I tried to transfer my eSIM from my old S21 to my new S24 the other day. It failed miserably. My carrier charges me $10 for a new eSIM (which i think is way too much for a digital service). Transferring eSIMs sounds like a good idea if it works, but might not be endorsed by carriers that earn large profits from the service.
The $10 is so ridiculous not because it costs them virtually nothing as a digital service, but because they charge you for access to something you’re already paying them for.
For me it’s about every 1 to 2 years, but I’m an app developer part-time so I use it to make money which justifies the high cost of ownership. I keep the trail of older phones for testing on different models.
For my wife, it’s more like 4 years, and we prefer to get last year’s model especially with today’s update commitments.
No. Once every few years. However, the gap in service is absolute disaster in modern society. Without a phone, you can't use public transport, can't pay for parking, can't get a taxi/uber/competitor, etc. etc.
Any "progress" that makes the turnaround time longer when your phone breaks is a horrible and unacceptable downside.
Maybe in somewhere free like the EU or SEA. In the US, most phones bought from a carrier (and most sales are that way, some exclusively so) are locked so that no other SIM (e or physical) can be used.
That's your problem as a consumer accepting that. This thread makes me depressed, with the amount of people happy to allow shitty US consumer hostile practices to become more common globally.
Cell phone use was a US thing that spread there before any other country. Five fold the amount of mobile phone users than the next closest country. They were also invented in the US.
The way of buying a cell phone and paying too much for the monthly pan, but getting the phone for free kicked off in the 90s and has never managed to go away because yeah, the cell companies are assholes, but also because consumers got used to getting phones this way. The bs part is that you plan isn’t any cheaper, even if you own your phone outright.
But for most people in the US there’s little use for switching carriers while using your same phone, so sim stuff isn’t all that important. Most don’t vacation outside of the country.
That’s the special condition we get in the US, though - there is little or no effective choice across the spectrum. Without regulation, corporations will become asymptotic to maximum financial extraction techniques. There are few real choices at the consumer level and the barriers to entry are such that a single consumer - or even an uncoordinated (read: without a national, staffed organization) - cannot circumvent the system.
When I traveled across the world last year it took me 5 minutes to sign up for a temporary cell plan in the country I was visiting, then install the eSIM from my phone’s web browser. I didn’t have to plan ahead and wait for them to mail me a SIM card so I could juggle around SIMs while abroad. I much prefer that over a physical SIM card.
For reference, this was in Japan. From my experience, there weren’t SIM card vendors until you get through customs. That could be a 2 hour long process from landing to entering the country before you can get a SIM and communicate with family or your travel arrangements at your destination. It also won’t be doing you any favors if you need to pull up documentation on your phone to provide to the customs agent, like your return ticket.
I can buy an eSIM and install it before leaving my home and verify it works instantly. It’s just a better experience than the alternative.
I just bought up a few prepaids and popped them into my phone when I wanted to use them. Also we shared them between people. Not sure how sharing works on eSIMs
Maybe it’s just bad luck, but the last time I tried to swap a physical SIM, I inserted the removal tool in the hole, and then the mechanism somehow broke. So I cannot swap my SIM from my current phone to any other phone, unless I have eSim. Unfortunately, my current phone does not have eSim.
It’s just to give more control to the carriers. They say it’s a feature for travel but realistically how many people and how many countries does that actually apply to? Some places require ID to buy a SIM card, many places don’t even offer plans travelers would want to use (who wants to pay $80 for 1 month of unlimited data instead of $5 for 1GB for a week?), and there’s also the question of how many travelers are there vs locals? Are the travelers the majority of users? The majority of profit? Why don’t the travelers’ local phone companies have travel plans to gouge the travelers themselves?
Anyway all this is to say this is just carrier lock in, it’s the return of CDMA.
On the phone that isn't connecting to the internet, because it doen't have a SIM yet? Or do eSIM phones use free internet before they have an eSIM issued?
In the store if you’re getting the phone from a store, or somewhere with wifi (home, a friend’s, a cafe) if you’ve gotten it some other way.
If you don’t have any of those, you probably live way out in the jungle, and I’d be surprised if you had service even if you got the eSIM. But in the edge case that you somehow got home delivery postal service in the jungle, you’d probably be able to survive just fine without it until your next trip into town.
In the extreme edge case that you are in the jungle, get service, and your need is critical, I would have an activated backup phone tested periodically and ready to go.
I’m not sure if there’s some special calling feature to reach a previously associated provider, but when I’ve been in that situation I just borrowed my roommate’s phone.
yea, that’s my biggest annoyance with it, if you can’t pass security on the phone (talking to you prepaid carriers who have absolutely shit CS and protocols) you can no longer just hot swap the sim to get your verification code. You are just locked out of your account now. It’s nice that it’s more secure but, also such a pain in the ass for people who don’t call their carrier a lot so they don’t know their security.
Generally you go to some site your carrier has, enter the IMEI or some number from your phone’s settings, then scan a QR code. It’s not bad… depending on your carrier.
Exactly the same as a normal one. It just works and you don’t really need to do anything with it. Everything seems the same just no little card in the side of your device.
I don't want a "new sim", I want my old one, which doesn't exist anymore since it was virtual and only existed in my now broken previous phone. How does it work in that situation?
Exactly. What a shitty anti-feature. Your answer proves that the people saying that "eSIMs are functionally the same as normal SIM" are full of absolute shit.
Not the person you asked but I have a couple of sims by different providers that I swap between phones/sim routers when I need to make calls or use data from that carrier. Popping the sim into an old device and configuring whatever I need is super convenient.
Keeping my number. Are you saying that I can immediately, online, get my existing number connected to a different handset? If I can't, then that's why I want to transfer the physical SIM.
What prevents someone else from doing that at any point, taking over my number? Is the only authentication a simple login to the mobile provider's website?
You trust your carrier to not give your number away today, right? Many providers allow a number migration code to be generated from their website, protected by just their authentication.
The fact that carriers have poor security today isn't an argument for discontinuing the part of the system that still allows the consumer to be in control. It's an argument against it.
I’m not actually saying they have poor security, authentication is authentication, you need to be able to trust your carrier regardless of if your SIM is physical or an eSIM. I’m saying the two approaches are essentially equivalent.
You’re aware your provider can turn your current SIM into a piece of inert plastic via a migration access code. That’s what I just described.
Whether it’s physical or software, your carrier has 100% control. You cannot do anything your carrier doesn’t want you to with it.
If SIM swapping is your concern, know that it is just as simple to do with physical SIMs. It’s not like your phone number is hardcoded to that one card alone. The phone company can easily move your number around. Literally anything you’d want to do with a physical SIM you can do with an eSIM. Some very niche situations may be easier with a physical one but over all it’s a much nicer experience with eSims
Literally anything you’d want to do with a physical SIM you can do with an eSIM.
No. There is no reason for you to blatantly LIE. It is NOT possible for the consumer to switch to using a borrowed or backup handset, when there is no physical token. How on earth do you think that contradicting actual reality is an argument?
Yes, it is possible. You use whatever the provider’s method is to download an eSIM to that device. Usually it’s logging into their app or calling their support to register the IMEI or whatever.
Now I can’t answer for other regions, but with my carrier here in Norway I can sign in to their website and authenticate with the government ID system (bankid) and generate a new esim and get the QR code. Takes about a minute total.
I’m personally more for physical sim cards as swapping it into a new phone or swapping in a traveler datasim etc is just something I prefer to have physically.
That being said, I use esim for my phone number, and then swap in travel sims for data with my physical sim slot, works really well when you travel a lot.
Well frankly, that’s pretty shitty of your carrier, IMO. I didn’t realise anyone was actually out there charging for what’s basically essential functionality.
There’s basically nothing technically different about transfering a physical SIM or an eSIM from the network’s perspective. The same registration takes place, they have to send all the same carrier service configuration messages.
I don’t blame you at all for holding onto a physical SIM in that scenario, but I’d be looking to move to a less customer-hostile carrier once my contract was up.
Well frankly, that’s pretty shitty of your ______, IMO. I didn’t realise anyone was actually out there charging for what’s basically essential functionality.
I just wanted to say how valuable this lesson is for everyone who hasnt learned it yet to learn
This is an equally important lesson to learn for both capitalism and enshitification.
That’s unfortunate, at least in the UK all the (eSIM supporting) providers seem to offer the same capability.
As I’ve said elsewhere a physical SIM is slightly better in the situation where you smash your phone and buy a new one as you don’t need to connect your new phone to the phone shop’s WiFi for 5 mins (scanning the QR code is the quick way, you can just type an alphanumeric code in too, some carriers let you download it via an app). On the flip side though, if your phone is stolen, I still just need the WiFi for 5 mins. With a physical SIM, it would be sent to my home address and arrive a couple of days later.
I thought you could too but I use Google Fi and I just log into my Google account on a new device and it lets me deactivate the old phone and download the sim to the new phone.
They’re functionally the same as normal SIM, instead it is stored in a secure location of the storage (which can survive factory reset). In a way, it makes it a bit more secure as a thief can’t just yank out the SIM card to avoid being tracked (although it doesn’t defeat a faraday bag) or take it out to use it in another phone.
The major function of a normal SIM is the ability to take it out of one device and put it into another one, effectively disconnecting my identity towards the network provider, from the handset. With eSIM, that doesn't exist, and if my phone breaks, it's unclear what happens.
To me, that's not secure, that's unsafe and insecure.
From a corporate device perspective it’s an interesting evolution though, since we can remotely provision an eSIM through our mobile device management platform. No SIM to handle from the user point of view, and they can’t take it out.
Well fwiw, the post we’re commenting on is about that now existing.
the ability to take it out of one device and put it into another one, effectively disconnecting my identity towards the network provider, from the handset
Unless you think that taking a SIM out of a phone means that the phone is no longer connected to you, which isn’t the case at all. A phone’s IMEI is sent along with the SIM data as part of the initial handshake to make a mobile connection, your carrier knows the make, model and serial number of every phone you’ve ever put your SIM card in. The police in most countries make them keep track of which cell towers that combo of IMEI and SIM connect to and at what times. There’s no privacy in using a mobile network you pay a bill for.
that’s not secure
Obviously this isn’t the be all and end all of security, but an eSIM slightly improves device security because a thief would be unable to remove it and disable any theft tracking measures which require network access. (Yes I know about EM shielded bags, but most thieves are opportunists)
The only real advantage of a physical SIM is that if you smash your phone up, you can walk into a shop and put it into a new phone without needing an internet connection first. If I smash my phone up, I need a WiFi network to hook my new phone up to the network. On the flip side, if I get robbed abroad, the process is the same. With a physical SIM it’s gonna get sent to my home address.
It seems to support transfer between Google and Samsung devices on the latest OS according to the article.
Given that, if it doesn’t work with non-google/non-samsung devices today, I’d expect it to in the future as that’s obviously the goal for this.
Funnily enough about iPhones, I don’t think they even have a physical SIM slot anymore in some markets. So unless they have a transfer feature I’m unaware of, you’re gonna spend a minute logging into your network’s account screen and scan a new QR code, like you can with any eSIM phone today.
on T-Mobile USA: I preordered my iPhone 15; the QR eSIM and automated SIM transfer system was completely down and I had to spend 30 minutes to an hour on the phone with customer service to swap over my physical SIM to an eSIM I could type (IIRC) into my new phone.
Yep, same here. Wouldn’t want to use eSIMs at all if they were any more hassle than this. But their process to me is good enough to outweigh the physical SIM swapping process.
When I got my Pixel 8 Pro it asked me if I want to convert the physical SIM from my Xiaomi 9 SE (and disable the old SIM). I didn’t have to take off the case and move the SIM, so I liked it.
Effectively, imagine there’s a SIM card soldered to the motherboard of the phone, you can then download an eSIM to it and the phone behaves as if it’s a physical SIM.
In reality it’s generally built into the modem and I believe they can typically hold multiple eSIMs. What I’m not clear on is if inactive eSIMs actually live in the hardware eSIM or if they get swapped in by the OS
Depends on the phone. The newest ones let you use multiple ones simultaneously, one for calls/texts and one for data, for example. Slightly older ones only let you use one at a time, but they let you activate and deactivate multiple downloaded eSIMs.
I don’t understand how this wasn’t more of a priority to begin with. If you’re going to offer a digital solution for something it should at least be as convenient as the existing physical solution.
Hah. To swap eSIM on O2 in the UK, you have to order a physical pack that gets posted to you with the QR code in. There is no way to get the code to appear on a screen you can scan with your camera, or in an app on the phone you can transfer to the phone's eSIM manager. It's so dumb.
That’s so dumb. When I moved over to Google Fi, I put the sim in, the phone ported the number, then I chucked the sim into the fucking trash. Whenever I get a new phone, I just need to sign in on wifi and Google does the rest.
Granted – I only use phones designed to work on Fi [Nexus/Pixels], but I prefer vanilla Android.
Also I have a data only sim if I need it for anything. Right now I’m waiting on my Clockwork Pi to finally ship.
That is very dumb with Verizon in the US you just type in the esim imei online and submit it and it auto downloads and activates the esim on your phone very easy.
Also because it’s locking another aspect of the device behind software that you do not have control over, which gives carriers and phone manufacturers some new levers to exact control over how and what you do.
Because evidently we haven’t learned our lesson yet.
Like when the SD card slots got taken away, and now not only are most phones storage non-expandable, you can’t even use a proper file explorer on Android anymore.
I mean, you can just not use it. It was a great option for me because I can just have one provider in the SIM slot (if I wanted) and keep my main one on the eSIM. It allowed me to swap to eSIM when my SIM card was acting up. I switched to eSIM over a year ago and honestly forgot I did and it’s been really stable. I think it’s a great option and works for me. I wasn’t even thinking of needing to switch to another phone because I have no interest in swapping to another phone. I’ve had mine since 2020 and will keep using it until it is unfixable. But I also don’t drop my phone or damage it otherwise.
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