> iPhone Air features an eSIM-only design that saves space internally, helping enable the unbelievably light and thin form factor.

I've only ever had phones with at least one (regular/physical) eSIM, and a 'slot' for an eSIM for travel.

What are the pros/cons of only eSIMs?

Edit: I'm not questioning eSIMs, which I know can be handy: my iPhone SE3 is physical+eSIM. I'm curious about no physical SIM. If you can support 1-eSIM+physical is it a big deal to go to >1-eSIM+physical?

I have an only esim since the iPhone 11 was released.

Pros:

- Super easy to get esims while traveling. e.g. in Mexico i downloaded an app while still in the airport and paid $5 with apple pay and instantly activated a 1 month esim.

- You can have multiple esimss. With physical sims you are limited to the physical number of sim slots on your phone, usually 1 or at most 2. With esim there is no such restriction.

- More secure. esims can't be cloned (e.g. sim swapping attack) or simply removed from a stolen phone like physical sims.

Cons:

- If you get a new phone, you cant just pop your physical sim in. You need to go through your provider to transfer, which requires calling them and verifying your identity.

I actually dont see this as a con really, I see this as a security benefit. Since I only get a new phone every 3-4 years, the 20 min on the phone it takes to transfer is not a significant burden.

When they first introduced eSIM only on the 13 iirc, not every country had that rolled out especially with old telcos in South America so if you travelled there for work or family you were completely shut out and it means buying a burner. I am not sure how that has progressed in the past 4 years but hopefully more telcos adopt it. The downside is no real portability of cheap plans using regular sim cards.

SIM cards are huge. Even the smallest form factor is a pretty large component. It has to be accessible from the exterior of the device and often has an ejection method of some kind. Getting rid of it is huge from a form factor standpoint.

I am sure there are downsides to eSIM but particularly for the average consumer who gets a SIM in their new phone and never changes it... there is probably zero difference.

Depending where you are in the world some banking apps only work with phones that have physical sim cards.

fwiw, I dropped my e-sim iphone in the water.

I asked my provider to issue a new e-sim that I could use in another phone, but it asked me to verify my id by sending me a text message I couldn't receive because I didn't have a phone.

I couldn't buy a new phone without a new sim, because I had forgotten the pin of the card I needed to use, and the pin was visible on a website that was protected with 2FA.

So I bought a physical sim card from my provider shop (using my last physical 10 euros), then went to a used iphone reseller, who let me setup the phone before paying, so that I could use the phone to actually pay for it.

It was not fun

You can’t swap them easily between phones.

If you break your phone, you may lose access to the number until you return to your home country.

Other than that, it’s the same.

For most people esim is better

Not sure, but my provider don't do eSIM so I guess I can't get one.

eSIM is essentially a client-server protocol for provisioning secrets into an embedded SIM (whether discrete chip soldered on the mainboard or emulated by the modem).

The QR code you get when you purchase an eSIM is merely an access token to initiate the provisioning process. Some carriers may make these single-use, or attach extra restrictions such as fees if you want to get a new one, or restrictions they themselves don't know about like that you must be on an IP from your carrier's home country to reach the provisioning server (good luck debugging that if you're not already aware of it - and no, on-device VPNs won't save you as the OS will not use your VPN for this traffic).

Even the mechanism that allows you to move an eSIM from one iPhone to another requires carrier involvement, which they have to support (internally I don't believe it moves anything, instead merely requesting a new SM-DP code in the background and sending that to the new phone). It doesn't work for all carriers.

Oh and you already need to have some existing IP connection to provision the eSIM in the first place, so first-time provisioning is tricky. I'm sure there is a workaround for it, but again carrier support varies.

TLDR: it allows the carrier to interfere when provisioning or moving the eSIM which carriers can and do take advantage to make the process more costly/painful and discourage easily using alternative carriers.