When I helped my dad get a new iPhone at an Apple store without my mom (who is the primary holder of the phone account), my dad had to give all sorts of information to the employee and had to jump through a bunch of hoops that involved my mom being on the phone to give to the employee (things like giving my mom's SSN to the employee, sending a text to my mom's phone, and some other things I cannot remember now).

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.

That experience has nothing to do with eSIM or physical SIM. It has to do with current protocols that mobile networks use to transfer phone numbers.

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.

> That experience has nothing to do with eSIM or physical SIM. It has to do with current protocols that mobile networks use to transfer phone numbers.

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.

That’s down to your network. I was able to buy an e-sim over the internet in a few minutes from Vodafone UK, while not even being in the UK, and set it up by scanning a QR code that got emailed to me.

Your problem isn’t the e-sim, it’s a shitty network.

Totally agreed. But networks in many (most?) countries have been shitty for a long time, and show no signs of improving. And they're so entrenched that we don't have much hope of replacing them even if something better suddenly showed up. This is the case in USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, and I'm sure a lot of other countries.

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.

> buy an e-sim

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.

Either way, it's the behaviour of a crappy network rather than an issue with e-sims as a technology.

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.

Every time I've transferred my eSIM to a different phone, I had to get a QR code regenerated.

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.

I haven't used an eSIM. Is regenerating a QR code more onerous than driving to a store to buy a SIM or waiting for one to arrive in the mail?

When I wanted to get new phone service, I could so instantly without getting the physical SIM, i.e. waiting for it to be shipped to me, or going to a store.

I switched to using an eSIM with the iPhone 11. I was frequently traveling internationally and wanted the convenience of quickly purchasing a local SIM at my destination for easy cheap data, while retaining my US eSIM for important communication back home.

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?

>I sure hope this has improved in the US since my experience.

Verizon has a link on their website that just spits out a QR code. Completely seamless.

>Advocating for a far less convenient physical solution over a digital solution - on HN?

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).

Or changing provider.

Maybe once the carriers are forced to adapt, but in Canada they don't support them on most eSIM capable devices. Swapping an eSIM requires an app, entering values, waiting for the swapping process. Whereas a physical SIM I can just pop out and pop into another phone.

To me it is more loss of control of our devices; No headphone jack, Bluetooth doesn't actually turn off, no SD card slot, locking batteries and screens, powering off the phone but it is still awake, now no SIM card.

[yes I know some deeply buried settings can override the above]

I on the other hand have been on Verizon's no-SIM CDMA network. Didn't like it, and don't want to get back but this time giving the power to phone manufacturer's. SIM is giving power to the customer, and I actually don't understand those sheepish comments on HN.

I can't use devices with eSIMs on my MVNO, so nope, I've never actually dealt with eSIMs.

Agreed. This feels like folks complaining about e-mail vs snail mail.