I've found this as well; totally painless to add a destination data plan just before jumping on the plane. And even switching my local plan was pretty straightforward when a promo offer came in from a competitor.

That said, I'm sympathetic to the stance of the article's author. I recently had a scare with my iPhone 13's battery not being able to charge (it recovered itself eventually) and I realized it was going to be a hassle to switch to another phone if I couldn't get the old one powered on enough to run the esim transfer, much less the whole OS migration.

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abigail95 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I guess I'm lucky enough to only have had providers where it would take 0-3 hours to create a new eSIM profile. Compared to 3-7 days for a new SIM.

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kiwijamo 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Note that if you just have a broken phone you don't need a new SIM, you just pop it out and pop it in the new phone. So 1min for a physical SIM vs 0-3 hours to create a new eSIM profile. I know which one will be faster. :)

	▲	mikepurvis an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, that was the situation for me exactly, that basically if I lose or break my phone, I obviously have other devices that can access 1Password and my email, but I'm locked out of anything that requires SMS or an authenticator app to 2FA. Definitely made me feel that at the very least I should be getting a yubikey so that I can have authenticator codes across multiple devices.