iPhone 14 Pro Max Teardown Provides Closer Look at Unused SIM Tray Area on U.S. Model and More

[JoshNori]

eSIM likely WILL be available when you travel going forward, BECAUSE of Apple’s decision to remove it. The carriers have no choice but to adapt.

Also known as a monopolistic maneuver in the meantime…

The subset of people who travel internationally and who need “the physical sim” are the ones who are going to be crying the loudest are are LITERALLY a small fraction of the entirety of phone users. You can always get another phone and frankly you should anyways if that is your line of work. e-sim is the future and literally like the headphone jack, this was the right move by apple. Carriers need to stop dragging their feet with this stuff anyways. The unused space can now be used for something good like battery. As it seems to me now days ALL smartphones have plateaued at 5000mah and are showing no sign of every increasing ever again. Sim actually takes up a LOT of space in the smartphone picture. So YES! I welcome 1000% it’s removal <3

I welcome its removal too, but why are you using the “small fraction” argument to justify my disposal as a consumer? I don’t think it’s as small of an audience as you think, surely it’s in the millions who use prepaid carriers who don’t yet support eSIM. Don’t assume your use case is everyone’s. It’s a welcome idea, but the lack of a physical SIM is why I do not currently have an iPhone 14 Pro Max.

 

[JoshNori]

Not sure it adds any real friction. In fact, eSIM made switching easier for me. I got new service setup for the second “slot” and once I confirmed everything was good, I opened a port request with the old carrier which automatically terminated service with them.

Another great reason to go with eSIM. Love the second line option.

 

[nicolas17]

But initial service will only be availabe in November for USA + Canada, making this feature not functional for the rest of the world.

The Apple Watch has those fancy sensors for ECG and it's still not enabled in many countries (due to health regulations). For example, it was enabled in Mexico in watchOS 8.6(!), on previous versions "the feature would remain not functional" and that sensor would be useless.

The iPhone has had Apple Pay since iPhone 6 but it was enabled in Argentina, Peru, Moldova and Malaysia this year. It's still not available in many countries.

Having hardware present on your device that you can't use due to region availability is not a new thing at all

 

[svish]

Good to see the internal. Prefer the normal physical SIM. Hopefully Apple does not remove it from the international models any time soon.

 

[Beautiful Opinion]

Waterproofing issues maybe?

Would it work to use lightning to analog headphone, jack adapter?

Out with the old in with the new, I say

Phase out the SIM card completely is best

I’m quite certain there are plenty of android phones with waterproofing and headphone jacks. In both instances, the SIM tray and headphone jack, it doesn’t cost much in terms of design to offer the choice - for both of those things.

 

[Cole82]

Could be for structural support 🤷‍♂️

Do you think it rattles around? That would be a fun noise to complain about.

 

[Cole82]

And so many people have been saying they used the space for another mmwave antenna. YOU'RE WRONG! I don't see the need to dump physical SIM chips. The 13PM has both so why not just continue that? So if people travel and want to use their phone with a local provider, is that even possible? I heard they support 2 eSIMs. Is that true?

Does the plastic 'bite block' add to structural stability?

Regarding stability... I'm waiting for this thing to become the iMaraca. Seems like a lot could go wrong sticking a "spacer" in there. Hope it's at least well secured.

 

[Cole82]

Irritating. My carrier doesn’t support eSIM. So they basically are using this maneuvering to try to force adoption. By doing so, they’ve just placed money into the pockets of AT&T/T-Mobile/Verizon monopolistic market and cut out the majority of MVNOs who these carriers likely don’t offer eSIM to. I smell a class action lawsuit coming if any MVNO can show that the network carriers are introducing any type of eSIM provisioning hurdles for unjust enrichment.

A class action suit would require proof of damages. Not being able to use this phone on your carrier is not a damage. It's an inconvenience sure, annoyance definitely, but it's not a damage. Just like you can't run Windows programs on a Mac... there's no damage there. Do you not remember when the iPhone was first released? It was only available on AT&T. Apple will simply tell you, make sure your carrier supports the phone prior to purchase. It removes liability on their part.

 

[BuddyTronic]

I’m quite certain there are plenty of android phones with waterproofing and headphone jacks. In both instances, the SIM tray and headphone jack, it doesn’t cost much in terms of design to offer the choice - for both of those things.

Well - I don’t think we are able to know all the design choices really.

I could guess that the transition to the future causes Apple to do various things that sometimes concern the end users.

1. SIM card - E-sim is better for all but only when it’s ubiquitous. All USA providers are good with ESim I’m guessing.


2. Headphone jack - if you are an audiophile insisting on a wired headphone - maybe an adapter works good enough? Or no? Otherwise get Bluetooth headphones.


3. Lightning not fast enough some people say - but Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 means you won’t ever want to transfer files over a wire from iPhone.

 

[_Spinn_]

Since the rest of the world still get a physical SIM I'm not surprised that they didn't do anything with the space.

 

[macduke]

Kinda funny since that plastic spacer serves no meaningful purpose at all.

Apple preaches environmental benefits when they removed the power adapter and EarPods. With no SIM slot on the U.S. model, they decide to generate plastic waste by putting in a spacer. It serves no purpose except hope nobody remembers what's supposed to be underneath it.

Everything choice Apple engineers make with the internals serves a purpose. This likely maintains structural rigidity and balance of the device in hand.

By starting this phase out, they are signaling to the carriers of the world “we’re really doing this, be prepared for next year” and hopefully they put the space to good use. There have been rumors of a periscope style internal optical zoom lens for the next iPhone so maybe this space could be used for that.

 

[JPack]

Everything choice Apple engineers make with the internals serves a purpose. This likely maintains structural rigidity and balance of the device in hand.

By starting this phase out, they are signaling to the carriers of the world “we’re really doing this, be prepared for next year” and hopefully they put the space to good use. There have been rumors of a periscope style internal optical zoom lens for the next iPhone so maybe this space could be used for that.

It’s hollow plastic and weighs 0.5g or about a pinch of salt. It has two pegs to fit in the six peg hole. Trust me, it’s not there for rigidity or balance.

The display assembly would never flex to the point of touching the plastic spacer. If it did, it would pressure and damage the OLED assembly and bend the logic board, which leads to bad things like Touch Disease.

 

[laptech]

Nothing surprises me with Apple. They refuse to accept the RCS Messaging standard but yet are telling the world they must adopt eSim if they want to use the latest iphone.

 

[MacFarmer]

This is funny, but I think this was a last minute change. Probably they will redesign the board once they move to usb-c or completely wireless. To redesign it just for this alone is not cost effective.

 

[ID_Field_Blank]

It’s all part of the port-less iPhone journey…

 

[Aggedor]

The space is empty so there is no need for drastically different design and manufacture for US and non-US models. Pretty logical.

 

[Aggedor]

So in other words, they won’t be able to utilize that space until eSIM becomes the standard worldwide?

Correct! See my post above.

 

[CarAnalogy]

This makes me so angry. On top of telling me I “no longer have deal with a SIM card” they clearly did this as a business tactic. It’s cheaper to make them all exactly the same and just remove the feature from the ones you don’t want to have it, so they do this. Didn’t even take the time to design in any improvements for its replacement, because of course they can’t, because the rest of the world wouldn’t put up with this **** so they had to leave the SIM hardware in those.

This is a very bad mark against Apple that I hope people won’t soon forget. Apple has become more arrogant and out of touch than ever lately and I hope they reverse that trend soon.

 

[CarAnalogy]

The space is empty so there is no need for drastically different design and manufacture for US and non-US models. Pretty logical.

Yeah but there was never any need to design two different models except for this power play with eSIM. They apparently didn’t have the leverage overseas, or it was the US communications cartel’s idea, or something fishy. They absolutely did not do this for any user benefit.

 

[cageface]

Yeah but there was never any need to design two different models except for this power play with eSIM. They apparently didn’t have the leverage overseas, or it was the US communications cartel’s idea, or something fishy. They absolutely did not do this for any user benefit.

Exactly. People that wanted to use esim already that option. If Apple is really doing this to put pressure on the carriers then they've put their own business agenda ahead of their users' best interests. Unlike the audio jack there is no recourse for people that need to be able to use a physical sim card for various reasons.

 

[dysamoria]

Profile information is in the embedded chip. You would have to attack the embedded chip which requires firmware-level access. Very difficult to do unless you can desoldier the processor and access the chip directly, which needs physical access. Which is part of the problem with the traditional SIM which is people using a SIM without a PIN set so if your phone is stolen and you didn't set a PIN they get access to your phone line, eSIM completely blocks that.

How are they configured to use different providers/numbers?

 

[dysamoria]

ESIM is still a separate chip with the same electrical interface as a traditional SIM. The only difference is that different profiles can be installed on that chip by the host device. ESIMs can be configured (and presumably usually are configured) such that installing a new profile requires approval from the previous operator (i.e. via the mobile network the eSIM is currently connected to, IIUC).

So it’s software access…?

 

[klasma]

So it’s software access…?

Regular SIM is software access as well.

 

[zach8987]

So much for all the people who said getting rid of the SIM tray is a good thing as it would mean extra space for Apple to give us something extra (e.g. features, battery capacity, etc.).

We got something extra alright... a chunk of plastic 🤣

This is the trial, when they remove it from all phones they will use it for something, but Apple never likes features or performance to vary hardware-wise by region. The only exception is connectivity. China had dual physical sims.

 

[jaytv111]

How are they configured to use different providers/numbers?

From the PDF:

With Remote SIM Provisioning, there are no traditional SIM cards1 . Instead there is an embedded SIM (called an eUICC), which may be soldered inside the mobile device, that can accommodate multiple SIM Profiles – each Profile comprising of the operator and subscriber data that would have otherwise been stored on a traditional SIM card (the red and blue dots in the previous section). In (1), the end user sets up a contract with their chosen mobile network operator, and in the case of a Consumer solution, instead of receiving a SIM card they will receive instructions on how to connect their device to the operator’s Remote SIM Provisioning system. In this example a QR (Quick Response) code is used. The QR code contains the address of the Remote SIM Provisioning system (SM-DP+ server within the GSMA specifications), which allows the device to connect to that system (2) and securely download a SIM Profile. Once the Profile is installed and activated, the device is able to connect to that operator’s network (3).

TL DR Remote SIM provisioning means you get connected to a remote server who serves your device with the profile required to connect. The profile is then stored on the embedded SIM. Multiple profiles can be stored on the embedded SIM.