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Comment by stanislavb | Hacker News Reader

It's good that he's highlighting the potential issues with the eSim. To me, forcing every new iPhone user to go all-in with eSim is ridiculous. That will work for many, yet it could be a painful issue for some.

Given that they still sell iPhone 14 with regular SIM cards, why wouldn't they allow that option in the US ¯\_(ツ)_/¯!?

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> forcing every new iPhone user to go all-in with eSim is ridiculous. That will work for many, yet it could be a painful issue for some

Floppy disks. Java. Disk drives. Headphone jacks. This is Apple’s M.O.

You forgot power cable. Inductive for the win. I figure the cable is just a backup for real problems

The cable is still good for charging (if you need fast) and I like it a lot for CarPlay because in my experience wireless CarPlay has a ton of lag to it.

I do wonder what they do if they remove the port completely, how do they fix the phone if it gets truly messed up? Does it become like the watch where they just have to swap it out with a different one and send it back to Apple?

Unless they’ve changed it you still need a USB cable to sync directly from finder for the first time.

I recently tried buying an esim while travelling to Sweden because I always forget to buy one at the airport, or in advance. It actually worked out very well, and it was nice not to have to swap out my existing sim and take on a new phone number across all the messaging apps while I was there.

The thing that strikes me as ridiculous is that in the US on CDMA carriers, there was the exact same thing as "eSIMs" for years. You had to beg and plead with your carrier to set up and provision your phone, since there was no physical SIM.

So for Apple to pitch this as "wow, it's a new system where instead of just putting in a sim card you have to grovel to your carrier to set up your phone", it hardly strikes me as better UX.

Carriers have been fighting sims for years because it makes it too easy to switch carriers. I think TMobile is the first one out of the gate to do this. You can download their app, try the service for a month or two by activating the esaim. If you like it, you can transfer your service right from the app.

Not having to talk to sales reps or go to stores is a big win for customers. Granted, this is mostly hypothetical at this point but it is coming.

Have you tried eSIM? It’s dependent on carrier, of course, but it’s actually an incredible UX.

My partner lost his phone (and SIM) recently and I was able to transfer his T-Mobile line to a different iPhone in a few minutes using eSIM. It was totally automated using the T-Mobile website — enter the IMEI then scan a QR code with iPhone camera.

I saved a trip to the store to get a new SIM card and didn’t have to talk to a human.

What sort of security is there? How do they prevent anyone from registering your number to a new phone?

The usual: My account password, two factor auth, account security PIN. Additionally, an SMS is sent to the number that’s being transferred giving a chance to block (with a timeout to auto-approve if the device is lost).

I haven’t explored it but I would assume there is also an optional “high security mode” lock — something like requiring account changes to happen in-store with physical ID.

How is having to type into an app your account password, do two factor auth, type account security PIN a better UX then pulling out a physical SIM and putting it into another phone?

More secure at least, if my phone is lost or stolen they can't just take the SIM out and rack up international charges on my account, etc.

Because I didn't have a physical SIM. The phone was lost.

It will be painful for an incredibly tiny number of people, and vastly superior for basically everyone else. Plus, it frees up valuable physical space inside the phone.

another counterpoint: I just got back from a trip in Europe and had to swap my sim card back when we landed. I forgot to ask for the small (and easily losable) tool they give you to pop open the tray, but luckily my SO had an earring that was able to fit.

How do you buy/activate a temp e-sim when traveling? And as most shops capable of doing so? My family goes to the UK often and usually get a local sim.

You just do it online. In the Wi-Fi the airport offers. I did just that with Ubigi. Far more convenient.

Just pick a random cellular provider, visit their website, and that’s it? Do they have the cheap pay as you go plans available? Honestly don’t know - we’ve always gone to the local Tesco and asked the sales clerk for a sim on whatever service works best in whatever town we’re in.

Pretty much.

For example, if you were coming to visit me in Australia, you could get an Optus eSim for the days you are here: https://www.optus.com.au/prepaid/esim

Annoyingly, its not yet perfect. Vodafone for example can do prepaid, but requires the prepaid physical SIM to be activated first then transferred: a Vodafone store can do it of course, but that's a pain.

https://www.vodafone.com.au/support/device/esim?accordion-id...

I imagine this will get better as time goes on, though.

Woolworths can do pure online eSim only prepaid: https://mobile.woolworths.com.au/mobile-phone/esim

I recently visited France. Before flying from the US, I purchased an Orange e-sim online and activated it while at the airport in the US. As soon as I landed in Paris, I was connected to Orange network and was able to use internet instantly.

I used Airalo App to buy and refill multiple eSims while travelling through Europe this summer. I had an American Physical sim on my iPhone 11 and 2 eSims at some point with both physical and 1 eSIM being on at one time while the 2nd eSIM was off. When i would arrive in a ne country, I would switch one ESIM off and switch another one on. Note: you do need internet access to load an eSIM onto your phone, but you can preload it prior to arriving in its region

While clearly the future, in many countries you can only get expensive global eSIMs at the moment.

I’ve spent time in both the UK and Mexico this year and it would have cost 2-5x as much if I couldn’t get use a physical SIM.

that looks awesome tho some of the deals are really bad - e.g. morocco has 1gb for 7 days for 10 usd. I am pretty sure I bought something like 30gb for 15 eur. Same for UK and France, the prices there are just too much and you can get cheaper deals in person.

But again I love the app and hope something like that becomes big enough that the big operators will integrate with it.

I realise this isn't for everyone, but if you're changing sim often enough those sim card proddy tools fit nicely on keyrings. I fly from Canada to the UK roughly once a year to visit family and haven't felt like it's taking up excess space the rest of the year.

You say this but at the same time Apple is selling iPhone 14 with two physical sim trays in China. https://i.imgur.com/xsvwViv.png

If you wait for the carriers to do something as consumer friendly as supporting eSIMs, you're in for a very long wait.

It's not in their best interests to allow friction free price shopping.

As someone who switches between two phones somewhat regularly, eSim is just not doable for me. Thankfully I'm not in the US so this specific iPhone 14 situation doesn't effect me but I can totally see them forcing this on us here in Australia as well.

I’m not in the US and I’m happy with this new change. Local telcos have eSim support but only for postpaid. Now US iPhone users will come and demand eSim for prepaid, it should finally force them to support prepaid users (or lose out to competitors).

I switched to T-Mobile last year and they basically insisted on a physical SIM card. They told me I wouldn’t get 5G with an eSIM. That sounded like BS, but I was never able to figure out why they would care what time of SIM I used.

Bet there was some sort of commission thing involved.

Why is an esim a problem?

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