Just curious.
I used eSim for a while when I first got a phone that supported eSim, because I wanted to make it harder for a thief to disable the phone tracking, but now my main phone is broken and I’m a bit annoyed at having to chat with customer support for half and hour to activate eSim on another device.
I use a physical sim. I’m not sure it even supports eSIM, but I’d be hesitant to ditch the physical sim for precisely the reasons you mentioned. I’ve swapped sims around between phones and even borrowed them from people when I was in a new area, something that’s much harder with eSIMs.
Physical, because “it just works”. I have had a SIM fail on me once, but I was quickly able to get a replacement. Popped out the old one and popped in the new one. No fuss.
eSIM on the other hand requires competency from both your device manufacturer and service provider, and is a mess to deal with if anything goes wrong. The phone manufacturer will blame the service provider and vice versa.
I’ve had two unpleasant experiences trying to activate an eSIM, and I don’t plan on using it again soon – at least not until every Android device manufacturer does an Apple and goes eSIM-only.
what’s eSim?
From my understanding, its a chip inside your phone that allows you to download Sim cards onto your phone. You could switch carriers without visiting a store or waiting days for the sim to arrive, just take minutes to an hour depending on which carrier you choose. Cool concept in my opinion, just not very mature at the moment.
I use a physical SIM because my phone doesn’t support an eSIM, also i’m preety sure you have to activate it everytime you clean flash a custom ROM.
I’m not an expert in technology, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t delete eSims since they are actually stored in a separate chip. I’ve done some experients with wiping data (I’m always curious about new tech so I always do some testing to satisfy my curiosity) via remote wipe, both Android and iOS, I’ve intentionally entered incorrect password to get it to reset, and I’ve used the recovery menu in android to reset it, and I’ve used android apps that lets you wipe data via the device admin feature. The eSim always persisted unless you specifically choose to delete it, so I think flashing a rom isn’t gonna be different as long as your don’t send a command to the eSim chip to wipe the eSim data.
Which can be a bit worrying if a theif is able to reset your phone and bypass the anti-theft device activation features (which is difficult, but not impossible), they could use your eSim if it doesn’t have a Sim pin to protect it, which nobody even thinks about locking the eSim since most people would assume it is safe behind the phone’s lockscreen and it would get deleted in a device reset, but the eSims never get reset unless you specifically chose to.
Physical SIM. Mostly because I’ve never tried to buy a SIM in a country where eSIMs exist yet. It’s kind of annoying, as it’s the only way I can dual-SIM my phone.
Current eSIM possibilities in given countries:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209096deleted by creator
That hijacking risk applies to both. If you’re able to social engineer a telephone worker, they could move your account to a different SIM card completely.
My best advice, is to use Google voice, Google Fi, lockdown your number for SMS two factor. A Google account and lockdown mode, with physical security keys, is not going to get hijacked by anything less than a state actor.
Then your local phone, your local phone number, local SMS, none of that should be on your escalation path to authentication. Then you don’t care if somebody steals your sim.
Phone numbers and SMS should never have been involved with user authentication beyond simple contact info. Smartphones really ruined it.
Canadian providers all charge about $15 a day to “roam like home”. For about $20 I can buy a 30 day 5GB data only plan for Europe. Getting a European phone number doubles the cost as most of those plans have much more data as well. You can buy the plans before you leave, download and install the eSIM so you’re ready to go when you arrive.
The wife and I both bought Pixel 7’s this year as they support eSIM. We’re in England right now. Our cost roaming would have been $600+. Only one of us needed a local phone number, and the has just data, and the cost was maybe $70.
If you enable wifi calling before you leave then you can leave your Rogers esim active and use your local sim for data and calls. The advantage is that you still receive sms messages on your Canadian number.
Rogers won’t let you use wifi calling to avoid the roaming charges. I’ve tried.
I’ve been using a physical sim for a while and while I normally would be fine with esim I’ve heard of various issues with them including having tethering data be used as normal data. There’s also the ease of switching between phones with a physical sim so for now I’ll continue using it.
You have a separate data plan for tethering?
No I’ve read about issues where after switching to esim people have had all phone data get reported as if it was tethered. For example if you have 2 gigs of tethering data included with your unlimited plan then you effectively have only 2 gigs of data if this issue affected you.
I didn’t know anyone had a separate limit for tethering.
Speaking as an Apple user here with a phone that does dual SIM (one physical and one eSIM), but I currently prefer the physical SIM for my primary number and eSIM as I need it for data.
For the last 18 months I’ve had it the other way around (eSIM primary) and I needed a data SIM with a different provider for a weekend cause I was somewhere with bad coverage on my main provider.
Getting a prepaid eSIM was very easy, but it decoupled my main number from iMessage since the eSIM slot was now linked to a different number.
So now I’m working off the theory that since I can generally get an eSIM for any country I might visit reasonably easily (the App Store has a couple of different eSIM providers), it’s better to leave the eSIM empty until I need it and rely on a physical SIM for my primary.
It’s not the cheapest way to go about it, but definitely the most convenient, and doesn’t rely on you having to try and obtain a SIM locally (which can be very easy to very challenging depending on what country you’re visiting).
Apple user here. When I went from the X to the 14, I went full eSIM.
Primary is eSIM. Works fine. When I travel, I add a second eSIM to my phone from a cheap, local provider. When I’m done, I deactivate and delete the traveling eSIM.
Not once do I have to use a paperclip. It’s wonderful.
If we had the dual eSIM model in Australia this would be my setup as well, but since we still have one physical and one eSIM, having the home SIM being physical basically provides the same benefits you’ve described.
Yeah, that would make sense in that situation. And primary carrier is a rare change, so it’s not really an inconvenience.
Physical SIM because I have that card since a few years and I am too lazy to request an eSIM. In the end it simply does not matter at all.
Dito, also I don’t want to pay 20 bucks for a „replacement“ SIM on my contract, since my SIM isn’t broken/lost
Physical. Had the same card for aaaaages now and no need to swap to esim so why bother.
My phone doesn’t have eSIM option, so physical.
Both. Sim card for my country’s provider. eSim when I’m abroad for cheaper rates.
Using both. Just emigrated from the US but keeping my Fi number as I’ve still got roots there, meanwhile I can swap physical SIMs as I jockey services here.
Physical SIM. No way to use eSIM in my phone. Even if it had, I’d have gone with physical one.
