Just curious.
I used eSim for a while when I first got a phone that supported eSim, because I wanted to make it harder for a thief to disable the phone tracking, but now my main phone is broken and I’m a bit annoyed at having to chat with customer support for half and hour to activate eSim on another device.
I use a physical sim. I’m not sure it even supports eSIM, but I’d be hesitant to ditch the physical sim for precisely the reasons you mentioned. I’ve swapped sims around between phones and even borrowed them from people when I was in a new area, something that’s much harder with eSIMs.
what’s eSim?
From my understanding, its a chip inside your phone that allows you to download Sim cards onto your phone. You could switch carriers without visiting a store or waiting days for the sim to arrive, just take minutes to an hour depending on which carrier you choose. Cool concept in my opinion, just not very mature at the moment.
Physical, because “it just works”. I have had a SIM fail on me once, but I was quickly able to get a replacement. Popped out the old one and popped in the new one. No fuss.
eSIM on the other hand requires competency from both your device manufacturer and service provider, and is a mess to deal with if anything goes wrong. The phone manufacturer will blame the service provider and vice versa.
I’ve had two unpleasant experiences trying to activate an eSIM, and I don’t plan on using it again soon – at least not until every Android device manufacturer does an Apple and goes eSIM-only.
Physical SIM. Mostly because I’ve never tried to buy a SIM in a country where eSIMs exist yet. It’s kind of annoying, as it’s the only way I can dual-SIM my phone.
Current eSIM possibilities in given countries:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209096My phone doesn’t have eSIM option, so physical.
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That hijacking risk applies to both. If you’re able to social engineer a telephone worker, they could move your account to a different SIM card completely.
My best advice, is to use Google voice, Google Fi, lockdown your number for SMS two factor. A Google account and lockdown mode, with physical security keys, is not going to get hijacked by anything less than a state actor.
Then your local phone, your local phone number, local SMS, none of that should be on your escalation path to authentication. Then you don’t care if somebody steals your sim.
Phone numbers and SMS should never have been involved with user authentication beyond simple contact info. Smartphones really ruined it.
Physical SIM because I have that card since a few years and I am too lazy to request an eSIM. In the end it simply does not matter at all.
Dito, also I don’t want to pay 20 bucks for a „replacement“ SIM on my contract, since my SIM isn’t broken/lost
Speaking as an Apple user here with a phone that does dual SIM (one physical and one eSIM), but I currently prefer the physical SIM for my primary number and eSIM as I need it for data.
For the last 18 months I’ve had it the other way around (eSIM primary) and I needed a data SIM with a different provider for a weekend cause I was somewhere with bad coverage on my main provider.
Getting a prepaid eSIM was very easy, but it decoupled my main number from iMessage since the eSIM slot was now linked to a different number.
So now I’m working off the theory that since I can generally get an eSIM for any country I might visit reasonably easily (the App Store has a couple of different eSIM providers), it’s better to leave the eSIM empty until I need it and rely on a physical SIM for my primary.
It’s not the cheapest way to go about it, but definitely the most convenient, and doesn’t rely on you having to try and obtain a SIM locally (which can be very easy to very challenging depending on what country you’re visiting).
Apple user here. When I went from the X to the 14, I went full eSIM.
Primary is eSIM. Works fine. When I travel, I add a second eSIM to my phone from a cheap, local provider. When I’m done, I deactivate and delete the traveling eSIM.
Not once do I have to use a paperclip. It’s wonderful.
If we had the dual eSIM model in Australia this would be my setup as well, but since we still have one physical and one eSIM, having the home SIM being physical basically provides the same benefits you’ve described.
Yeah, that would make sense in that situation. And primary carrier is a rare change, so it’s not really an inconvenience.
Physical SIM. No way to use eSIM in my phone. Even if it had, I’d have gone with physical one.
Canadian providers all charge about $15 a day to “roam like home”. For about $20 I can buy a 30 day 5GB data only plan for Europe. Getting a European phone number doubles the cost as most of those plans have much more data as well. You can buy the plans before you leave, download and install the eSIM so you’re ready to go when you arrive.
The wife and I both bought Pixel 7’s this year as they support eSIM. We’re in England right now. Our cost roaming would have been $600+. Only one of us needed a local phone number, and the has just data, and the cost was maybe $70.
Canadians are getting robbed. Roaming for me, if I travelled to Canada from the UK, would be £15 a month added to my plan, and I have one of the more expensive providers (EE). That’s with the same limits so like 200GB data.
If you enable wifi calling before you leave then you can leave your Rogers esim active and use your local sim for data and calls. The advantage is that you still receive sms messages on your Canadian number.
Rogers won’t let you use wifi calling to avoid the roaming charges. I’ve tried.
Physical. Had the same card for aaaaages now and no need to swap to esim so why bother.
Using both. Just emigrated from the US but keeping my Fi number as I’ve still got roots there, meanwhile I can swap physical SIMs as I jockey services here.
Stares in American
This isn’t exclusively an American thing. I went to China and it’s extremely common to see SIM cards being hawked on the street and sold to tourists. They’re disposable and quite convenient. You buy them on the street, pop the SIM card in, get an activation text, and then you get data for a week before it stops working and you throw it away. They come with different data amounts and durations. But eSIMs do exist as well there, although it’s not nearly as convenient. You need to register your identity (surveillance purposes) and sign up for a regular phone contract. I haven’t seen any disposable eSIM plans there yet.
Phone models sold in China (even iphones) have had dual sim capabilities for a long time before eSims were a thing. I mean like 2 physical sim card slots in a phone. Adoption of eSims isn’t much of a necessity when the phone itself already can carry 2 sims by default.
On the other hand American phone models only ever had the one sim card slot. It’s a bit strange that eSims haven’t been as widely adopted.
My last phone had a dual physical sim in the same slot. Unfortunately it was shared with the SD card reader so you couldn’t have dual sim and an SD card.
I think that’s because of Chinese people’s travelling habits. Popular domestic travel destinations include Hainan for a tropical experience, Sichuan for pandas, Beijing for landmarks, Hong Kong for fake Britain, Macau for gambling, and Taiwan because it seems foreign enough without being actually too foreign (to Chinese people).
Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan require travel permits to enter, despite the Chinese government considering them “domestic”. They kinda straddle the line between actual domestic and international. Regardless, it’s not common for Chinese people to have phone plans that work in Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan, so they’ll buy the disposable SIM cards I talked about earlier. That’s why phones typically have two SIM slots.
Getting visas to travel internationally is a pain for Chinese people because they have to visit a consulate or embassy, apply, and then be subject to high scrutiny. After all, it seems everyone’s scared of Chinese spies nowadays. It’s also very expensive by Chinese standards compared to applying for a cheap HK/MO/TW travel permit. The People’s Republic of China passport is pretty weak compared to European or American passports. Chinese people can get visa-on-arrival or visa-free access in South Asian countries, Central Asia, or Africa, but these destinations are not popular with Chinese tourists.
Physical since I carried it over from my old phone which didn’t support eSIM.
I did get an eSIM some time ago for a short vacation in switzerland though. The activation went surprisingly smooth even though I had to wait a day before they verified me. The verification delay was probably because I used a foreign ID to register at a swiss provider for that eSIM.
I was leery of eSIM when it first came out. Seemed like it was just a way for carriers to prevent you from swapping because you’d have to go through hoops.
After I got my iPhone 14 pro however, I actually really like it. I went on my honeymoon and didn’t have any cell service and I didn’t speak the local language (I’m an idiot), but luckily I was able to use WiFi and get an eSIM setup with a local carrier in like 15 minutes all without having to go to the store. It was great.
