Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Nacket

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 22, 2013
88
65
Phoenix, AZ
With Apple pushing eSIM, could it be possible that we’ll be pushed to pay the infamous one-time upgrade fee? Many (including myself) have managed to dodge it by inserting the old SIM card from the previous phone to avoid this fee. I wonder if we’ll move to a set up where the eSIM is preprogrammed instead of including a physical card, bypassing this trick.

The footnotes of the iPhone XS page say that it won’t be enabled until later this year via software update, so I imagine new phones will ship with a pSIM for now. I wonder if those who get new iPhones after the update is pushed might not be so lucky. This is purely speculative, but seems like a plausible issue. I’m sure carriers will manage to justify the fee for “bookkeeping” or some nonsense if it were kept with the eSIM. ;)
 
There is no way to get rid of the fee. You can call your carrier up and you could ask if it could be credited but there is no 100% way to get rid of it. They love those little fees.
 
With Apple pushing eSIM, could it be possible that we’ll be pushed to pay the infamous one-time upgrade fee? Many (including myself) have managed to dodge it by inserting the old SIM card from the previous phone to avoid this fee. I wonder if we’ll move to a set up where the eSIM is preprogrammed instead of including a physical card, bypassing this trick.

The footnotes of the iPhone XS page say that it won’t be enabled until later this year via software update, so I imagine new phones will ship with a pSIM for now. I wonder if those who get new iPhones after the update is pushed might not be so lucky. This is purely speculative, but seems like a plausible issue. I’m sure carriers will manage to justify the fee for “bookkeeping” or some nonsense if it were kept with the eSIM. ;)

I would imagine that if/when they move to eSIMs only that there would be no way around the fees sadly. I'm sure the carriers are just waiting for his to happen to be able to force more bogus fees on us.
 
So we cant just swap nano SIMs before turning on to avoid the fee?
Apparently the carrier phones from apple will only activate with the SIM it ships with... Only after you activate it with that sim can you swap it to a different one. I guess it's a "security measure"
 
The way it seems to work is you have to start the process to activate the eSim though. If you don’t because you don’t need it then you can just keep using the Nano Sim I’m guessing.
 
Apparently the carrier phones from apple will only activate with the SIM it ships with... Only after you activate it with that sim can you swap it to a different one. I guess it's a "security measure"
Not true, I’ve put the SIM card from my old iPhone in for my past few upgrades to bypass the fee. On Verizon at least.
 
Six users on my plan. Probably bought/activates ~25 iPhones. Always got the fee waved.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.