Some random person I met dropped their phone in a river, just after arriving in a foreign country. He bought a new phone, but getting back to his phone number was not easy or possible for him (while in a foreign country). If he had an eSIM it would have quickly solved the problem for him. Instead he had to wait until he got home to pop in a new SIM card.

I learned from this experience that maybe eSIM is a good idea and I switched immediately upon hearing this person's story. Did I miss something?

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skylurk 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you damage your phone, as opposed to completely loosing it, the sim card is almost never damaged.

So changing phones can be done without any customer support or web forms or calls to service provider etc.

Actually, every phone I ever had eventually got replaced this way, I am still using the original sim card from years ago.

	▲	reverserdev 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I should have clarified that he dropped the phone in the river AND he did not attempt to get it back from the river, thus the SIM card is considered lost as well :)

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throw-the-towel 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If he had an eSIM it would have quickly solved the problem for him.

Except many carriers have you jump through hoops to activate an eSIM on a new device. Here in the comments one person has to receive a new QR over snail mail.

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reverserdev 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Indeed I became aware thanks to this thread!

For me it was 10 mins through my provider's app (and I was also doing it internationally)

	▲	ValentineC 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> For me it was 10 mins through my provider's app (and I was also doing it internationally) What verification processes did you have to go through? If it's simple username/password, that could mean that your number could be trivially hijacked by a determined enough attacker.

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jech an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> in a foreign country [...] If he had an eSIM it would have quickly solved the problem for him. Instead he had to wait until he got home to pop in a new SIM card.

Are you sure that his carrier allows activating an eSIM while roaming? Mine definitely doesn't, which means that if I break my phone while abroad, I lose access to online banking.

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throw4fr5yy 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A colleague of mine was in a similar situation except he had an eSIM. It didn’t help because AT&T would not provision him a new eSIM internationally.

As another anecdotal data point, I was able to switch phones internationally using a physical SIM by just putting it in the new phone.

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eesmith 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

FWIW, I dropped my phone in the Chicago River. Crossing a drawbridge, I pulled out my phone to check the time. It slipped and fell - right into the gap in the middle. I peered through the gap to see if was there, and was able to see the splash it made.

Neither SIM nor eSIM would have helped.

In that case, I waited to get home (I didn't live in Illinois) and got a new SIM by mail.