I have not done this in many years, but I vaguely recall it used to take a few days for the charge to appear, I presume after the IMEI was updated in the system.
Maybe popping a sim in and out for a short time will not trigger it, but who knows.
> it quite often can take 24-48 hours for your physical SIM to activate
In my world, I land in an airport, purchase a SIM card and it works before I leave the airport (or the operator’s desk). It’s often that way with eSIMs purchased via Airalo.
The delay could appear when your transferring your number, but even then you can still use a temporary number until the old one overrides it.
Which doesn't help from a tracking point of view because the device still retains a persistent, unchangeable identifier (the IMEI) which will be broadcasted as soon as you insert a new SIM (and maybe without one even, since in certain locations SIM-less emergency calls are possible).
I'm wondering if it's the age of the SIM card in use...
A few years ago, I upgraded to a new android phone. A day or two later, the SIM card couldn't be detected. Try as I might, it was as though the thing wasn't plugged in.
I took the phone to the nearest carrier store, and the clerk took a look at my SIM card and told me he knew the problem.
My SIM was an older model, and wasn't designed for the heavy amount of... I'll be honest, I don't remember exactly what he said, but the gist of it was the newer phone was activating and accessing the SIM card at a much higher frequency than my old phone did. It had burned the thing out in a manner of 24-48 hours.
They loaded up a new SIM card (which actually had a slightly different look to the connector pins) and everything worked just fine. I couldn't believe it, even though it technically seems plausible.
I'm wondering if this is a similar issue - the new phones are accessing the SIM more frequently, and thus burning them out?
FWIW, my experience with eSIMs has been identical to my experience receiving physical SIMs. Instead of inserting it, I scanned a QR code. It then activated much as any physical SIM activates the first time you put it in a phone.
People are complaining so much that I guess maybe I've had just good luck with carriers?
Fair point on changing devices. I've never tried that and I imagine you might have to get the carrier to issue a new eSIM, which is might be an annoying ordeal. It's _meant_ to be possible to do it easily (see e.g. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212780 - but that does say it works only for "some carriers").
I was surprised that hotswapping SIMs works, I thought it was not supported.
Many phones used to have the SIM under the battery (back when it was commonly removable), ensuring you couldn't remove it without powering the device off first.
I have literally never had to worry about my phone not taking the SIM out of the box. Put the SIM in, maybe reboot, and I'm off to the races. Is this a USA carrier thing??
One nice feature of the iPhone right now (and the Nokia N9, but not any other phones I've used): you can simply hot-swap the SIM without any battery pulling or even rebooting. Just take out the tray, replace the SIM, and pop it back in.
Seems not very coincidental that this happens right after the new iPhone in the US went eSIM only, which means you now have to talk to your carrier to change phones instead of just moving your SIM over.
(Unless this doesn't count if you move your SIM over through the OS, but I figure the carrier would have to be informed?)
If you already have a preactivated new SIM card on hand, sure.
Its the activation process that can take a while, not downloading the eSIM (for what its worth, my most recent SIM / eSIM activations were comparable and took only a few minutes).
That's not true. For the last few iPhone upgrade cycles, everytime I got a new iPhone I just removed the SIM it came with, and popped in my old one. Everything worked. The only time i replaced the SIM was when 5G came out and it required a new SIM to work.
Same happened to my sons phone, but it has an esim. I pulled out the original sim paper, scanned the QR code, entered the confirmation and SIM pin. Bam, it was transferred instantly to the new phone. It was easier than a traditional sim, simply because I didn’t have to create or find a tool to open the sim tray.
Maybe popping a sim in and out for a short time will not trigger it, but who knows.
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