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 major advantage is now that the expensive and time-consuming part ... is ... sending out a physical SIM card
For the carriers I can see that. Especially the part where users can't move their esim without carrier cooperation. That grants telcos (and sometimes handset manufacturers) additional control over users - control that they don't get with physical sim.
And physical sim save me time and money. I get a new SIM each month. It's 1 min to swap it and update my forwarding #. Service is reliably cheap.
When I need my sim elsewhere (ex:5g router), I just move it.
> The major advantage is now that the expensive and time-consuming part of provisioning a new mobile service (sending out a physical SIM card)
I don't know, choosing service package, signing paperwork, identifying and other KYC stuff (tens of minutes) for me was always much more time-consuming than the few seconds of reading the barcode(?) from a new SIM card and giving it to the customer (or putting it into an automatically addressed envelope).
I can't see any advantage of eSIMs except that it makes harder to change providers what they of course really like.
(Anyways the security of the whole PTSN is a joke and publications about cracking cell networks, why SIM cards are even a thing? I would suspect an customer-id@service-provider.country and a password would work, too. Maybe with a zero-knowledge password proof.)
They are incredibly handy when you are traveling abroad, you don't speak the local language fluently, you want cheap data, you don't want to study 100 different prepaid plans from 10 different local primary and MVNO carriers to figure out the best offer, you don't want to wait for the shops to open because your flight landed late at night, and you don't want to scan your passport and send it to the carrier for verification and wait for hours for approval (yes, in many countries, KYC is required even for prepaid SIMs). I've lived that experience and I can't say I miss it.
Yeah, basically people here think that their experience is the only experience there is with phones. I wager not that many people are actually physically going to stores in many markets anymore like this commenter, and definitely next to nobody is switching their SIM cards literally every month like a sibling commenter is doing, but for people like me who live and travel abroad, eSIMs have been great.
Really? I live in Japan, eSIMs made it very easy for me to switch carriers 3 times when I was shopping. Just had to click the “agree” checkbox in the ts and cs for each carrier when I switched, provide the transfer code (which is always in an easy to find place in their management dashboards), and then plug that into the form when signing up for the new carrier. Then my butt did not have to budge from my couch as the eSIM was provisioned and my old service was cancelled automatically. Definitely beat schlepping it to the physical stores of each carrier in ye olde times.
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
Unfortunately there's not much competition on providing low-latency data connections, so most travel esim providers don't advertise where their connections route through. It's not great when you're travelling and all your connections to local sites get routed through and geo-located to a different continent.
True but it can be an advantage as well. Some countries highly restrict what you van do on the internet and a roaming card bypasses that. For example UAE doesn't allow calls via WhatsApp but foreigners can do it fine this way, no need for VPNs even (though a foreign roaming kinda acts like a VPN in the geolocation sense)
I am currently traveling in the Philippines and used a cheap eSIM provider offering nearly unlimited data. The only problem was all the traffic was getting routed through China, and then I encountered a bunch of great firewall or geolocation restrictions. For example, Claude wouldn’t work because Anthropic doesn’t allow access to Claude in China.
What are you even talking about? eSIM for travel requires to be connected to internet and in the country when provisioning. With a SIM you just pop it in. It is however nice to be able to buy an eSIM without having to wait in line at the airport, but you get what you pay for. The airport SIM is better than the eSIM from generic provider, depending on your use case, like making calls in some countries
I like that my current phone can do both, and I'll hold onto it as long as I can. Why can't we just have both options? Why do we need to keep removing features to save 2mm of space inside the phone? Oh right, it's not really so much to save space, it's to make an extra $0.01 per phone they sell.
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.