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Comment by pieterhg | Hacker News Reader

This hasn't been my experience. I use only eSIMs now on an iPhone 13. I buy eSIMs via Airalo's iOS app (not affiliated, not an ad but love it).

It takes me 30 seconds from buying an eSIM in any country worldwide from their app, paying with Apple Pay, to having it active and working with data and voice line.

I travel a lot and before it'd take 15 minutes to sometimes an hour of driving to a phone shop or finding it at the airport, getting your passport copied (fraud risk), getting foreign money in cash out to pay, and handing a stranger your phone.

Big improvement for me. And I can run 2x eSIMs at the same time!

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Airalo sounds interesting. I'm a bit suspicious of the offering though after studying their website. No business address, no mention where it's based, privacy policy is not GDRP compliant. Not sure if this is a serious business.

Airalo is just one of multiple online retailers, like Mobimatter or Holafly. eSIMdb is a good starting point as well.

Serious question: Who has the time to research all that stuff before buying a 5 euro eSIM? Why bother?

Airalo is legit, whether or not they're "serious" really doesn't matter.

The problem with services like Airalo is that they almost never give you a local phone number. In many countries getting a phone number involves showing a physical id.

Problem? This seems like a huge win, the sooner we get rid of phone numbers the better.

How does one make outgoing calls without a voice-enabled number?

Airalo is data-only plan, so you have to either use another SIM card for making phone calls, or use VoIP/Skype/Viber/etc.

Just top up a VOIP service with $10 and never run out of credit because nobody makes regular phone calls in 2022?

What happens when you have more than the 2 active? Can they still be stored on the phone and reactivated in the future?

yep, you can have multiple eSIM and just swap on the fly

>And I can run 2x eSIMs at the same time

Dual SIM devices were available for a long time.

Yes, most of them were dual standy sim, which meant that you wouldn't get calls from one while talking on another.

> Dual SIM devices were available for a long time.

Dual eSIM, however, are fairly new.

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