That is exactly what apple doesn't want you to do. They don't want users making deals with local ISPs for service. They want in on that transaction. Virtual SIMs, controlled by phone manufacturers, will allow them to exercise a degree of control over wandering users. If you are a local ISP, you better be part of the program if you want to sell your services to apple's devices. And most users will be OK with this. They will probably appreciated not having to buy a local SIM cars. They will enjoy how easily their virtual SIM connected to the local ISP and hooked them into a the prearranged roaming deal for apple devices. They won't question the price because they will have no input into a negotiation that happened years before they arrived in the country. All that is left for them is to blindly pay the bills.
Google supports eSIM. Google can sell you cell service for your iPhone from the couch.
If any phone manufacturer is trying to compete with the carriers, it would look a lot like Google, which made a global MVNO.
Yes, there is usually a business motive behind every business decision. The GSMA makes it sound like the carriers want it, as well as the phone manufacturers:
“Simpler device setup without the need to insert or replace a SIM card;
Devices that can operate independently of a tethered smartphone, with their own subscriptions;
A range of new, enhanced mobile-connected devices.”
Emphasis on “with their own subscriptions”
> Google Fi is a service for US residents only, as of late 2019. [1]
> When outside the United States, cellular phone calls cost $0.20 per minute, data costs the same $10 per gigabyte (i.e. there are no extra data charges outside of the US), and texting is free
It's difficult to get SIMs that work in local places around the world that do everything you need to do and cost much less than that. Plus the ones you buy locally have different numbers.
Eventually I switched this around, I put my US carrier in my SIM slot, and I use eSIM on the phone to get decent digital plans "in market". Some are digital via apps, some are QR codes from shops or kiosks.
eSIM seems to have better or at least competitive pricing for the last 4 years or so.
// Note I'm generally using a lot of data, so cost matters. The only thing I've found much cheaper is to get a local carrier who also offers free unlimited WiFi from local APs. Anywhere this works, that naturally beats any cell-only plan. You usually won't find this except by searching local language sites or going into local carrier stores and asking.
iPhone 12 series was the first to support 5G - launched in Oct 2020. That’s barely over a year ago?
So much about support and independence.
My Pixel 2 supported WiFi Calling but my carrier didn't acknowledge it as "supported" and the carrier's servers refused to send it a settings file.
I assume that’s an autocorrect? I like it.
Another thing that I just remembered is that my ISP only allowed me 10 activations on the e-sim before having to buy a new one for 50 bucks.
How does the phone manufacturer have anything to do with it? My only wish is to support multiple eSIMs, as now I only have one physical SIM slot and one eSIM.
A physical SIM in contrast always works. I was already questioning whether I'd ever need to upgrade from the 12 Pro but this type of needless regression makes it an easy decision.
You could still get everything working by manually configuring the phone, and carriers like GiffGaff had support articles explaining how, but it was a total pain in the arse and stuff would occasionally break in subtle ways.
Additionally the eSIM is separate physical chip within the phone attached to baseband radio. Once configured with a profile, the host OS has as much access as it does to a normal SIM, I.e. not much. The entire standard is kinda a hack, which basically boils down to “what if we embedded a normal SIM card chip in the phone, and let the phone flash a new carrier profile every now and then?”. Remember these SIMs are fully fledged computers, like their normal removable counterparts, that can ignore host OS commands, and issue instructions directly to the baseband processor without the host OS knowledge.
Then there’s the dozens of companies in the App Store like https://www.dentwireless.com/ who all provide eSIMs for international travel. I find it hard to believe they all have agreements with Apple, it normally costs far to much to deal with Apple for bottom dollar companies to make any money.
So would take all of those sources with a large pinch of salt. If Apples eSIMs we’re proprietary, I would expect to be easy to find articles discussing the fact, given they’ve been around for a few years now.
SIMs come from the phone company. How could it be otherwise as that's where the phone number comes from, and that's how the local physical network determines whether you're allowed to connect or not:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_card
Unless Apple is planning to become a MVNO (or building out their own cell towers), they cannot provide any information for network connectivity.
> A virtual SIM is a mobile phone number provided by a mobile network operator that does not require a SIM card to connect phone calls to a user's mobile phone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_card#Other_variants
This isn't about Apple becoming an MVNO, this is about Apple somehow controlling the process of configuring your phone because you no longer have the option to choose a SIM card and insert it yourself.
https://www.t-mobile.com/support/tutorials/topic/esim/activa...
Here's what a rational, profitable scenario would look like to me: in the not-too-distant-future, you land in country X and you get prompted if you would you like a local number by partner Mobile network. If you agree, Apple submits your electronic ID[1] to the Mobile Network for KYC purposes (with your opt-in), you pay with your Apple wallet, and you get a local number. The network gets paid, and Apple gets its cut (as well as a subsequent payments, if it's a PAYG plan) - and you haven't even picked up your baggage from the carousel. Apple can even play off networks against each other and pick the more profitable ones, and consumers get a sleek onboarding experience for a fee, or bundled with your Apple TV/iTunes/iServices subscription, so you can resume watching season 10 of Foundation while you wait for your Uber.
1. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/15/apple-strict-terms-on-u...
Removing the SIM slot isn’t a step into that direction, removing standards compliant eSIM support would be.
Or maybe your comment isn’t meant as a criticism at all, I think that actually sounds pretty awesome. As long as we retain the ability to load our own eSIMs.
Please tell me you are serious about this. Tried looking into this earlier and found out that eSIM is extra proprietary, which means no hobby devices, like those 3G/4G/GSM connectivity Arduino modules.
https://www.gsma.com/esim/esim-specification/
In addition you can get ST micro data sheets for full blown electrical and mechanical data sheets for free
Why do you think you a physical sim for different providers. Because they only work with that provider. Apple can turn the tap off on a class of Sims as it is
That's definitely going to be a step up in user comfort... The average apple user will definitely love it
eSIMs aren’t some apple run “program” you have to take part in.
[ citation needed ]
eSIM is already a standard and as far as I can tell, Apple gets no kickbacks/etc for users using it. I can go to att.com right now and swap to an eSIM if I were so inclined, for free.
I wonder if Apple won't just bulk-buy bandwidth and take care of the customer experience.
Imagine your phone just... working globally.
A SIM is not a embodiment of an iPhone’s identity. Maybe it was in the 90s, but today it’s so much more. The SIM is more like your iPhone’s credentials for accessing one network. You can change SIMs, change your access token for one network, but you are making no bigger impact on your phone’s “identity” than if you were to change Wi-Fi networks.
List of Identity related things that change when you change your SIM
* Network Access Layer data associated with the cellular networks
* Phone Number
* All data stored on the phone (messages, photos, apps)
* Two Factor Authentication apps like Duo, PingID, Authy
* ICloud Accounts
* Stored passwords
* Login tokens for various apps like email, social media, etc
* Browser Cookies
* Applet Wallet DataToday if your phone fails, you can pop a sim in another phone and regain your phone service identity within minutes. No SIM, it could take days or even weeks.
With an eSIM, I'd have to-- at the very least-- do some sort of migration process through a carrier-provided resource. Maybe it's a web-based thing where I can sign in to their site on the old phone and get a QR code to scan on the new one, but I'd be unsurprised if at least some carriers say "gotta come into a store" or put up some sketchy "for your protection" roadblocks. This could be technical incompetence or a dark pattern, but I'm sure they want to keep anything related to bring-your-own-device to be a bit arcane and scary, to encourage customers to buy through the carrier.
This doesn’t make any sense. Anything that can be done using a physical sim, you can do faster with e-sim (input data into fields).
What if you don’t have another physical sim ready to go? It’s the middle of the night and stores are closed. Your car won’t start. You lost your wallet and don’t have currency. Traveling in a foreign nation and don’t know where the SIM store is. (Yes these are extreme situations, but that’s exactly when you need your phone to work)
Who can do it faster? Me? Or the dude I just waited on hold for for 45 minutes (on someone else's phone i borrowed because I'm lucky enough to be around someone who is there to let me use their phone for 45 minutes) sitting in a call center somewhere?
Connecting to ATT/Verizon/T-Mobile/Vodafone should be as easy as choosing a Wifi Network.
Carriers (Verizon and Sprint?) tried to improve it, but never really worked and the expense was high.
Compared to AT&T's "take the card out and put it in the new phone" reprogramming it was night and day.
You can say that eSIM is easier than the old CDMA days but it still isn't as easy as SIM swapping.
I go to a conference or hotel, and they can figure out how to have me login to the wifi and pay them. Or not pay them if I am a certain level member of their rewards program or part of a certain group of people attending the conference.
Other than legacy business contracts or lack of will by mobile networks to allow easy switching, it seems it should be just as easy to change which mobile network you are using.
As a side note, I love the cash grab by ATT/Verizon/Tmobile right now where changing your device entitles them to collect an extra $30 "activation" fee from you. Zero labor cost, almost zero compute cost other than changing IMEI in their database, and you still have to part with $30.
> The SIM is more like your iPhone’s credentials for accessing one network.
That's what I meant. Anyone with any familiarity with SIM cards knows it's no personality chip that brings everything over with it, and if it were such a thing it would probably be pretty annoying.
I’ve spent a lot of time engineering login pages and thinking about questions of user identity.
So it might be you're basing your knowledge from some fictional show where the writers got it wrong.
It's funny this commenter accuses Apple of mindlessness when they did not look up that the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro are thicker than their respective counterparts from last year.
https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone13,iph...
I would speculate that removal of the physical SIM card is more likely to be about one (or a combination) of:
* Apple taking even more control over the device
* Making it marginally more difficult to switch to another brand's ecosystem
* Resilience (e.g. water/dust proofing).
Phones already were water proof when they had sim cards and phone jack.
While I never owned an iPhone, those changes annoy me immensely. The reason for it is that Android manufacturers are copying all of that. I'm currently want to update phone, and want one with sd card and phone jack. Those two things make my selection much smaller. And looking at trends looks like very soon it will be similarly gone as physical keyboard is.
Water resistant you mean. Eliminating more holes will just make them more water resistant, it’s a spectrum of course.
As an individual, I agree with you. The industry consensus (initiated by Apple) that the headphone jack ought to go is a great shame for a few reasons and I would happily trade-off some water resistance for its inclusion.
However, when you want to use phones to pull customers into the lucrative world of subscriptions (and the big corps, especially Apple, seem to be heading this way), having a device that is more reliable and less likely to break is very helpful. The longer you can make the device last, the less reason you give the customer to try another, competing brand, and the more you increase the chance that they get pulled into your ecosystem.
We could talk about the ethics and attitude that leads them to locking down the device more and more to increase one-shot longevity instead of making devices repairable. But this is outside of the scope of my original comment.
The original argument I was making was that SIM card removal does seem plausible to me. It fits into a number of trends in Apple devices over the last couple of years, and arbitrarily increasing thinness isn't one of them.
It takes me 30 seconds from buying an eSIM in any country worldwide from their app, paying with Apple Pay, to having it active and working with data and voice line.
I travel a lot and before it'd take 15 minutes to sometimes an hour of driving to a phone shop or finding it at the airport, getting your passport copied (fraud risk), getting foreign money in cash out to pay, and handing a stranger your phone.
Big improvement for me. And I can run 2x eSIMs at the same time!
Airalo is legit, whether or not they're "serious" really doesn't matter.
Dual SIM devices were available for a long time.
Yes, most of them were dual standy sim, which meant that you wouldn't get calls from one while talking on another.
Dual eSIM, however, are fairly new.
Then you tap on the one you want, select the package you want, pay for it from that menu and then bam you are connected.
All without having an existing Wi-Fi or Cellular data plan.
There needs to be some basic/back-end service that allows for this type of communication to people not already subscribed to a mobile network.
And what if those menus are in some foreign language I don't understand? And how would that work with cash? I'd have to fork over my credit card (assuming that's even an acceptable form of payment) and may end up with a recurring charge for a cell plan in a country I'll visit for a week.
Visions like yours are nice, but my money is what we'll actually get is a far crappier, buggier version.
One impossible-to-replace benefit of physical objects is that you can use physical control to place limits on them. Pay with cash, no recurring changes, move the card, move the service. Theoretically you could do that in software, but practically you won't because those are expensive features that almost always get cut.
The menus will be in whatever language your phone is set to. You can use contactless payment like Apple Pay or Google Pay and there's no recurring charge unless you want there to be one.
You do understand how strange this sounds? Like airdropping files from C:/Downloads to C:/Archive
If I write you a letter on a piece of paper, is it wireless transmission? Mind you, paper has no wires.
Contactless payment is the marketing term for NFC technology. It has nothing to do with you not interacting with other people.
I totally agree that it could have been Apple Pay, Paypal Pay or whatever else Bingus Pay, but it definitely was not contactless, because there was no NFC radio communication involved.
This change is bad for the customer no matter what. It's similar to me to what Verizon had during CDMA days.
(For iPhones to work on your network you would HAVE to sell bandwidth to Apple who then uses it for international roaming. The user really is connecting to and using Apple's Network, the local ISP only has the priviledge of serving packets to Apple devices.)
I don't understand this comment.
Pre-COVID I used to travel a lot for business, with an iPhone.
iPhone has physical SIM + virtual SIM.
My "home" SIM would stay in my iPhone.
Meanwhile I would have one of the many eSIM apps (Truephone, GigSky etc.) on my phone, which I would activate for international data for X days which would enable me to continue doing VoIP and messaging apps as normal.
I don't see the need to go buy local SIMs (and indeed, in some countries, buying SIMs as a foreigner is difficult for legal not language barrier reasons).
Plus, in reality who needs "lots of GBs" these days when travelling ? You need "enough" GBs to tide you over between WiFi hotspots which, let's face it, in 2021 are everywhere and free in many places (hotels, conference venues, offices, shopping centres, coffee shops etc.).
You cannot accuse me of being a shill because I named multiple eSIM providers (alongside an "etc." suffix at the end of the list) so you have no right whatsoever to accuse me of marketing for any specific eSIM provider.
(I do not work for an eSIM provider either).
So please stop your trolling.
After about 30 minutes of frustration, I saw that there was a physical SIM slot. We restarted the whole process to buy an unlocked iPhone and swapped the SIM card. That process took 3 minutes.
I also have no problems swapping my SIM between an Android, Pinephone, Pinepine Pro, and Librem 5 to test out various things. Or buying a used/new phone and not having to visit my carrier's store to switch the eSIM. Or permentantly swapping my SIM to a Pinephone. Every time I have had to visit my carrier's store, I have to dedicate an hour to it. I also REALLY don't want Best Buy or some other thir party handling my PII to swap an eSIM.
I will keep my physical SIM, thank you.
Which can, and should change to something better than providing the SSN and passcode of the mobile network primary account holder who “owns” that phone number.
If anything, your experience should lead you to advocate to a quicker change to eSIM, so that your dad can control his phone number without needing someone else’s SSN.
Given that so many things are tied to a phone number (they shouldn't, but are), there should be strong authentication measures to transfer phone numbers.
Your problem isn’t the e-sim, it’s a shitty network.
So no, I'm not going to applaud giving the networks even more power over my ability to switch phones and SIMs. Physical SIMs are nice because I can 99% cut the network out of my decision to switch phones -- all I have to do is pop the SIM into my new phone. I do not want to go through Verizon's, AT&T's, or any other archaic provider's process when dealing with my (or a family member's) phone upgrade.
It's a lot like the headphone jack removal: replace something that works great with a solution that works OK 90% of the time. But 10% of the time you're stuck in an edge case that isn't covered at all by the new, shinier solution.
I wasn't trying to buy a new number, I was trying to transfer an existing one. It doesn't surprise me that they make it as easy as possible to get a new one.
Not that that's unusual, most of the networks are crappy - vodafone was the only UK network I could find that didn't require you to go to one of their stores to get the QR code. Artificial barriers are erected at every turn.
Physical SIMs can be swapped in seconds.
Was your experience of transfer simpler?
Have you ever switched SIMs continuously, in an ad-hoc way, because you had more SIMs than phones? This isn't that unusual if you're on a road trip or, especially, if you're relocating.
It took [large US mobile operator] THREE days and multiple conversations to get the eSIM working. Multiple support techs either told me eSIM's did not exist or were not compatible with [large US mobile operator]. I sure hope this has improved in the US since my experience.
What is the eSIM experience in other countries?
Verizon has a link on their website that just spits out a QR code. Completely seamless.
Maybe HN readers don't applaud knee-jerkλυ something just because it's digital.
As for which is "more convenient" that is what should be proved, not taken for granted. And this includes a lot of cases (travelling, using 2 phones, and so on).
[yes I know some deeply buried settings can override the above]
Apple have a long history of not being afraid of getting ahead of the curve. Sometimes it works out (removal of floppy drive), sometimes it doesn't (lack of ports on the previous gen MBP).
Personally, I would also prefer to have the SIM-tray as a backup and for travel. Most prepaid plans in Europe still don't support eSIMs.
Getting a new eSIM is not terribly complicated. But you have to log in, click through some menues, wait for an SMS code and an email to arrive, wait a couple of minutes.
Edit: you can still enroll in a different carrier when traveling with an ESIM because they’re often dual ESIM modules and the way to do it through GUI is trivial.
Thinner is absolutely better. The ergonomics and lightness of the iPhones 6 through 8 are far superior to the thick and heavy iPhones Pro of today. Without Jony Ive at the design helm to push the "single slab of glass" vision, the thickness and weight has been gradually creeping upward for years now to cram in more batteries and hardware. A return to thin iPhones would be a good thing.
If you're traveling you sometimes need to show your passport and fill out forms in a foreign language (looking at you, Germany). Adding eSIM is a lot easier, and will let you keep your regular phone connected when someone rings you (which is not happening a lot lately) or sends you a code via SMS.
There are many reasons to keep SIM cards but traveling is not one of them.
It only sucks if you come from somewhere else not in EU. Even then operators (iirc at least Vodafone) offer remote verification of documents over a video call, so it's not as painful as it might seem to be. I don't see how eSIM would make this easier, since the main pain point of verifying your identity will remain.
Next time I'll just do roaming on a prepaid card from my home country, unfortunately my current provider doesn't support roaming in Germany.
I then installed Airalo app and bought an eSim in five minutes, still at home. Once I landed, I had 4G service for a week.
On my trip, I was never asked for my (German?) phone number but had received multiple SMS verification codes to my regular line.
Your experience may naturally be different.
Plenty of countries don't allow no-locals to buy a sim or don't allow them to by a "good" sim so you get a local to buy a sim and then they give you the sim. Not going to work for eSim.
I also used to keep an extra sim for friends visiting. Can't do that with an eSim
It also sells one for my country, so my friends visiting can buy it from them, so I don't need to keep an extra SIM.
So, no, airalo is not an example of why eSims are good
For some reason this is what the phone manufacturers seem to think that people want and I don't know why. I don't think getting thinner and smaller phones has given me any extra value in the past decade. I would rather have a thicker phone with bigger battery.
Travel to a new country? Same thing. No apps should even be required, it should be a native OS functionality.
TBH the entire concept of a SIM isn't needed anymore, cellular networks should become like wifi networks, and should be as easy to switch between too, complete with phone number portability.
People remember the bad old days of CDMA where a phone was bound to a network and there was no way to change it's internal esim. It doesn't have to be that way and most of the world doesn't do phone locking that much or at all anymore, much like your phone's wifi.
When cell networks become like wifi, the government excuses for KYC to buy fucking cell service would be reduced even further.
Using credentials(esim) for accessing phone networks looks much easier and practical than physical tokens. No need to wait 2 weeks to switch companies. No need to check if your phone supports dual sims, and which slot is the one with 4G/5G. Security won't be worse, remeber that sim swapping already exist.
It's a win for consumers. Would anyone use a physical token to access a wifi network? Even corporate wifi networks use credentials or digital certificates.
So use an Android. You have hundreds of manufacturers to choose from. People love Apple precisely because of their purist vision, and that's what made them the most valuable public company on earth.
> Apple's former design chief Jony Ive once envisioned the iPhone as becoming a "single slab of glass," and the SIM card slot's removal would be another step towards a seamless design...
I really do hate purist visions like that.
> Taking out the slot would also free up some valuable internal space in the iPhone — every bit counts.
And my money is that they'll use whatever volume they free up to mindlessly make the phone thinner.