logoalt Hacker News

Grombobulousyesterday at 8:30 PM3 repliesview on HN

After switching providers with a recent phone with eSIM, I would say I’d never want to go back to physical SIMs ever again.

They’re going to go away worldwide eventually, they’re just more easily removed in the US where the carriers are more bleeding edge on features and there are only 3 providers to think about in a very large homogenous market.

The difference between waiting for a SIM card to arrive in the mail or traveling to a store, fiddling with a paperclip, tray, and impossibly tiny nano-SIM versus switching providers in 10 minutes via an app is night and day.

Most SIM/dual SIM solutions also involve removing both SIM cards at once even to swap out one of two, and they tend to require device restarts.

In the past I’ve also had network problems as a result of bad/damaged SIM cards.


Replies

drnick1yesterday at 10:47 PM

You seem to forget that moving an eSIM between phones isn't nearly as straightforward as moving a physical SIM, and often must be requested or approved by the carrier. If for some reason you intend to use the same SIM in various phones for one reason or another, it's a huge inconvenience.

show 1 reply
fc417fc802today at 12:03 AM

Can I switch out an eSIM while running an AOSP based ROM yet (ie no proprietary userspace)? Last time I checked (several years ago) it didn't seem to be possible. Did that change?

monksyyesterday at 9:58 PM

ooo I can't wait for the CDMA carrier locking boogaloo all over again.