Apple Removes SIM Card Tray on All iPhone 14 Models in U.S.
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
In fact Apple knows this themselves, which is why international iPhone 14 models are going to keep the SIM tray. Removing it from US models is such a bizarre decision to me. Does the target iPhone user in the US just not travel?
With that being said, I think it would be better if carriers were just global tbh. But that's a dream.
And do you think you will always get the best prices/services compared to SIM cards sold to locals?
I don't think the incentives go that way. It's more like step 1) limit the visibility of the alternatives in the name of convenience/simplicity step 2) "these are not the alternatives you are looking for"
For the phone company, their best bet is that they'll nickel and dime you through roaming, if for some reason you need this exact phone number to receive calls.
If you just need to use your skype/google voice number , they know you don't need roaming, as a local company will be less expansive, but they can still try to push you towards their "friendly favored partner" (which bad prices due to generous revenue sharing agreement)
If your phone is unlocked and is not ESIM only, there's nothing they can do to let local competition deliver you the cheapest service
However my verizon "Travel Pass" has never ever worked in any country I've tried it in. Even when I ended up getting billed for.the $10/day to use it I still never had service.
On the other hand a 70gb Vodafone SIM card was 10 euro and all I had to do was stick it in and wait 30 seconds.
It's good to have options, esp tried and true ones
With a physical SIM you can insert it into your device, even if there's no connectivity available to you.
That's not to mention how likely carriers are to make it difficult to swap eSIMs around.
T-Mobile is pretty close. Most monthly plans get unlimited data and text in 200+(?) countries. Pay $10 extra for better data speeds. Haven't had to buy an airport SIM since I was already covered for the things I use - rideshare apps, google maps, hotel/airline apps, messaging apps and regular sms. Would be nice to get even higher data speeds in places that have it, but it's still very much usable and useful.
Also, a lot of 2 factor verification systems have trouble messaging international numbers. A lot of the airport Wi-Fi’s I try to log into, for example, almost never succeed in sending me a pin on my international number.
Adding a roaming data plan to my existing number only solves a small number of the problems international travelers face. And even those problems are almost always resolved at a higher cost than getting a local SIM.
Does having a SIM tray stop you from replying to that prompt?
> and you could just opt-in to something straight from your phone and be connected before you even get off the plane without needing to buy a disposable SIM card.
Does having a SIM tray remove your ability to choose?
Meanwhile, people use multiple SIMs even without leaving their home town as some mobile internet providers offer better services than bundled voice+internet services, having to use multiple cellphone numbers is a reality, and actually subscribing to separate services in multiple countries is a thing as well.
For instance, right now I have two SIM cards from two separate operators from two separate countries in one of my phones, and I would have a third if that was an option. Why is this suddenly a bad thing?
Let’s say there’s a product that has 2 similar features A & B.
For its next version of the product Apple removes feature B.
Then folks complain about how there are things they cannot do because feature B is missing.
The Apple fans respond by extolling the benefits of feature A.
The problem is that I already had all those benefits of feature A when Apple shipped the product with both A and B. The Apple fans convert the actual argument, which is (A AND B) vs (Only A) into a strawman argument, which is (Only B) vs (Only A).
Then again, just using a carrier that has global coverage would be even better.
I mean are you really going to be upset that one multi-billion dollar corporation is getting a share of the revenue of other multi-billion dollar corporations? Should we be upset that Amazon sells Apple products on Amazon.com?
Or do you think Apple and others should just not create features like this or make it easier for you to switch carriers in different countries when the carriers themselves are making billions ripping you off with overpriced throw-away SIM cards?
Ultimately if they're developing features like this, I don't care if they do or don't get a cut. My life gets a lot better. If (to use the US as an example) Verizon makes a little less money because they're paying Apple. Whatever. Could not care less.
Apple will probably eventually launch their own service anyway unless anti-trust breaks them up. iPhone is so huge that they can truly own the full stack if they so desire.
The best we will ever get is if some MVNO gets a good enough deal on their global transit that they can provide some kind of global roaming service like that by way of agreements with physical carriers in many countries.
Getting a model from Canada is an option, but those don't support mmWave 5G, and I'm often in areas where I'd actually use it.
They want the industry to move on from physical sim to esim, so they are essentially forcing it to.
I imagine the odds of Verizon Prepaid getting esim support in the near future have greatly increased since this announcement.
be weary of the cheaper eSim providers, as they may not be using the best networks in a given country. Many do not disclose country specific network carriers, and others are hidden deep in documentation. Airalo is among the most transparent and has different vendors for their Global, EU, and country specific plans, with country specific packages usually having the best national carrier support.
I've spent a bit of time researching this in this past as Airalo wasn't usually the cheapest.
https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/ is the best resource I have discovered to compare country specific network coverage
AT&T charges me $10/day up to $100/month for unlimited calls, texting, and data while overseas, virtually anywhere in the world. That's low enough I can't be bothered to go to the trouble of SIM purchase, swapping, and giving everyone my temporary number on arrival.
If you are paying $100+ for a cell phone plan in the US today you are being taken for a ride.
Until you add the $20-30 in taxes and fees they don’t show on their pricing page.
“Regulatory Charge”, “Admin & Telco Recovery Charge”, “Gross Receipts Surchg”, and “Fed Universal Service Charge”, and that doesn’t even include the state/local ones; they’re just Verizon’s set.
Looks like it's up since my number, too.
https://www.cnbc.com/select/how-to-cut-your-cell-phone-bill-...
> In fact, JD Power told CNBC that the average cell phone bill is now $144.
(T Mobile Metro)
For lots of people $100 is a significant amount compared to a $5 prepaid sim they can get locally.
And heaven forbid if they don’t have an iPhone. In some countries they’ll be charged large sums of money to text you as well.
I am not sure how true this is anymore, but it was in the US until at least a few years ago (and may still be on many carriers/plans) in many countries they would be charged for receiving texts from you as well.
Iphones are Nikes and the major consumers are poor people.
The SIM tray adds manufacturing cost and complexity. It's also a structural weak point and makes waterproofing harder - which adds to warranty/applecare+ costs.
Therefore it's an easy cost-cutting move to get rid of the SIM tray on US models to bring the costs back in line.
I will say this: they should have kept the tray on the Pro Max models, which is what international travelers use.
Please explain then why I have been seeing iPhone 13 ads that showcase how it handles all sorts of drops and spills and sprinkles and kitchen hazards while sporting the SIM tray.
Unbelievable.
It just makes it more difficult and therefore more expensive to manufacture.
Most people do not care about the SIM tray. There are apps that can get you e-sims for data in every country in the world.
Physical SIM cards are largely a liability. They need to be replaced as the network changes (as T-mobile had to for standalone 5G) and they make phone theft even more of a headache because phone thieves can take your SIM card and use it for SMS-based OTP and password resets.
I would rather have mmWave.
I don't understand how modern hard drives are not helium proof. Apparently, everything is a permeable solid.
1. There are companies specifically doing esims for data effectively everywhere in the world.
2. Google Fi exists
3. Just get an international plan? It’s honestly so much easier than juggling sims.
That's a very country-specific view. It does not hold for many people.
Losing the ability to easily swap physical SIM cards seems like a major loss in functionality and robustness for consumers. All for a minor convenience during first setup. Am I missing something?
The ability to move SIM cards around isn't something the carrier likes. eSIMs give them that control back.
The ability for you to easily pick up a local SIM while travelling isn't something either the local carrier wants (they'd rather be paid 10x as much in roaming fees) nor your primary carrier wants (they'd rather have you roaming which means they can now tack on a bigger margin on the roaming fees).
eSIM involves the carrier during the provisioning step (the QR code you get is one-time-use) and I don't believe you can move them, which means to move the eSIM the carrier needs to be involved again to give you a new QR code. This could involve fees or other unreasonable requirements.
Sure there's plenty of upsides to eSims
1. You can have any number of eSims on your device and have two active simultaneously, such as one for a data and one for a calling. You can optimise your costs based on who is providing the better deal.
2. You can 'manually' switch out eSims or set up location based shortcuts to put in the correct eSim for you (the automation is useful for people who regularly cross a border.)
3. eSims can be loaded directly from an app, this is how the majority of eSims function - QR codes are just another means of loading an eSim without an app or when using a provider that doesn't support loading eSims without an active data plan.
4. Global eSim data plan providers are competitive. An example is TruPhone which I found cheaper than local alternatives. Local providers cash in on holidaymakers.
5. Purchasing a local calling plan requires ID such as a passport (regardless for eSim or physical sim cards), if just needing data however: global eSim-based data providers don't have this burden.
6. Switching physical sims can wear them down to become faulty (such as by touching their contacts them too much) - eSim can be sent digitally or scanned from a physical card. It's much faster to get a phone back on a network with eSims than it is physical sims.
The -real- downsides of eSims:
1. eSims are largely the domain of wealthier countries. Many African providers don't have local eSim offerings (but the global providers still function of course).
2. China is a notable hold out on eSims because data plans can be obtained without providing your ID to the government, there is a similar story with other countries that have tight filtering/control over their internet.
My quick web search revealed eSIMs to be non-portable.
Clearly Apple is going to save billions of dollars because they don't have to include those little metal sim tray openers in the box anymore.
Jokes aside, I doubt people swap sims very often and when they do it is because they are doing a first setup. International travel is obviously an instance where people do swap sims but I expect it will become easier to use esim for this now that you have to.
I welcome the move to esim-only and have been using it since the Pixel 2. Having to stick a little 256KB card into the side of my state of the art, thousand dollar phone just so it can connect to a cellular network and having to get a new card if I want to swap networks is ridiculous.
I think it is a huge inconvenience. When I was with my stepdad, trying to port a SIM to an eSIM took over 20 minutes. Since my mom wasn't there, we attempted to call her because they needed at least the last four of her SSN and the account password (which she couldn't remember).
In the end, we found out that we could simply just pop out the old SIM and put it in the new phone. That took us all of 30 seconds.
Probably also comes with a minor reduction in material / manufacturing costs? One less port and moving part that has to be waterproofed.
I wonder if you can run dual eSIM.
[0]: Using Dual SIM with an eSIM ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209044 )
I was thinking more about how eSIM really limits you and adds carrier control. For example, my partner has a cell plan that allows you a big bucket of data, then lets you link multiple SIMs to that data. The idea is it's for your tablets, watches, etc. But I use a secondary SIM from his plan on my phone to add to my data for free. But there's no way to install an eSIM for this plan on a secondary device as it wasn't an "intended use" to use multiple phones. With a physical SIM, I can use this data on any device I choose.
eSIM is a very nice convenient feature, but not at the expense of a physical SIM.
I know that’s not exactly what everyone would want, but for some use cases that may suffice.
The trick is not to buy "global data", but just data for the country you are visiting. For example compare TruPhone to O2.
TruPhone eSim: 16 EUR for 20GB, 30 day validity (this is the most expensive option.)
O2 Sim-only: 15 GBP for 5GB, 12 month validity. (this is the cheapest option.)
A traveller doesn't need 12 months of validity, they need data - Local providers rip off travellers by not making reasonable plans available. The biggest scam are the "1pound" plans in Tesco, which are not 1 pound plans, but just the cost to buy the sim card which then requires a costly plan.
That Truphone deal is not bad but outside of Europe the plans are much more expensive. Mexico is US$24 for 5GB whereas a local SIM works at US$10 with 6GB and unlimited Facebook/WhatsApp/Twitter.
Edit: looking at O2 it seems to be £15 for 20GB. Not sure where your figure is from.
Cell provider websites are almost universally garbage and swapping IMEIs to activate different phone hardware was a complete nightmare that bugged out far too often.
If the eSIM swapping process is at all similar, this feels like a step backwards even if you don’t travel a lot.
eSIM seems to be good for the carrier (who doesn't have to ship anything or manage a database of SIMs for sale: provision on demand) but not for the customer.
Personally, I will not buy anything that doesn't offer an option for an actual SIM. SIM? Yes! eSIM+SIM? Sure! eSIM only? Nope.
It's like these services that ask "for your safety, please enter" (whatever, say the SSN): in general, when it says that, it's the opposite: it's for the safety of the service provider, putting the user at risk, and adding inconvenience.
Just like "The Democratic Republic of..." old joke: if it needs to say so and to add that in its name, it's likely neither a democracy nor a republic.
From Lord of War:
> "Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors Than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters."
Except that as a customer I can buy cell service from my phone without having to anywhere or have anything shipped to me. eSIM is great for me personally. I had bought cell service on my main iPad (Mini 6) and it was seamless, then a few months later I tried to do the same on an iPad 6 (test/demo device) and realized I would have to get a real sim card so I just gave up and moved on because it wasn't that important and would have just been a "nice to have". eSIM makes my life easier though I understand international travelers might have some rough spots until the carriers get onboard (which they will because... Apple).
I believe this is already supported. Haven't used esims extensively, but I see toggles for activating them on android. Not sure if there's a limit there. The real limit is only how many can be active at the same time.
If you preferent results to excuses, you get a dual sim phone and use whichever line has the most bars (I keep a Tmobile 5G access point for my computer stuff)
Hopefully
Currently 82 countries have eSim support for iPhone, typically it is poorer countries that don't have eSim support.
More reasonably one would utilise an inexpensive worldwide provider such as TruPhone for travelling - there are currently 15 worldwide eSim providers for iPhones.