Android now lets you transfer eSIMs between your phones

Hah. To swap eSIM on O2 in the UK, you have to order a physical pack that gets posted to you with the QR code in. There is no way to get the code to appear on a screen you can scan with your camera, or in an app on the phone you can transfer to the phone's eSIM manager. It's so dumb.

This is just an assumption, but I thought the whole point was to make it more difficult for people to switch carriers?

I mean, you can just not use it. It was a great option for me because I can just have one provider in the SIM slot (if I wanted) and keep my main one on the eSIM. It allowed me to swap to eSIM when my SIM card was acting up. I switched to eSIM over a year ago and honestly forgot I did and it's been really stable. I think it's a great option and works for me. I wasn't even thinking of needing to switch to another phone because I have no interest in swapping to another phone. I've had mine since 2020 and will keep using it until it is unfixable. But I also don't drop my phone or damage it otherwise.

I've been avoiding eSIMs like a Boomer avoids anything tech because I don't understand them, and now I'm glad I did.

SIM cards work fine; other than waste reduction, what's the point of eSIM?

The hard way I see.

When I traveled across the world last year it took me 5 minutes to sign up for a temporary cell plan in the country I was visiting, then install the eSIM from my phone’s web browser. I didn’t have to plan ahead and wait for them to mail me a SIM card so I could juggle around SIMs while abroad. I much prefer that over a physical SIM card.

Maybe in somewhere free like the EU or SEA. In the US, most phones bought from a carrier (and most sales are that way, some exclusively so) are locked so that no other SIM (e or physical) can be used.

Maybe it's just bad luck, but the last time I tried to swap a physical SIM, I inserted the removal tool in the hole, and then the mechanism somehow broke. So I cannot swap my SIM from my current phone to any other phone, unless I have eSim. Unfortunately, my current phone does not have eSim.

It's just to give more control to the carriers. They say it's a feature for travel but realistically how many people and how many countries does that actually apply to? Some places require ID to buy a SIM card, many places don't even offer plans travelers would want to use (who wants to pay $80 for 1 month of unlimited data instead of $5 for 1GB for a week?), and there's also the question of how many travelers are there vs locals? Are the travelers the majority of users? The majority of profit? Why don't the travelers' local phone companies have travel plans to gouge the travelers themselves?

Anyway all this is to say this is just carrier lock in, it's the return of CDMA.

Effectively, imagine there's a SIM card soldered to the motherboard of the phone, you can then download an eSIM to it and the phone behaves as if it's a physical SIM.

In reality it's generally built into the modem and I believe they can typically hold multiple eSIMs. What I'm not clear on is if inactive eSIMs actually live in the hardware eSIM or if they get swapped in by the OS

on T-Mobile USA: I preordered my iPhone 15; the QR eSIM and automated SIM transfer system was completely down and I had to spend 30 minutes to an hour on the phone with customer service to swap over my physical SIM to an eSIM I could type (IIRC) into my new phone.

Exactly the same as a normal one. It just works and you don't really need to do anything with it. Everything seems the same just no little card in the side of your device.

Yeah same, I want to know how you move phones if one breaks, or any number of similar situations where you can't run an app or access another device

@AdmiralShat @FragmentedChicken phones that support esims have actual sim chips inside, and esims basically flash the carrier data onto that chip.

They're functionally the same as normal SIM, instead it is stored in a secure location of the storage (which can survive factory reset). In a way, it makes it a bit more secure as a thief can't just yank out the SIM card to avoid being tracked (although it doesn't defeat a faraday bag) or take it out to use it in another phone.

Generally you go to some site your carrier has, enter the IMEI or some number from your phone's settings, then scan a QR code. It's not bad... depending on your carrier.

The same way Verizon phones used to work: less well.

With Google Fi

When I got my Pixel 8 Pro it asked me if I want to convert the physical SIM from my Xiaomi 9 SE (and disable the old SIM). I didn't have to take off the case and move the SIM, so I liked it.

No. Once every few years. However, the gap in service is absolute disaster in modern society. Without a phone, you can't use public transport, can't pay for parking, can't get a taxi/uber/competitor, etc. etc.

Any "progress" that makes the turnaround time longer when your phone breaks is a horrible and unacceptable downside.

For me it's about every 1 to 2 years, but I'm an app developer part-time so I use it to make money which justifies the high cost of ownership.

For my wife, it's more like 4 years, and we prefer to get last year's model especially with today's update commitments.

The $10 is so ridiculous not because it costs them virtually nothing as a digital service, but because they charge you for access to something you're already paying them for.

It's the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. Apart from the flat bezels, you can see that the other phone reads "Transfer SIM to Galaxy S24 Ultra"

With the edges and the s pen I would guess it's the S23 Ultra maybe the Ultra the year before.