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iPhone 14 Pro I hate eSIM

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macrumors 68000
Original poster
Dec 6, 2009
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It's been nothing but a pain in the ass.

I like to switch back and forth between Android and iPhone depending on what I'm doing or where I'm going and I use Spectrum's service. Sometimes it works to let me allow to switch myself online and it's fine. Still a pain in the ass, but fine. But usually lately it says it can't and I have to chat or call, and the chat has been incompetent and wanting to upsell me on stuff.

Another problem is I've been traveling internationally and even though my service works in the other location, it's obviously more expensive for data so I add a local SIM no problem but somehow after adding it I stop getting data on my main service when I get back home so I have to delete the eSIM and call back in and get them to activate it again. It's just a stupidly annoying process.

Sure I could just go all in on Android but I like my iPhone and would like to continue to keep it.
 
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The situation feels like when Apple introduced MacBooks with only USB-C in 2015. It was obvious the world wasn't ready, but consequences be damned because Apple wanted it to look nice.

eSIM simply gives the carrier and Apple another opportunity to be a gatekeeper. They determine when and if you ought to transfer eSIMs. And anybody who really travels knows physical SIM rates are almost always cheaper globally.

The worst part is, removing the SIM tray has zero benefit for consumers. It saves Apple money but doesn't save any space on the logic board. Apple simply inserted a plastic spacer on U.S. model iPhone 14. For iPhone 15, Apple just spread out the components to take up the extra space.
 
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That’s why I tell my parents that the only model of iPhone sold overseas that still has physical SIM card is the one for many other parts of the world, except the US model. I saw the dual physical SIM card slot for iPhone sold in China. It is a very clever engineering to allow users to put 2 physical sims (China doesn’t support eSIM) while only using up the space of 1 SIM card slot we used to have.
To me Apple forcing eSIM only in the US is apples spite to all of us users.
 
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JPack said:
The situation feels like when Apple introduced MacBooks with only USB-C in 2015. It was obvious the world wasn't ready, but consequences be damned because Apple wanted it to look nice.

eSIM simply gives the carrier and Apple another opportunity to be a gatekeeper. They determine when and if you ought to transfer eSIMs. And anybody who really travels knows physical SIM rates are almost always cheaper globally.

The worst part is, removing the SIM tray has zero benefit for consumers. It saves Apple money but doesn't save any space on the logic board. Apple simply inserted a plastic spacer on U.S. model iPhone 14. For iPhone 15, Apple just spread out the components to take up the extra space.
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Yeah, the carriers are lucky I’m not in charge. If it were up to me, carriers wouldn’t be allowed to sell phones at all, neither would they be allowed to do eSIM. A phone customer would go and buy a phone and then shop for the carrier they want.. more power and choice to the customer.
 
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I have had nothing but good experiences transferring eSIMs between AT&T devices but am currently in the midst of an incredibly frustrating situation helping my mother transfer eSIMs on Verizon.

I was needing to simply switch the phone numbers between two devices, a task which would have been trivially easy with physical SIMs. Instead I spent 3 hours on chat and support with three different techs who could not figure out the issue. At one point they tried to convince me that I need to get issued two new phone numbers and claimed it was because one of the numbers had recently (3 weeks ago) been ported from a land line. The second supervisor I talked to claimed there are lingering issues with the port that are causing the problem…? Both numbers are 25+ year old lines, one of which has been with VZ since the mid 90s.

I am now tasked with calling their port team but haven‘t yet had two hours to set aside. At the moment one number is still working on the wrong phone and they have the other number forwarding to it. Needless to say it has been very frustrating.

I also hate eSIM.
 
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It is a new era!
of user hostile design.

I like to use an old iPhone 6 when out on the bike or boat, so as not to have to carry the giant brick of the big new promax and risk destroying it. I switch that sim card a couple times a day. After this 13 dies, I’ll just go back to skype on an ipad mini 5. In fact maybe ill do that now.
 
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Paddle1 said:
eSIM doesn't have to be bad, but the way it's implemented today makes it unnecessarily frustrating whenever you run into a barrier that doesn't exist with physical SIMs.
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I remember some of the UI mockups from when eSIMs were first announced. In particular I remember one where it was something like "you've gone overseas, chosen Set Up New Prepaid Account from a menu, and been presented with a list of operators and pricing plans". What did we end up with? Faffing around with QR codes and having to go into the shop when we want to move the account to another phone.

Come to think of it, when my provider started offering SIMs back in 2009 there was marketing around how great they were because you didn't need to deal with customer service, just swap the SIM. Now the marketing says the opposite, no messing around with flimsy cards, etc.
 
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Nermal said:
I remember some of the UI mockups from when eSIMs were first announced. In particular I remember one where it was something like "you've gone overseas, chosen Set Up New Prepaid Account from a menu, and been presented with a list of operators and pricing plans". What did we end up with? Faffing around with QR codes and having to go into the shop when we want to move the account to another phone.

Come to think of it, when my provider started offering SIMs back in 2009 there was marketing around how great they were because you didn't need to deal with customer service, just swap the SIM. Now the marketing says the opposite, no messing around with flimsy cards, etc.
Click to expand...

A lot of carriers have stopped doing that though. I know on some providers if you swap a sim and it doesn’t match the IMEI of the phone on the account the service won’t work. Some providers still make you call then to swap sims.
 
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I love eSIM. Not having to deal with those stupid little cards anymore, that always seem to get lost, is fantastic.
Also I can keep up to 8 in my phone, so I just active whichever I want when I need it.
Currently in Bali where I paid less than 10 USD for an eSIM with 84gb data/month.
 
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The eSIM has been a godsend for me, especially since I travel a lot. Personally, I haven't used a physical card in over two years, and I wouldn't want to go back managing those fragile things. I do agree however that the phone should retain a physical SIM slot for flexibility.
 
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Iwavvns said:
Yeah, the carriers are lucky I’m not in charge. If it were up to me, carriers wouldn’t be allowed to sell phones at all, neither would they be allowed to do eSIM. A phone customer would go and buy a phone and then shop for the carrier they want.. more power and choice to the customer.
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Yeah, nothing says ”more power and choice” like a law that says “you’re not allowed to buy a phone from your wireless carrier” and “you must get a physical SIM from your carrier which may require you to go there in person or wait to receive it in the mail before you can get service”.

Sometimes, I really have to wonder about people…
 
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This is precisely why I haven't yet bought a new M4 iPad Pro. I will soon, probably next month. But the faff of having to port and deal with Vodafone UK as opposed to pop out the sim in my old iPad and drop it into the new one means that I cannot pick up a new machine in a rush and I'm about to go travelling.

For me, long term eSim probably won't make any difference except to prevent impulse purchases (and that is a good thing). But.. it will need to be as hassle free as possible and user serviceable otherwise it's a step back.

Ultimately though, I doubt that many people are constantly swapping out sims in their iPads. And the ability to support multiple concurrent contracts on iPhone and iPad beyond the number of sim slots makes eSim more useful.

The OP's use case is where eSim falls down. My backup phone is unlikely to be another smartphone (certainly not a top of the range iPhone). When I was younger I would have grabbed a dumb phone for festivals etc where battery life was much more important than social media (there's no way an iPhone would last three days which would lead to a frustrating time of lugging round battery packs).
klasma said:
Unfortunately for iPads they now dropped physical SIMs also outside the US.
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my iphone has both sim + esim (yey for not being from USA). i moved my main number over to esim. no issues so far but i haven't traveled or wanted to transfer my number. i put my work sim into the physical slot and it's been great.

i'll be traveling next month but i don't think there should be any issues as i'm only going from UK to EU. i'm more worried about data caps. I'll need to look into a cheap local sim for internet.
 
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