eSIMs will be really great in the future, but the present is rather messy for Android and iPhone users like me.
SIM cards are the new 3.5mm headphone jack, circa the iPhone 7’s launch: Everyone has them right now, but Apple has signaled that it’ll be getting rid of them eventually. Soon, the best phones you can buy will likely follow suit, and we’ll all feel the pain.
The replacement to the removable SIM card – or eSIM (embedded SIM) – is a growing technology that has been available for a few years now. Their presence in many phones spans years, yet they haven’t really being taken seriously until the iPhone 14 went eSIM-only in the US. As a result, the current state of the technology has proven rather inconvenient compared to regular old physical SIM cards. Some of these cracks only really show up when you go looking for them, but it’s the edge cases that make me take a step back – and have me wondering why The Future™ looks so messy.The trouble with eSIMs
My carrier must be tired of me at this point. Like clockwork, I’m once again logging into the web portal and asking for a replacement SIM. This time it works, so I don’t have to battle with an irritating chatbot, as I struggle to find a customer service agent to speak with. No, I did not lose my SIM care or my phone. Instead, I got a new phone to review and I’m trying to put my primary SIM into it. It’s not like the ‘before times’, when I didn’t need customer service to get involved. No, because transitioning to eSIM, I now need my carrier to know whenever I’m switching phones, and it’s annoying to say the least.
I didn’t make the jump to eSIM because I had to; I wanted to. There’s no better way to gain insight into new technology than by using it for yourself.
On paper, eSIMs are better than physical SIMs; they aren’t small or finicky things that you have to poke and prod at with a special tool, earring or a paperclip in order to insert, they also can’t be taken out of your phone and discarded by bad actors (more on that later too) if your phone were to be stolen. So it should be all sunshine and rainbows, right? Not quite.
