try online.
Ended up going with a different provider.
for the average user
points at Lineage boot logo
not you
Speaking of Lineage…
I wonder, how long will it be before you’re not “allowed” to install esims on phones with custom firmware?
Either due to the esim application not installing/running on modified firmware, or the phone will just not allow it.
If that stops Lineage from being practical on that phone, then fuck that phone in particular.
If eventually, that is every phone, then grab a hotspot and get tethering.
We are well on our way. The EU is holding the manufacturer liable if a cellphone radio is “modded”, thus manufacturers are blocking the ability to unlock bootloaders.
If eventually, that is every phone, then grab a hotspot and get tethering.
I did have a chuckle at the thought of having a cellphone for your (modded) cellphone… but then I thought about it: “meh, yeah… it’s not a bad idea. I’d do it.”
Well then goal achieved, custom roms will be even harder to use, and from when I’ve seen I’ve got every reason to belive that every phone will get to that point.
In most countries, getting a phone in a store is something done only by people happy to pay lots extra for a little human help, surely? The average user now signs up online and gets a phone in the mailbox.
If I asked my mom for her SIM card, she’d ask for her purse so she could attempt to find a credit card that doesn’t exist.
She has no idea how a phone works in any capacity. I’m not being insulting about it, I am informing you of blatant and honest truth.
My cousins, people my age are a hard maybe, I know two family members who went in-store recently. They treat their phones like cars. They use them and that’s as deep as it goes.
That’s not so informative without any idea of your age and thereby the ages of your examples.
Many of them could still follow the assembly/card insertion instruction sheet with pictures that comes in the mail from the phone company, even without knowing which part is called a SIM.
And maybe your area’s phone stores aren’t as notorious for overcharging as the UK’s.
I go to a phone store every time I get a new phone!
checks when my last phone was bought… 2018
I go to a phone store every six or seven years!
6,7!
Kill me, kill me slowly.
Those of us who swap SIMs when travelling are also affected. I travel outside my country several times a year and must say that eSIMs sound like a good idea until you actually deal with them. Spending vacation time debugging an eSIM is an annoying distraction.
Can’t your phone store multiple esims? I thought that was actually one of the selling points of the stuff.
It’s a software implementation though, so if you have a rooted phone or use another Android OS, you have limited options in apps that implement eSim for you.
OpenEUICC is a good one, but sometimes requires magisk modules to work.
I remember it took me half a day of fiddling to get my eSim working under Lineage.
People forget that your phone supporting “feature X” means that even though it has all the hardware to do X, it still needs to software, which might not be part of the devicetree.
For example paying for items with your phone’s NFC does not happen because of NFC capability. There are no open source solutions to Google Pay. It’s an agreement brokered between Google and Banks that allow the bankcard to be “cloned” and used via NFC, not the NFC doing any cloning of your actual bankcard
That’s not a problem with eSims, that’s just a problem with your custom ROM not shipping with absolutely basic functionality
Much more likely to be the phone vendor not releasing this “absolutely basic functionality” to customisers. Some vendors hate their customers having freedoms.
I don’t think it was a basic problem, but something to do with vendor’s implementation of it not being in the device tree and so it could not just be copied over as a binary blob
It can, but both my Fairphone and old pixel could have a physical sim and an eSIM. I daily drive both with my old US number and my current EU number. Can’t have two active eSIM cards at once though
I buy eSIMs every two months when I travel. I only had issues when I fucked it up by deleting one myself. I’m on eSIM like 20
This never happens
My parents came to visit my over xmas and installed Airalo to get a local SIM. Activation failed, the support AI bot re-issued the eSIM, activation failed again, it got escalated to human support, they asked for a refund, and 12 hours later randomly the phone popped up an “eSIM activated!” message. That would have sucked if you actually relied on needing the SIM on landing.
It is also a problem for us IT guys, when we need to migrate users from one phone to another it is super annoying to deal with eSIMs
That’s odd, I just swapped phones. Old phone was eSIM, it literally couldn’t have been easier.
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I think it’s just highlighted by someone doing it regularly, it’ll happen the same % of times when someone else does it, maybe more since they don’t know the process.
I also don’t know how many people change phones in a store, I never have, but I’m not average. And even then, maybe a carrier store can help you, but I doubt the generic shop or branded supermarket can offer much support for an issue with a carrier.
I wonder how much of a problem it is when you lost the phone that had your eSIM. If the registration flow requires SMS authentication, how are your supposed to register your eSIM on your brand new phone?
My carrier supports TOTP for this.
The carrier can bypass that authentication, so basically the same process as if you had lost your physical sim. Show up at the shop in person with id.
I will never use an ESIM due to this. I have had by ass saved multiple times by being able to use a physical sim card when my device failed to work or i needed to be able to port a number.
My last phone went for a swim, I changed phones just be removing the sim card, and putting it in the replacement phone. Easy 20 second process vs an hour trying to argue with customer service that I am the account holder, and no I can’t receive a one time pin, the phone is toast then another 20-30 minutes of waiting for the towers to identify that the ICCID changed and that the new sim is actually allowed to communicate with them. The last time I changed my sim card on t-mobile, I didn’t have roaming data for almost 30 days due to desync between the USC towers and Tmobile on if I was actually authorized to use the tower or not.
Then back when I used MVNO’s it was even worse. Arguing over device compatibility and identification when you lost access to the device was like pulling teeth. The agents never understood that broken means broken, and despite saying 4 times the devices either don’t turn on or has no service, they still insist on trying to send a one time pin, because according to their end the phone is active on the tower somehow.
Then there’s benefits like when I put an s20 on total wireless 2 years before the company supported 5g devices due to the ability to use a physical sim. I upgraded to an s20 from an s9 after being told that both total wireless and red both supported 5g phones. Only to argue with both of them after I actually bought the device that they couldn’t actually activate/transfer it onto the device. I just took the 4g sim card (which they previously said would not work on the device), and threw it into the s20, and then used that until I eventually swapped to a first party carrier.
I could never use an ESIM, you lose way too much control over your device.
…how is that an improvement over physical SIM then ;D
you are supposed to be able to have multiple, 1 or 2 of which can be active, and switch between them whenever you want.
but afaik that’s only possible on rooted phones with openeuicc or another app like it, because by default only google’s own app is allowed to handle esim configuration, and that has limitations in what it allows.
AFAIK, the only ‘improvement’ is that it takes up less physical space.
Kind of like the jack. They say removing it does this or that but all it really did was save the corporation a couple cents and was overall a downgrade and removal of functionality for the average person.
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When traveling you can pre-purchase an E-SIM and already have it loaded to your phone in advance of landing - avoiding the whole airport SIM purchase shuffle, or he holding off on using your phone until you get to a convenience store, etc.
I use an E-SIM for my personal plan, saving the physical SIM for a work line.
I think if I ever used ESIM I would do similar Physical sim for the primary line, ESIM for travel or temporary lines
It’s not a physical SIM—the E
Ah yes, obviously. And the author mentioned going to the store in his article.
It’s like everyone forgot what a pain in the ass it used to be when Verizon was cdma and didn’t use sim cards.
Or much of the world never had a similar malfunctioning telco.
I don’t have Verizon in my country. Not sure who this ‘everyone’ is and what they’re forgetting.
eSIM sounds good on paper, but the implementation is horrible. You should be able to easily back them up. Also I expected to be able to have many many eSIMs rather than be limited to one or two.
I’ve actually just had my eSIM decision backfire on me.
I switched months ago and hadn’t had an issue until I got ready to go to an airport last week. I figured I’d be able to switch off the eSIM and switch on Airplane Mode so my phone could essentially be an offline iPod, but when I landed and tried turning it back on it didn’t work. I then found people discussing the same issue on their phones (GrapheneOS + Pixel 7) and really regretted messing with it.
My carrier’s account login hilariously requires an SMS 2FA to the phone number that’s been yeeted from existence and since I’ve been staying with in-laws this Christmas I’m not willing to sit on hold for however many hours to recover my account till I get home.
What prompted you to disable your eSIM? Airplane mode works just fine on its own to temporarily disable the cellular connection, and you can turn Wifi and Bluetooth back on while in airplane mode. There’s also several settings to turn off data roaming if you were worried about accidental extra charges on your phone plan.
Yeah I just wasn’t thinking clearly be it early morning or lack of coffee or both. I definitely won’t repeat this mistake so its a learning moment now
And for people that don’t want proprietary carrier apps on there phone? Don’t have WiFi, so you can’t download the virtual sim? On a OS that isn’t Google or Apple?
You don’t need a carrier app. The phone OS asks the carrier network for activation and pulls the esim. I’ve done this several times in lineageos and grapheneos.
