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Comment by rock_artist | Hacker News Reader

One implication not considered with eSIM is that not the SIM is indeed virtual. if something happens to the device... you need to do much more to get yourself up and running.

An example, my wife dropped her phone and her screen is now completely broken. phone unusable. When the phone has a physical SIM, I can simply take out the SIM and put it in a backup/older phone.

With eSIM only, I need to:

contact the carrier or have an additional phone with additional "backup" sim.

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Some carriers (for example, all the major carriers in the U.S., Telekom in Germany, and Vodafone in Australia) have eSIM "Quick Transfer", which requires no contact with the carrier at all:

https://www.t-mobile.com/support/tutorials/device/apple/ipho...

It's just a series of steps that you do on both phones, not that different than transferring a physical SIM.

This does not work in the parent's scenario of the phone with the sim not having a working screen because you need to do things on both phones.

Same happened to my sons phone, but it has an esim. I pulled out the original sim paper, scanned the QR code, entered the confirmation and SIM pin. Bam, it was transferred instantly to the new phone. It was easier than a traditional sim, simply because I didn’t have to create or find a tool to open the sim tray.

No, but you do have to keep the original paper around, assuming you got one in the first place. Those things easily get junked or misplaced.

You can also go online to do it in like three clicks, but you have to verify stuff to get the QR code. And don’t you keep the original paper the physical sim comes on for the PUK?

I make a note of the PUK and IMSI in the family OneNote. Have so for years.

Nothing stopping you from storing the QR code either.

QR codes can be one-time-use only though; it depends on the carrier. They can also be revoked (sometimes by accident - maybe their "reusability" was an oversight to begin with that's now been corrected) which you will only realize when it's too late.

It seems like you’re just rationalizing why you don’t like them. It’s ok not to like them.

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