Show me a piece of tech that Big Tech hasn’t turned into a tool for customer capture, privacy invasion or advertisement in the last 25 years…
Still works like a charm!
The author seems to have a rather idealistic view of this. At best eSIMs were a way to cut costs for the manufacturer by leaving out the SIM slot, socket, and supporting circuitry. They were always supposed to be a trap for the user though.
eSIM promised frictionless switching, but carriers kept the friction
They never promised frictionless switching. Whereas with physical SIMs you just remove one and either put it in a new phone, or replace it with a new SIM, eSIMs require interacting with the carrier to coordinate pushing the config to the phone, with all the attendant headache, and additional friction, of doing so.
Moving your number between phones is now more complicated
Well, yes, you no longer have control of the process.
The idea is still good, but the ecosystem isn’t ready
The idea was never good, but the ecosystem is exactly where carriers want it. The extra hassle “encourages” users not to make changes.
and supporting circuitry
As far as it seems, that one should be the same. Just with the chip soldered-on instead of having a SIM slot.
Here’s a guide on XDA forum on how you can just solder eSIM chip onto regular SIM contact pads and manage the eUICC with OpenEUICC Magisk module on OnePlus 11.Osmocom reports some devices may recognize it as internal eUICC if the OS has LPA software.
By the way, there’s also lpa-gtk, based on lpac which allows use of eSIM on some Linux phones.
That’s interesting stuff, thanks for the links. I was under the impression that eSIMs were more integrated than that. That makes the whole eSIM nonsense even more ridiculous, as the manufacturer isn’t even saving much.
I just had to buy a new phone because the SIM reader of my old one stopped working and the repair fee was exorbitant. Esim would have been great.
Never ZenFone again.
I dropped my “old” (less than 2 years 😭) Pixel and shattered the screen. As I can’t go about without a smartphone I had to get a replacement ASAP. Of course I had eSIM there. I couldn’t access my old phone because I can’t see anything on its screen (I actually hooked it up to my monitor and was able to navigate to some extent by guessing where to tap, but it’s cumbersome and I often miss-tap). Moving the eSIM to my new Pixel required me to contact my carrier’s customer support. I thought it would be an easy process, where I simply log in to my customer portal and carry out the procedure there by myself. Nope. Also, I learned that the first transfer is free of charge, but I will have to pay the next time. What? :/
Just plug in a mouse and you will have a cursor on the screen.
Not a bad idea :) I use a Logitech mouse connected via their proprietary dongle which is in my PC, but I guess it might work if I plugged it into my monitor. I will remember that. Thanks.
They should invent a system where the eSIM is stored on like, a special SD card thing, so you can just switch it physically between phones.
I use an eSIM because it’s the only way to have dual lines with my phone. Are there still phones that have 2 physical SIM slots for dual lines?
Yes, it’s fairly normal from my experience as someone who helps people switch to new phones somewhat often
I bought a OnePlus for this reason, since it was one of the only physical dual SIM options available here in the North American market
I’m curious what friction they’re talking about. Except for the Saily ad in the middle, there no actual information about what they want changed and from what. My experiences switching eSIMS have all been seamless, but I’m still curious how extremely wealthy carrier companies fuck it up
What trap? What friction? Any time I change phones, I call up my carrier and give them the new IMEI, and it almost instantly connects and downloads the esim.
I’ve had it not do that automatically once or twice, so I do still prefer a physical sim, but I don’t really know what the article is talking about.
