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Comment by trevor-e | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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.

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