Title should read "I had to switch to eSim [...]"

well yeah, of course esim is shitty, as is everything imposed by big tech monopolies to their users without consulting or caring about what they really want. Did you think they were here for your wellbeing and not the money ?

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ACCount37 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

eSIM is specifically designed to deny user freedom.

They are impossible to transfer from device to device by design, for one. Every single "transfer" has to be approved and signed off by a cellular provider in an online mode. They can deny it at will, or just neglect implementing it, and you can do nothing at all.

It's pretty clear that when GSMA talks of "security", they mean "security of the business models". What does that mean for the users? It means they're getting fucked.

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waweic 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

esim.me, 9esim and "sysmocom eUICC for eSIM" are eSIMs in the SIM card form factor that you can load the SIM profiles onto and use them in any device with a SIM card slot (and of course transfer between devices). In my opinion, that's the best of both worlds.

	▲	ACCount37 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's good, but they're expensive as fuck for what they are. The best option would be a software-only eSIM with full transfer support, IMO. But we don't have that, because GSMA says we can't have nice things.

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bcye 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What would be the use case for that?

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ACCount37 6 hours ago | parent [-]

What would be the use case of being able to transfer a SIM card from one device to another at will, you mean? What kind of question is that.

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ashray 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'll post an example for the parent just in case they are honestly confused about use cases. Here is one that happened to me. I had an eSIM on my iPhone. My iPhone broke (screen became somewhat unusable, and the phone was stuck in a restarting loop). It was an older model phone so I checked the repair cost and thought I'd rather buy a new one.

Bought a new phone. Now, to transfer my eSIM from the old phone to the new phone, I needed the carrier to approve. But I was away from my home country and on roaming. So I tried to call them. They needed me to use a verification PIN they would send via SMS on the old phone, to verify the transfer to the new one. Impossible since the old phone is unusable.

Back in the day, I'd have just taken out the sim from the old phone and moved it to the new one. Easy peasy.

The only other option in this case now was to visit one of their stores thousands of miles away. Eventually just ended up doing that when I returned weeks later but during this time I could not access several services due to lack of access to my number plus 2 factor codes being sent there.

Moving a sim from phone to phone was seamless. Now the carrier needs to approve this swap. Even with two working phones sometimes it's a hassle and there will be delays while carriers decide to approve the move. There is a new feature that allows you to transfer eSIMs easily between phones but carriers seem to be holding onto their power in this regard and not every carrier will let their sims move so easily. This possibly requires regulators to step in and solve the issue - make it up to the user to move eSIMs. I would count on the EU to make this easier at some point.

On the plus side, eSIMs are nice to be able to signup and provision them through an app. Helps with travel and roaming. So there's that too.

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devilbunny 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

“I’m across an ocean from any of my network’s stores and need to activate a different phone on my regular network and number right now, on the side of the road, without WiFi or a computer or a different, working phone already on my account” is to me the most obvious case where eSIM is weak. And having been in that situation before eSIMs, it was really easy - remove SIM, put in backup phone, use. Not so much now.

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coderatlarge 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

this carrier approval to move esim problem is more generalized on modern “smartphones”. unless you opt in to cloud providers holding your data there is no easy way afaik to migrate your authenticator apps to another phone. and a host of other authentication/authorization data is tied to the device in an opaque way. don’t get me started on apple’s unpredictable model of sending 2fa to some other “trusted” device which means tou never know what tou need to bring with you.

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ValentineC 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> unless you opt in to cloud providers holding your data there is no easy way afaik to migrate your authenticator apps to another phone.

You could self-host Bitwarden/Vaultwarden, or something like that.

> don’t get me started on apple’s unpredictable model of sending 2fa to some other “trusted” device which means tou never know what tou need to bring with you.

I think they send 2FA to all supported devices on one's Apple account?

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AlexandrB 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Google authenticator lets you move accounts easily using a QR code + phone camera.

	▲	tscherno 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		But no way to backup to cold storage last time I checked. Took a picture of the QR code with another phone and printed it.

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sroussey 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Probably one most people never ask, though should be obvious to those on this forum.

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onesociety2022 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If what you say is true, why would Apple ever force a switch to eSIM? I’m now less likely to buy a new iPhone because I don’t want to deal with this eSIM fiasco. It’s to their detriment. If their goal is to sell more phones, they would want to eliminate all friction to switch to a new phone. So what you are saying doesn’t add up.

	▲	FireBeyond 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Less space occupied, more battery, smaller phones. It wasn't the only reason, but was at least one of the stated reasons for the jack removal.