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" !!!

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.

> 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 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 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.

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.

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 ?

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.

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.

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).

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.

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 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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Totally agree. I swap phones a lot and it's a nightmare with eSIM. For example I sometimes use an old phone when I go hiking or to a big festival. Better to have that stolen or broken. Some providers even charge money every time you swap.

Also, if I would drop my phone and break it I can simply remove the SIM and stick it in a backup phone. Can't do that with an esim either without the carrier cooperating.

Luckily all my current used phones still have two sim slots. It's something I select for but I'm sure eventually it will become harder.

Sure for a one month travel SIM it's super handy but I don't want it for my main number.

There must be some axiom about how corporations will eliminate every form of useful removable media, making customers more beholden and enslaved.

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?

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.

I am not positioned well to speak to it but a coworker who has spent decades in telcom said that another problem is the certificate authority that holds/controls the certificates to provision these sims. Just the consolidation of who is involved in securing the sims.

With physical sims, only your carrier has the encryption keys to be able to provision (and run e.g. a java program on the sim). With esims, that is not as tightly controlled. Coworker recommended I read about the "sim jacker" exploit, but I have not yet. If anyone is curious, I pass it along.

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 purchased physical eSIM Multicard. It worked quite easily, so now I can handle esims in a virtual/physical way.

And I know what you might think: Isn't that defeating the purpose? No, it is not. I can recive a digital simcard activation, render it on a physical card and use it in any phone. Thats perfect.

And yes, once the phones without a sim-card slot come ... we'll see.

eSim is fine, SMS "authentication" is once again the f#?*ing problem.

Its going to take congressional action before we can get rid of this menace. All we're doing is half-ass offloading credit and identity checks to cellphone carriers, which do this, and by having a cell phone, you've probably been through an identity and credit check.

Not only that... horror stories of eSIM transfers getting stuck and losing the phone number. Nobody is talking about this

there will be a point where esim will be forced on everyone, because having to swap sim is bad for tracking people

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?

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.

Which is why I will keep using SIM cards for as long as they are around.

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.

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.

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.