- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
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It’s like everyone forgot what a pain in the ass it used to be when Verizon was cdma and didn’t use sim cards.
eSIM sounds good on paper, but the implementation is horrible. You should be able to easily back them up. Also I expected to be able to have many many eSIMs rather than be limited to one or two.
I’ve actually just had my eSIM decision backfire on me.
I switched months ago and hadn’t had an issue until I got ready to go to an airport last week. I figured I’d be able to switch off the eSIM and switch on Airplane Mode so my phone could essentially be an offline iPod, but when I landed and tried turning it back on it didn’t work. I then found people discussing the same issue on their phones (GrapheneOS + Pixel 7) and really regretted messing with it.
My carrier’s account login hilariously requires an SMS 2FA to the phone number that’s been yeeted from existence and since I’ve been staying with in-laws this Christmas I’m not willing to sit on hold for however many hours to recover my account till I get home.
What prompted you to disable your eSIM? Airplane mode works just fine on its own to temporarily disable the cellular connection, and you can turn Wifi and Bluetooth back on while in airplane mode. There’s also several settings to turn off data roaming if you were worried about accidental extra charges on your phone plan.
Yeah I just wasn’t thinking clearly be it early morning or lack of coffee or both. I definitely won’t repeat this mistake so its a learning moment now
And for people that don’t want proprietary carrier apps on there phone? Don’t have WiFi, so you can’t download the virtual sim? On a OS that isn’t Google or Apple?
You don’t need a carrier app. The phone OS asks the carrier network for activation and pulls the esim. I’ve done this several times in lineageos and grapheneos.
It does require some Google service related functionality though I believe so may not work without gapps (may work with microg and graphenos has its own handling as you said).
I think I’d be fine if I had to use eSIM (when I get a new phone every few years, I touch the SIM exactly once to move it to the new phone and then forget it even exists until the next phone).
I still like having a physical SIM though and haven’t converted it, even though I could. I like the idea that, if my phone dies, I can easily switch it into a new phone (even someone else’s). I don’t think I’ve ever done that, at least not since the days of dumb phones with limited/expensive plans, but I like to know I could. The only downside is that I have to enter the SIM PIN if I restart my phone.
When a mobile carrier needs to verify your identity for an account change, they all do the same thing: send a text message. And what happens if you don’t have a working SIM? That’s right—nothing. Without access to my account or phone number, I was stuck with no way to download a new eSIM. The only course of action was to go to a physical store to download an electronic SIM card. What should have been 30 seconds of fiddling with a piece of plastic turned into an hour standing around a retail storefront.
what’s worse: none of my trusty backup phones support eSIM. so when my eSIM phone dies, i’m pretty much fucked until i buy a new one. :/
You can buy an eSim adapter online for ~$15 off sites such as AliExpress.
Such adapters are open source, and can support up to holding and swapping between 20 eSim cards, which makes phones with physical sim cards strictly dominate those without them.
i see, TIL.
on the other hand, this doesn’t solve the hassle when my primary phone dies and I’m unable to log in to my carrier’s self care to generate the new eSIM QR code.
unless… it’s somehow possible to do that beforehand – “preload” the new eSIM in the backup phone and activate it only when the main phone dies.
you can preload them as I understand.
one of the major apps for doing that is openeuicc: https://gitea.angry.im/PeterCxy/OpenEUICC
if you look it won’t work on unrooted phones, but it’s easyeuicc variant can still be used in the stated ways.
f-droid also has the jmp sim manager: https://f-droid.org/packages/chat.jmp.simmanager its a fork of the former, but it works 100% in unrooted phones with the jmp esim adapter that you can order in the app
…why’d you buy it, then?
i didn’t realize it was eSIM only until i had it at home. and i didn’t think much of it until a few days later.
eSIM is really hard to change device in Taiwan due to government (NCC Department) “instructions” (that carrier sometimes misinterpreted it):
- Can not transfer by yourself, you need to go to carrier to transfer.
- 300 NTD (~10 USD) per move (can be waived under some cases)
- Might deny if you move too often recently.
And now (actually start few days ago), you need to show proof of purchase (or gift) of the target device. Carrier can deny if you fail to do so, and they’ll say they’re following government instructions.NCC said it should not be applied to eSIM as it’s one-time use only, but such rule already executed for few days and caused troubles for some people.
So physical SIM is more flexible here. (For now)
EDIT: NCC Department said the instructions are just suggestions, carrier should do KYC properly, but how all major ones do the same annoying stuff is beyond me…
EDIT 2: NCC Department clarified the new KYC instructions. (Chinese) 媒體揭露KYC指引相關報導恐有誤解，NCC今日邀集三大電信業者溝通說明，持續滾動因應實務情形
For me the main benefit of eSIMs is they allow multiple numbers on a single phone which is super handy.
Reading the article though, and I think the described problem is entirely the fault of the carrier and not the design of eSIMs. The carrier should have allowed alternative verification methods (email, online account, in-person at store) other than just sending a text to the disabled number.
There’s also a thing called dual sim. Which is standard in the Asian market and used to be common in Europe.
Still using dual SIM in Europe. While EU policies made it so that you can use a European number throughout Europe with basically no real added costs, country specific numbers are still required for a bunch of bureaucracy
I don’t blame the technology here but the implementation or the scenario
- the article makes it clear they understand it’s an uncommon scenario to have to switch number so many times
- wtf is the carrier doing requiring text 2fa to get a new eSIM? Thats just dumb
- Apparently android needs some work?
I have the opposite anecdote: eSIM has been more reliable than physical SIM. It just works on my iPhone. I like never having to goto a physical store. When i got my new phone this fall it transferred the eSIM so smoothly I barely noticed. It just worked.
Meanwhile from previous phones it always seemed about half the time I got a bad SIM and had to goto my providers physical store to get a new one. What a pain!
The worst thing is how a normal SIM now costs 60$ with most providers here
Really? In Europe you can get one for free from some providers. And the vast majority offer one for under 15 dollars. And if you pay for it, it already comes with some preloaded data and calls so you can start using it right away.
The screen died on my wife’s iPhone, fine I have other spare iPhones aplenty she can switch to. But at some point she had accepted a prompt on the iPhone to switch to eSIM so we couldn’t just move a physical SIM over, you had to go through the “transfer eSIM” menus, which we couldn’t do because the screen was dead. The only option the carrier gave us was going to a physical store.
I’m never switching my main carrier to eSIM, what a PITA for absolutely no upside.
(they’re great for throwaway travel SIMs though)
Your carrier is the problem. I just login to my carrier’s app on the new phone and boom new esim.
So I have Xfinity and your supposed to be able to do this via web. I was riding my dual sport deep in the woods and lost my phone. Tried my damnest to activate an s21+ I had in a drawer and it kept kicking it back. I go to store and they cannot activate it as it’s “not supported by their network”. They try to sell me a new phone. I’m frustrated and on like day 3 no phone so I said fuck it I’ll buy the cheapest Motorola on the shelf, but under one condition. I refused to buy the phone or continue my contract unless they would give me a physical sim (they tried pushing the esim HARD). I got home, took the sim out of my Motorola, popped it into my “unsupported phone” and it worked fucking fine. Esims are just another complication and way to get tech illiterate into the store. As long as I can I will never let go of my physical sim ever again.
What a sane person would want to install a shitty carrier app just for that? There should be a way to do it via their web ui in the least
Well, my carrier’s app isn’t super shitty, actually. No ads, no bloat, just account management.
But… You get a new phone, you install the app and login to get your esim, then uninstall. Not exactly a difficult problem.
How do you how shitty it is or not? Have you examined their code? Do you trust them blindly to let them run arbitrary code on your device? They are preferring to shove their app into our devices for many many reasons that non of them are for our benefit.
And uninstalling right after is closing the gate after the horses are long gone
Edit typos
That’s not a solution. There is no other carrier that has the coverage I need.
The problem with eSIM as a concept is that it puts too much responsibility on the carrier, and there are way too many shitty carriers out there, and with the cost of building a network and the limited amount of spectrum, mobile carriers are not a functioning free market.
That doesn’t mean that your carrier isn’t the problem.
Just like the person you replied to, I to can just log in to my carriers app on a new phone and get eSIM fixed there if my old phone is in an unusable state.
This is a problem for somebody reviewing phones, but how much of a problem is it actually for the average user who will change phones once every few years? And will probably be doing so at a phone store where they can support it.
I haven’t been to a phone store in 15 years
for the average user
points at Lineage boot logo
not you
Speaking of Lineage…
I wonder, how long will it be before you’re not “allowed” to install esims on phones with custom firmware?
Either due to the esim application not installing/running on modified firmware, or the phone will just not allow it.
If that stops Lineage from being practical on that phone, then fuck that phone in particular.
If eventually, that is every phone, then grab a hotspot and get tethering.
We are well on our way. The EU is holding the manufacturer liable if a cellphone radio is “modded”, thus manufacturers are blocking the ability to unlock bootloaders.
If eventually, that is every phone, then grab a hotspot and get tethering.
I did have a chuckle at the thought of having a cellphone for your (modded) cellphone… but then I thought about it: “meh, yeah… it’s not a bad idea. I’d do it.”
In most countries, getting a phone in a store is something done only by people happy to pay lots extra for a little human help, surely? The average user now signs up online and gets a phone in the mailbox.
If I asked my mom for her SIM card, she’d ask for her purse so she could attempt to find a credit card that doesn’t exist.
She has no idea how a phone works in any capacity. I’m not being insulting about it, I am informing you of blatant and honest truth.
My cousins, people my age are a hard maybe, I know two family members who went in-store recently. They treat their phones like cars. They use them and that’s as deep as it goes.
That’s not so informative without any idea of your age and thereby the ages of your examples.
Many of them could still follow the assembly/card insertion instruction sheet with pictures that comes in the mail from the phone company, even without knowing which part is called a SIM.
And maybe your area’s phone stores aren’t as notorious for overcharging as the UK’s.
I’m not teaching a class, here, bud. If you need me to tell you that running LineageOS isn’t somehow a skill equivalent to walking into a store, then we have some serious cultural differences between the US and EU regarding average luddite phone ownership.
The stores don’t charge for helping you, no. It’s the same cost for service instore as out, at least in my experience. For all I know Tmobile started charging ‘install fees’ for putting sim cards in.
America, age 37, nerd-coded
Those of us who swap SIMs when travelling are also affected. I travel outside my country several times a year and must say that eSIMs sound like a good idea until you actually deal with them. Spending vacation time debugging an eSIM is an annoying distraction.
Can’t your phone store multiple esims? I thought that was actually one of the selling points of the stuff.
It’s a software implementation though, so if you have a rooted phone or use another Android OS, you have limited options in apps that implement eSim for you.
OpenEUICC is a good one, but sometimes requires magisk modules to work.
I remember it took me half a day of fiddling to get my eSim working under Lineage.
People forget that your phone supporting “feature X” means that even though it has all the hardware to do X, it still needs to software, which might not be part of the devicetree.
For example paying for items with your phone’s NFC does not happen because of NFC capability. There are no open source solutions to Google Pay. It’s an agreement brokered between Google and Banks that allow the bankcard to be “cloned” and used via NFC, not the NFC doing any cloning of your actual bankcard
This never happens
I wonder how much of a problem it is when you lost the phone that had your eSIM. If the registration flow requires SMS authentication, how are your supposed to register your eSIM on your brand new phone?
The carrier can bypass that authentication, so basically the same process as if you had lost your physical sim. Show up at the shop in person with id.
…how is that an improvement over physical SIM then ;D
you are supposed to be able to have multiple, 1 or 2 of which can be active, and switch between them whenever you want.
but afaik that’s only possible on rooted phones with openeuicc or another app like it, because by default only google’s own app is allowed to handle esim configuration, and that has limitations in what it allows.
AFAIK, the only ‘improvement’ is that it takes up less physical space.
Kind of like the jack. They say removing it does this or that but all it really did was save the corporation a couple cents and was overall a downgrade and removal of functionality for the average person.
I love eSIM because one day on the bus I was tired of AT&T speeds being shit in my commute, so I decided to switch carriers. By the time I walked home from the bus, I was done releasing my number and setting up my new eSIM to my new carrier and immediately got faster speeds. It just worked.
I completely understand if you’re changing numbers all the time it could be annoying, but it was just a simple activation for me.
Nice to see another feature getting removed to make phones slimmer which is necessary because of uhh… 'Cuz the uh… You know that thing that uh…
eSIM just makes more sense. Why do you need a card just to store some random bits of data when your phone can store hundreds of gigabytes of data?
In a world of corporate control over everything, I’ll take my globally defined, physical interface standard thank you.
What control are you losing by going with esim? They already had you by the balls with the physical sim. Now its just more convenient and esim is also globally defined/accepted.
The ability to swap it to a new device without carrier approval is a big one for me.
This sounds like a your carrier problem, not an eSIM problem.
I’ve swapped eSIMs between devices 3 times this year at my own leisure, no involvement from the carriers, no back and forth calls or visiting a store.
From what I can tell reading these comments, people don’t actually have an issue with eSIM (it’s literally just like your regular SIM card and the spec absolutely allows you to move it between devices with zero friction), they have an issue with how some carriers implement them, in particular how some lock down how you can move an eSIM to a new device.
Seems like carrier implementation should be more standardized.
“This sounds like a your carrier problem, not an eSIM problem.”
This is true, and we the consumer have no control of the carrier decisions. With a physical SIM, we have at least a little.
