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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

I will keep using SIM as long as it is possible, not only is eSIM a way for operators to impose restrictions on unlocked pre-paid phones, some really like to take their cut every time that eSIM gets moved, for something free of charge and doable under a few seconds with a regular SIM.

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So far, the main effect of eSIM was creating a lot of competition and forcing prices down.

If your provider is trying to charge you every time yo need to move your SIM, have you considered a different provider?

Maybe that is an US thing, there has alway been enough pre-paid competition in Europe, and I bet on other continents as well.

What good is competition if privacy are not maintained?

If anything, lack of privacy is causing this massive "gold rush" toward eSIM. Ancillary benefits are massive for ad companies, vendors, sales, marketers.

I've bought a 9esim, which is a physical SIM you can download eSIMs to. It's the best of both worlds for me, and I can move my data eSIM between phones, routers, and car.

This is interesting, does it only work with specific mobile providers though?

No, since eSIMs are basically just programmable SIMs literally soldered onto the motherboard, I imagine it works with all providers that support eSIMs.

Thanks, that makes sense. I’m curious how this works when it comes to the sim management in the phone. For example on iOS, one SIM and one eSIM have independent on/off switches. If you have one SIM but it contains multiple eSIMs inside of it, I wonder if iOS displays only one SIM or multiple eSIMs.

The OS only ever sees one SIM on this SIM, you have an app to program the SIM you want to actually be active on the card, and that's how you switch.

Ahh I see makes sense. So it’s not entirely a replacement if you wish to utilise the feature of having multiple eSIMs enabled at the same time. Thank you for the details.

I don't think you can do that with any phone, though. Given that the eSIM is a programmable SIM soldered onto the motherboard, you can always only have one connection active on it at a time.

On iOS you can have 2 active at the same time:

https://support.apple.com/en-ae/118227

> You can have two eSIMs active at the same time on supported iPhone models. For example, you can use one eSIM for your home phone number and another eSIM for the place you're visiting.

I think that's because the phone has two eSIM modules, same as if you have a two-SIM phone with two of these eSIM SIMs.

That would make sense, but it does indicate that 9eSIM isn’t a 100% replacement. If you wish to use multiple eSIMs at the same time, you will need to stick with the phones feature, instead of 9eSIM.

If your phone has two physical SIM slots you can fill them both with removable eSIM cards.

Does it avoid Hong Kong?

It's a SIM. Do SIMs avoid Hong Kong?

eSIM, not SIM. In its protocol.

An eSIM is just a SIM though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESIM

Not really true. I definitely failed to get one of these cards working with a provider. Some providers insist on only allowing device models they're familiar with, based on the IMEI/EID/etc.

And that's a major flaw of eSIM. Providers shouldn't even have been given that kind of discrimination capability.

With a physical SIM, I can pry my card out of one phone and put it into another, and expect it to work. With eSIM, every single eSIM has to be carrier approved and GSMA approved, and every single transfer from one eSIM to another has to be carrier approved too.

That's bad enough, but my biggest beef isn't even the need for carrier approval per se, but the fact that even when the carrier would intend to approve it, it still requires (a) an additional hurdle, (b) often a separate internet connection, and (c) an unbounded amount of wasted time to make it happen.

SoftSIM is straight up a better deal. But it's B2B only for now.

> With a physical SIM, I can pry my card out of one phone and put it into another, and expect it to work

Is anything preventing the provider from denying a SIM swap based on IMEI?

eSIM seems like a gradual return to the device-locked model that was IS-95/CDMA in the 90s and early 2000s, where it contrasted with the openness of GSM.

> not only is eSIM a way for operators to impose restrictions on unlocked pre-paid phones

Are you outside the US? I've used eSIM on iOS many times with a number of carriers and MVNOs and never noticed a fee (unless you're talking about a postpaid carrier's line activation fee, usually around $36, not related to esim or not)

It's not only the fee. eSIM simply needs too many entities to cooperate just so you don't have to look for a paper clip.

An eSIM only phone could have a bigger battery, if the manufacturer replaces the sim tray with a larger battery. That’s what Apple has done in the iPhone 17 series released last week. The US versions are eSIM only, and have better battery life.

That’s a trade a lot of people would gladly make.

The iPhone 17 in the UK still has the SIM tray, something I'm glad about. Knowing I can pull the SIM and slot it into my old iPhone 8 where there is no eSim support is valuable to me.

And how about knowing that it takes a minute to swap a physical sim and there is no server to take its sweet time and at worst not respond like for eSIM?

Say you arrive somewhere where your regular provider doesn't have signal so you get a prepaid sim from the one provider that does have signal. How do you install it if it's an eSIM? You don't have connectivity on your regular.

> Say you arrive somewhere where your regular provider doesn't have signal so you get a prepaid sim from the one provider that does have signal. How do you install it if it's an eSIM?

One, you can plan ahead. Two, most of those spots have Wi-fi for this purpose.

There are legitimate reasons to prefer a physical SIM. This isn't one.

I just think your mountain holidays aren't remote enough :)

I'm not saying your scenario is unrealistic. I'm just saying it's avoidable. I'll generally buy an eSim, if I need it, before taking off for my destination. In the cases where I forgot and was somewhere I couldn't get it, the SIM vendor let me hotspot to activate.

Only time I’ve used an eSIM was a potential problem with roaming on our corporate deal (was supped to be free roaming but they stop said $1.80 a meg) when I landed in New York. I was connecting before we’d finished taxiing.

I have no idea where to get a local sim from, but it would mean I wouldn’t have my normal phone number (unless I had a phone with two physical sims - very rare), and presumably would have had to find a shop at 3 am body clock time and 10pm local time. Maybe there was one post customs, I don’t know as I was autopiloting to the taxi.

>a phone with two physical sims - very rare

...? - they are literally the norm in Android land nowadays, it's only Apple that INSISTS upon a single SIM or, in third-world variants, two eSIMs.

People can buy roaming and travel sims before they travel and have them delivered to them and activated.

In Europe, in the past it used to cost about 5€ and there was a limitation on the amount of swaps.

As it is nowadays, I am not up to date.

Bouygues France still charged a 10€ fee as of September 2024. Didn't need to move it to another phone though, so I don't know how that works.

That 10 € fee is exactly the cost they would have charged for a physical SIM, shipping included.

Bouygues was one of the companies lamenting the change. They viewed it as a "loss of connection with their customers", whatever that means. I haven't set foot in a phone store in I don't even remember how long, but at least 10 years, so I have no idea what the hell they're talking about.

Read it as: "we wouldn't be able to use our physical stores and physical SIM card distribution as an advantage anymore".

Makes it harder to sell a SIM card along with a new phone, or upsell an entire new phone to someone who wants a SIM card.

eSIM profiles also cost money in a sense - there’s a cost per-profile generated and per download usually from the eSIM personalization provider.

I agree. Thankfully in my country (Australia) eSIMs are handled pretty well, no charges for updates/changes and can be done without interacting with a customer service rep. You can also switch back from eSIM to a new physical SIM (say if preparing to travel).

This is a place where I really think Apple, Google, etc could throw their weight around for good.

If Apple just said to carriers: "You can't sell any iPhone's unless eSIM activations, changes, and updates are free for everyone, and take less than one hour." I think many would follow suit.

The iPhone transfer process actually tries to transfer the eSIM automatically, but it seems to require the carrier to support it.

I suspect Apple is still in the process of forcing every carrier to just support eSIM in the first place, before trying to push making it work well. The second part might end up being implemented through law though.

That's true.

I think carriers always need to be pushed via law. Australia mandated carriers to support number portability (including transfer time-frames) in 2001-ish. It suddenly became so easy to shop around, keeping your number was super easy.

Some started charging 'port out' fees, but that was squashed too.

eSIM provisioning needs wifi. Which means that eSIM transfer can be blocked at any of the bajillion internet levels. eSIM is backwards technology at DRM'ing our devices and the access service

Yeah plus you can take out the physical SIM to (mostly?) guarantee your cellular service won't be utilized by the phone. I mean, barring some hidden back-door eSIM, I guess.

At least in Europe and the US, you can call emergengy numbers (112, 911) without any SIM card installed. So your phone can certainly connect to the cellular network without a SIM.

To piggyback, the SIM card is only needed for identify/authentication/billing. Your phone is already in contact with all the towers nearby. Emergency calls, by law in the US, go out to the strongest towers in reach, get tagged high priority, any bypass any authentication/billing.

Some countries (e.g. Germany) disabled this because there was too much abuse.

Wtf! Why do I need to find this out via HN? I live in Germany and all info I've ever seen says you can always call 112 in Europe with any phone you have on hand, active subscription or not, and worldwide potentially a different number but that it's part of the GSM standard that it lets you call via any carrier because your emergency call is treated differently, always gets accepted and routed with priority

Also considering you're required to authenticate to the government before being allowed to have a mobile phone number in Germany, some people might choose to mainly use their device on WiFis and with downloaded maps and other data. It's not like mobile data is that reliable in Germany anyway. That'd be an unpleasant surprise if you are subsequently denied emergency services in the life-threatening situations that 112 is for

I didn't believe you, or that it was possibly a temporary thing, but I checked and it seems to be true since 2009 with no news since. I'm curious to try it (if there were a test number like 117 and 119 in Belgium¹) because I'm still a bit in disbelief, or to know if it e.g. works with a data-only SIM, or if an expired SIM works (if it ran out yesterday and you haven't had time to fix it or charge up the prepaid card), or if you forgot the SIM PIN due to stress (happened to me once when the phone needed a reboot, so I spent my trip abroad without mobile service until I got home and could reset it). Is it that easy to change the IMEI of a device, that pranksters abuse the service with it constantly if not blocked outright? Why isn't this a thing in other countries? I have so many questions

What a backwater this is in terms of communications infrastructure

¹ https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noodcentrale_112#Testnummers_n..., English translation on https://www.reddit.com/r/belgium/comments/191hryo/comment/kh...

I bought an iPhone 16e which I am about to sell, not only because of iOS 26 (horrific looking and battery drain), but I did not know they switched to only eSIMs. I have a flip phone which I like to use when I have no need for a smart phone. Now there is no way for me to switch. Plus, I know when I take out my SIM there is no way any one is tracking my phone.

eSIMs just another way these companies are trying to control, and as you said, profit, off of their customers.

I see this as taking ownership away from the customer as well. I no longer own the SIM in essence.

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