Transferring your phone number can be a mess, especially if you’re going from iPhone to Android. Here’s how my experience has been with the carrier.
eSIM management became an initial, frustrating, time-consuming challenge.
T-Mobile now offers a surprisingly seamless eSIM transfer within its app.
iOS Quick Transfer also works well for moving eSIMs between devices.
As a mobile reviewer, I spend a lot of time on phones, but I also spend comparatively little time on each individual phone I review. The constant cycle of swapping from handset to handset as they launch throughout the year has made one aspect of my life a delight — the SIM card. Not to be mistaken with eSIM.
It’s no big deal to pop the SIM card out of one phone and move it over to another as my assignments (or my flights of fancy) dictate. But all that started to change when Apple moved to an eSIM-only model in the United States two years ago. The first year, I got the iPhone 14 in for review and had to move my main T-Mobile SIM over to it, and so, as a tech reviewer, I decided I wanted to stay on eSIMs for as long as I could.
I lasted about four months.
The following January, it just became way too much of a hassle to call T-Mobile, explain to them why I wanted to switch my SIM, say, «No, thank you. I don’t want to buy a brand new phone; I already have one», and go through that whole process. It was a mess.
The Google Pixel 10 series loses the physical SIM card slot in favor of eSIM.
So, this year, when Google launched the Pixel 10 series of phones, also withholding the SIM tray, I was prepared to do battle once again. I figured that at least the Pixel and iPhones launched so close to each other that I could just deal with it for a couple of months and go right back to my reliable SIM card.
But in order to do that, I needed to first move my SIM from the Google Pixel 10 Pro to the iPhone…
…and it was…kind of easy?Why eSIMs?
Swapping SIM cards is simple, as long as you have a SIM ejector tool (or a paper clip).
