I’m quite concerned about the fact that only China will be getting nano-SIM and every other territory will have e-SIM only. On a recent trip from the UK to South Korea and Japan (where my network has very high roaming prices), it was relatively easy to pick up SIM cards from vending machines and desks at airports. I don’t imagine it’ll be as easy to negotiate and activate an e-sim connection.
I'm all for it continuing, but it always struck me as wild how you can just pick a UK SIM up at the airport from a vending machine. I don't know of many countries where this is possible.
I got the impression where they said that China would not have e-sim but would instead have a dual SIM tray that it was a mutually exclusive thing. E-sim or physical but not both. I hope I’m wrong. There’s a link on the spec page (point 11 in the small print) to details on the e-sim but it returns a 404.
Well there are many countries that have yet to roll out e-SIM, China being one with no definite timetable. Which means there will still be iPhone with Sim Slot in the foreseeable future.
I assume they want to go "portless", which means they will have to wait for Full e-SIM support first? ( They could well be a wrong assumption )
That’s nice but it’s still going to be 10 years or more until it’s as convenient as SIM cards everywhere.
When I crossed the border from Rwanda to Uganda, I bought a sim at a local shop, and a boy from the village cut it down to size by hand with a pair of scissors. They are not going to have ESIM anywhere soon.
ESIM requires carriers around the world to have the technical competency to make the activation and management process work smoothly and that is not something I would count on.
This is terrible news. I wanted to get a sim card for Japan, but you can only get a pocket wifi device, which isn't so bad, but not as straightforward as swapping your sim out for a local sim as i do when in the states or malaysia.
1. And why would Unregistered Apps be a huge plus in these countries? Apart from VPN.
2. Having used E-Sim I actually think it is the future, even more so in developing countries, Physical Sim is an extra cost for management while E-Sim is a one time software cost. Dual Sim is only in China users requires Real Name another regulation which makes E-Sim much more complicated.
I was really thinking of being able to grab an eSIM directly for a local network, rather than one of the "global eSIM providers". You'd just grab your eSIM over WiFi when you land rather than seeking out a physical SIM from an airport vendor.
Obviously it's not the reality that these are easily available in all destinations, yet, but should become more so over time.
If you travel to more than 1 or 2 countries per year, especially less developed countries, you'll learn that your life (connection) depends on picking up cheap $5-15 sim cards at the border for each country.
I couldn't imagine them jumping on the esim train in any useful way in the near term.
Unfortunately, the increasing prevalence of eSIMs in new phones makes temporarily switching to a foreign carrier far more inconvenient than "just buy a SIM at a vending machine".
The problem generally isn't the SIM itself - it's the form factor. Granted I haven't traveled to China in two years now, but MicroSIM form factor was nonexistent there on my last trip. Many vendors used cheap, shitty handheld punches to get the excess plastic off of normal SIM cards to get them into SIM form factor. This worked about one time out of five - most of the time it just destroyed the SIM card.
I don't see how it would be easier necessarily as I assume the rules in countries that make it hard to buy some cards as a visitor, would apply to companies selling esims too.
Many android phones offer dual SIM trays which shouldn't even preclude the ability to offer esim.
I had zero trouble getting a SIM with China Mobile. I pre-paid $1/RMB per day plus a deposit in case I went over my daily usage. It took a bit of time that day because of language issues but I was fine.
That was the first thing I wondered; how will they avoid this? Let's say I'm going there for an extended trip and decide to get a local SIM card. Will my phone just go poof?
I don't know about others, but what would have been a day one purchase for me is now going to be put off because of this one limitation. Flying into some random country, buying a prepaid SIM card at the airport or some street corner and popping it into my phone is something I do multiple times a year, but this phone seems to only have been designed with the major US carriers in mind (and not even most MVNOs). eSIM is not at all prevalent in most of the world.
In fact Apple knows this themselves, which is why international iPhone 14 models are going to keep the SIM tray. Removing it from US models is such a bizarre decision to me. Does the target iPhone user in the US just not travel?
Recently moved to a new country (non-EU). The carrier I'm using does not offer eSIM and shipped me a physical SIM card. This is not an outlier, I have a couple of physical SIM cards, some US, that I wouldn't be able to use if the phone was eSIM only, like the recent US iPhone.
Also moving a eSIM from iOS device to non-iOS device (for example to plug into my secondary Android) is a massive PITA. I always have to re-issue the SIM which I often can't do and need to jumps through customer support queries and hoops. My current provider back home doesn't even give me the option to do it while abroad and support told me to come back for a day, then finish the eSIM reissuing application, so I'm stuck with the physical SIM anyway.
eSIMs will be great one day, but that day is not now. I much rather pop the SIM out of phone 1 and move it into phone 2, or iPad when I want, than wait hours (or sometimes days) to get a new eSIM approved, and repeat that process every single time I want to move a connection to another device
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