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Comment by sunnybeetroot | Hacker News Reader

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?

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