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Comment by ropintus | Hacker News Reader

My phone broke down a few weeks ago, along with the eSIM inside it. The eSIM was very important to me because I used it for everything. If it had been a physical SIM card, I could have simply bought a new phone and moved the SIM card to it. This was a painful lesson, and I have decided not to use eSIM again.

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I had a similar experience; went to an African country for a while, eSIM stops working, support has no idea and suggested downloading it again, which requires 2FA with the number tied to the eSIM, was told to come to one of their stores (which are not in Africa) etc etc.

Sticking to physical for another couple off years until the bugs are worked out.

Of the 3 Pixel 6a phones I've provisioned with eSIMs two of them have mysteriously failed and required me to order physical SIMs to get working again. All attempts by support to resurrect the eSIM failed in both cases. It doesn't help that the error reporting is almost completely useless, giving only a generic error code.

Interestingly it's the exact model I have.

What was the “everything” you’re referring to? Physical sims can fail too, so not a good place to store a phone book if that’s what you mean.

Some providers are better than others at generating and replacing esims. The worst one I came across was Vodafone which removed passwords from their accounts and instead texted a code to log in - of course this is impossible without access to a sim, so good luck I suppose.

> Physical sims can fail too, so not a good place to store a phone book if that’s what you mean.

Sure, but often when a phone fails you can just buy a new phone (or borrow a temporary one) and be able to restore your connection without a carrier's intervention.

An eSIM doesn't "break". You can just get a new phone and transfer the eSIM yourself (it does depend on the carrier).

Only if you have another device with internet access. If you need your SIM to access the internet or your account, you're S.O.L.

When I mention that my phone "broke," I mean that my SIM cards stopped responding completely. I couldn't use it to access the internet or make/receive calls and messages. I concluded that the issue was with my mobile phone because I was using a physical SIM card alongside my eSIM, and the physical SIM also stopped working simultaneously. However, when I transferred my physical SIM to a new device, it started working again.

Can you explain exactly what you mean when you say you used the eSIM "for everything"?

Probably to receive 2FA and connect to the internet. Not specifically the eSIM.

All my 2FA authentications were linked to this SIM card, including all my internet banking services and other payment systems. Fortunately, I had some money set aside for emergencies. I also utilized this mobile number for various online services and relied on it as my primary method of communication.

It’s inconvenient, but surely you’re able to pretty easily get the number ported to a new eSIM…? You should still have the account and basically should just need to find some WiFi to download it on a different device?

I travel a fair bit, all this makes me think how hard this would be if I was in, say, Europe and my phone was stolen - to get a new physical SIM I’d need to visit a physical store in Australia! Perhaps I could have a family member visit and send it to me in the mail, but in just a slightly different situation the physical SIM is potentially a lot more problematic!

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