Table of Contents
Table of Contents
How eSIMs are meant to work… and how they do work
Apple has gone eSIM-only in the US… and it doesn’t work.
Why a cross-platform partnership is the ideal solution
Phone makers need to pick a single approach
Enough is enough: it’s time to fix the mess that is eSIMs
When Apple launched the new iPhone 16e on Wednesday, the Apple Store in every region displayed one thing under connectivity: eSIM. There was no mention of a physical SIM, and I had a waking nightmare that Apple had quietly pulled the plug, and every iPhone 16e globally would be sold as an eSIM-only model.
A quick search — and a look at the photos — confirmed that this hadn’t happened, but my reaction kickstarted a thought about eSIMs, their promise (and what we were promised), and the current state of eSIMs globally. I’ve been traveling for the past month, and eSIMs are an absolute mess. The potential was immense, but it goes against carriers’ interests to make it any easier, but there is a solution.
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eSIMs have huge potential for travelers, but there’s virtually no reason to buy an eSIM over a physical SIM card right now. With carriers unlikely to solve this independently, phone makers need to either return to physical SIM cards in all phones or push towards a global eSIM-only future.
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Here’s why it’s up to Apple, Samsung, and Google to decide how we use SIM cards globally. Or even simpler, it could be down to just one phone maker.
How eSIMs are meant to work… and how they do work
Jesse Hollington / Digital Trends
eSIMs were meant to be the ideal solution to solve multiple problems at the same time: reduce the space needed in a phone for a physical SIM card, reduce the risk of fraud when your phone or SIM is stolen abroad, and make it much easier for customers to move their SIM card to another phone.
Many of these risks are enhanced when using a physical SIM card, the main being related to security (or so carriers say). The theory is that if you lose your phone with a physical SIM card, there’s far more risk than if it’s tied to your specific phone. This is certainly true, but having access to your phone number is almost a necessity in the current world, and an eSIM doesn’t solve this part of the problem.
The second part of the implied promise was the benefits that eSIMs would offer to frequent travelers. Imagine being able to land in a new country and buy a local SIM before you’ve left the plane. Or losing your phone while traveling and being able to set up a new SIM within minutes, complete with your same number.
Christine Romero-Chan / Digital Trends
Instead, eSIMs have made the experience of traveling worse than ever before. Yes, you can add an eSIM from a few companies in a few select countries, but most countries have strict Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements around presenting ID, which makes it nearly impossible to achieve this eutopia. Companies like Airalo, Holafly, and Nomad allow you to add a local eSIM when roaming, but this is more a temporary bandaid than a permanent solution.
The biggest problem comes from carriers, both while roaming and your carrier at home. Most carriers abroad don’t offer eSIMs to prepaid visitors to the country, and of the ones that do, many require you to first use a physical SIM card to activate the eSIM. If we’re to achieve an eSIM-only future, the way eSIMs work right now has to change.
Apple has gone eSIM-only in the US… and it doesn’t work.
Joe Maring / Digital Trends
The iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro ushered in a new era for the iPhone, with Apple dropping the physical SIM tray entirely in favor of an eSIM-only future. The expectation was that global models would soon follow, but this hasn’t happened and isn’t likely to.
I’ve used three eSIM-only iPhones, and this model doesn’t work, at least in its current form. Carriers like T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T have reduced the need to use a foreign SIM card to reduce costs with bundles that cap out-of-pocket costs while roaming, but it doesn’t resolve the key issues when traveling.
In particular, if you go abroad and want to use a local SIM — or you have SIM cards from multiple countries like I do — activating and transferring an eSIM isn’t simple or even feasible in many cases. Instead, the eSIM-only iPhone has proven to be a blessing for carrier bottom lines but pure frustration for any customer who wants to change their SIM card.
Why a cross-platform partnership is the ideal solution
Tushar Mehta/Digital Trends
It’s strange to think that Apple, Google, and Samsung could work together to solve this problem, but there is some pedigree for this. In late 2021, Apple and Google worked together to ensure that you could track an unknown AirTag with your Android phone. This was necessitated by the AirTag being used to track the movements of people, often for nefarious purposes. The partnership and app were built in just months, proving that these companies can work together if they have to.
Samsung is a key part of any partnership as it’s the biggest phone maker in the world. If Samsung were to follow Apple’s model and go eSIM-only on its phones, and both phone makers were to follow this model globally, carriers would quickly be forced to adopt better eSIM practices. However, it would still require Google’s input to achieve a true eSIM-only future.
Nirave Gondhia / Digital Trends
Imagine being able to swap your SIM between an iPhone and an Android phone, or vice versa, without needing to contact your carrier. Even if you couldn’t sign up for an eSIM without the carrier verifying your identification, just being able to swap SIMs easily would be a major step in the right direction. However, many carriers also ask you to have a physical SIM card or receive a QR code in some physical form, which wouldn’t fully solve this problem.
The true solution is a cross-platform standardization of eSIM provisioning technology, a cross-platform way to identify customers to carriers, and the ability to activate an eSIM on any carrier when roaming, even if you’re not in your home country. To achieve this, the big three phone makers would have to force the adoption of all customers, much like we saw with the shift to nano-SIMs in the past.
Phone makers need to pick a single approach
Andy Boxall / Digital Trends
I love the idea of an eSIM and being able to store multiple SIM cards in a single phone, but every time I have to move my eSIM to a new phone, I’m reminded just how frustrating this experience is.
The original point of the GSM standard was to decouple the terminal from the service or, in simpler terms, make it easy to move service between phones. Unlike competing standards that are no longer used, which required you to provision a specific handset and leave it up to your carrier to ensure it was possible, the GSM standard has mostly achieved this goal.
Christine Romero-Chan / Digital Trends
Yet, the entire approach to SIM cards is still a mess, but it doesn’t need to be. Many will extol the need to save space inside a phone, but two phones prove this isn’t true. The iPhone 16e drops the mmWave antennas — as it’s not supported by the new Apple C1 modem — but doesn’t bring back the physical SIM tray.
Phones are getting slimmer and thinner, so you may be tempted to point towards this as a reason to drop the SIM card tray entirely. To this, I point to the world’s thinnest foldable, the Oppo Find N5. It’s just 4.21mm thin when unfolded, but it still features a SIM card tray with not one but two physical SIM card slots. You can also enable an eSIM to disable one of these slots, but the lack of dual physical SIM card trays is not down to needing to save space in phones; rather, it’s down to carrier preferences.
Enough is enough: it’s time to fix the mess that is eSIMs
Joe Maring / Digital Trends
Last year, my iPhone was stolen while traveling to MWC, and I found that while my US and UK carriers wouldn’t allow me to activate a new eSIM while roaming, Google Fi made it simple to regain access to my phone number. This proved that there’s no technical reason that you can’t activate an eSIM abroad; instead, your carrier just doesn’t want you to.
Phone makers need to collectively decide how we approach SIM cards going forward. The current state of eSIMs is an absolute mess, so we either need to ditch the idea of the eSIM-only future, or the big companies need to partner to solve this once and for all.
I wouldn’t mind an eSIM-only future if the problems were solved, but considering that carriers’ interests will play a huge part in any decision, it’s more likely that we won’t see any change or improvement in this. Of course, if Apple were to go eSIM-only globally, this would likely change rapidly, but that also seems quite unlikely. In the meantime, I need to go to my carrier store to change my eSIM to a new phone… again.
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