I am quite annoyed by the people who don't see the issue with eSim because "they never had an issue" with it. It's like having one murder down your block and stating that you don't see the issue because nobody attempted to murder you so far. ESim are backed up as part of iCloud backups, had one dodgy carrier in Europe (Lyca) who never activated my eSim so I switched back to a new carrier but I had to get a transfer authorization from Lyca. Guess what , since I was no longer a customer I was sent to hell by their customer support. Best joke that it was impossible to remove on my iPhone. It was part of the backup, a reset attempt did not solve it so I had to drive 200km to an Apple store to get a hard reset and the Apple genius advising me against restoring my data "otherwise it would retrieve the faulty ESIM back in your phone" !!!
You can’t actually backup an eSIM. If you could, they would be easy to clone. I know Apple uses that terminology, but that isn’t what is happening in the background. Same with transferring an eSIM. A new one is issued each time.
Isn't that just semantics? It's tied to the same phone number, and I assume the generation of a new eSIM invalidates any old one (as happens with my carrier.) It's essentially backed up, even if it's just a (carrier, number) pair. If the Lyca account is trashed, the rest is just an implementation detail.
But it's not, because some carriers explicitly don't allow eSIM transfers, or reuse of the initial QR code, or even the forced generation of a new eSIM without either customer support manually revoking the previous one, or deleting it yourself from the old device.
I think the problem here is: there's no consistent regulation on how a replacement eSIM can be provisioned on a new device.
Is the fact that you don't actually own a game you bought on steam, or a movie you bought on itunes (eg. if either of them went under, or you got banned) also "just semantics" and "implementation detail"?
eSIM profiles are not backed up, as the key never leaves the Secure Element. What might be backed up is a token allowing the reissuance of a replacement eSIM by the carrier.
Would be awfully obvious to have a subscriber to whom you issued an eSIM profile to an eUICC with the Removable flag set to False later accessing your network with a different IMEI...
I occasionally buy travel data, and 3 of probably 8-ish instances had me on the phone with support for at least 20 minutes (and once an hour) to make an esim work. Perhaps the problem is android. But I've never had that experience with a physical sim. :shrug:
Did this yesterday on Android when arriving into Indonesia. While my wife waited in immigration, I used the Smart Gates. I downloaded an eSim via Airalo in just 90 seconds, providing me with enough data to send her a "good luck" message and let her know I'd see her at the hotel if she cleared immigration.
Turns out women can be independent and don't need 24/7 supervision. If you fly often, there are situations where it's easier to stick together and situation where it's better to go independently. Especially if one of you can take the kids the faster way.
Traveling with kids is a different story, but there’s no mention of that here. Most people wouldn’t jettison a regular friend at passport control, text them “good luck” and head off to the hotel. This guy did it to his wife.
Well, if its related to the original poster, then how do you know it is their first time in indonesia? :)) Most likely, :)), it is Bali, and for sure, you can leave wifey alone.
Fair enough. Still rather odd thing to write without at least acknowledgment of this being unusual — I guess this is what had people somewhat triggered, because they made it sound as if this was a natural thing to. But we digress.
To clarify, I went to the hotel, she got through (eventually) and went to a conference. I collected her luggage. We met back at the hotel later that evening.
> I switched back to a new carrier but I had to get a transfer authorization from Lyca.
I don't understand. I am able to travel and load multiple eSims on my phone. If you wanted to load a second esim, what prevented you? After loading one esim, you dump the other, or disable it. Do you mean in terms of transferring ph number?
Is this because of an older version of iOS or specifically because of the shitty carrier? I can add and remove esims from my iPhone. I just recently added one for my new 17 Pro Max. It prompted me to login to Verizon and it "just worked". There is an option right there to delete the Verizon esim. Nothing restricted or difficult about it.
Yeah, eSIMs are built for high trust locations. I just use Google Fi and they’re pretty decent about it all. This whole “switching a carrier” business is kind of pointless busywork I don’t do any more.
Odd how it works out, but my work Pixel 8 on Google Fi forgets its eSIM about once every three Android updates. Usually takes 15 minutes to an hour to work itself out, with no indication as to what happened or why. Turned me off completely from eSIM-only devicess and Google Fi for personal use.
Hell, as I write this my on-call phone just notified me that its eSIM isn't valid. Good thing I'm not on call yet!
Classic Google. I’ve used the eSIM on iPhone flawlessly across numerous countries for 8+ years now. It’s typical that their stuff wouldn’t work on their own hardware.
> I am quite annoyed by the people who don't see the issue with eSim because "they never had an issue" with it. It's like having one murder down your block and stating that you don't see the issue because nobody attempted to murder you so far.
TBH that's most people on most subjects.
First one that comes to mind:
"I'm an honest citizen and never did anything wrong and never had a bank account frozen, hence it never happens to honest citizens who did nothing wrong".
You sound like you had a murder down your block and you are scared (understandably), but if nobody else anywhere had any murders you should understand why they aren't scared.
My carrier lets me issue esims myself on their website. I can login, get a QR code, and scan it on my phone and the service just starts working.
Personally I find this preferable to having to go to a physical location, and the fact that I can issue a new sim card to myself anywhere in the world has been very helpful.
Or just stick to regular sims. They're very reliable, esims are not.
I don't really see the case for eSims. In theory they could save a bit of time: activating immediately upon ordering your subscription online, instead of waiting days for delivery, but my new telco still sends you a plastic card with a QR code to scan before you can download it, completely nullifying that advantage. Besides, when you want to keep your number, you can rarely activate the new subscription anyway. On top of that, there's too much that can go wrong, and recovering from problems is harder than with a regular sim which just works.
