As a digital nomad + business traveler, eSims are total misdirection and more cumbersome experience:
Case in point - I stay in Country A (home country) for 3 months, Country B for 2 months, and then C for 3 months, back to A. Until now I used an Android with Dual-SIM (physical) and all I had to do was: put in physical-SIM whenever I am in and call it a day. With iPhone and more and more phone manufacturers praising about eSIMs, not anymore.
Country B/C/D etc may have extremely complex or underwhelming infrastructure/process to support e-SIMs. Lots of issues with “network reception not working” to troubleshooting the signup process. Heck, there are additional charges in some countries for eSIM vs. physical sim.
I had a carrier outright take 40$ on eSIM and then fail provisioning because Pixel phones weren't on their whitelist. They refused to return the money or provision my backup Samsung phone.
Last time I traveled to a EU country from the US I tried an travel esim service. For a single sample of an unlocked iPhone and and Airalo app it worked flawlessly. Not affiliated with the app, but I may use it again and am curious about different experiences.
I bought the esim about a week ahead and installed it and the validity period auto activiated when I turned on the profile in reach of a valid network.
Is your complaint that activation is troublesome and bureaucratic? Isn't that also true with physical SIMs?
With eSIM, you should be able to just have all three eSIMs stored on the phone, marking the one you want to use as active, and switching whenever you want, with no need to carry around physical bits of plastic any more.
This has been my experience with my iPhone 13 when traveling.
> Is your complaint that activation is troublesome and bureaucratic? Isn't that also true with physical SIMs?
No? Normally SIM card activated by carrier before sending to you, like a cable/satellite card would be. It just works when you put it in devices, can be swapped around between devices without a secondary internet connection. Same if you buy prepaid sim at a store, many countries you can just buy and activate at checkout, then put in phone, no carrier helper apps needed.
> With eSIM, you should be bale to just have all three eSims stored on the phone, marking the one you want to use as active, and switching whenever you want, with no need to carry around physical bits of plastic any more.
If wanting to change devices you need an internet connection and hope activation app/site isn't down, call on the phone to manually transfer (which requires a working phone service), or go into a store. Many carriers will not activate eSIM devices they don't recognize the IMEI of. The situation is only fairly seamless currently with iPhone in the US, most international carriers don't support the automatic iPhone transfer stuff. It's kind of a mess everywhere else on Android.
FWIW, my experience with eSIMs has been identical to my experience receiving physical SIMs. Instead of inserting it, I scanned a QR code. It then activated much as any physical SIM activates the first time you put it in a phone.
People are complaining so much that I guess maybe I've had just good luck with carriers?
Fair point on changing devices. I've never tried that and I imagine you might have to get the carrier to issue a new eSIM, which is might be an annoying ordeal. It's _meant_ to be possible to do it easily (see e.g. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212780 - but that does say it works only for "some carriers").
Which you need an internet connection for. A SIM you do not.
> People are complaining so much that I guess maybe I've had just good luck with carriers?
Apple really put a lot of thought into making the process as seamless as possible if the carrier builds into their system. Credit where credit is due, but everywhere else is a fragmented mess (not unlike how bad the voLTE situation has been with inconsistent phone/carrier support).
Apple's physical to esim transfer process is great (as well as phone to phone transfer) if the carrier supports it, but now how do you go about moving esim to an android phone if you like swapping around? Good luck navigating carrier apps/site/phone/store/etc...
Giving you real example of buying SIM card in 3 countries (Thailand, Vietnam, Russia) within last 6 months:
You step into the shop/kiosk at the airport (or in the city, however you prefer). They ask you to choose any SIM with desired numbers, plans are clearly well-written, take xerox of your passport (or click a snap of it), and plug the SIM in, pay money, reboot phone, and that's it. It did not take me more than 10 minutes in any scenario.
In all cases, it is cheaper (than using Airalo - and why are we promoting one app anyway!)and less hassle-free than buying eSIM.
Unfortunately it gets worse in other countries such as Mexico.
Most carriers will only provision a eSIM if you are on a contract through them. So lets say you are traveling for US to Mexico with an iPhone 14 (no physical sim) you are SOL. Extremely frustrating.
Only good news is once those contracts are up the used market I hope will force a change in this behavior.
Case in point - I stay in Country A (home country) for 3 months, Country B for 2 months, and then C for 3 months, back to A. Until now I used an Android with Dual-SIM (physical) and all I had to do was: put in physical-SIM whenever I am in and call it a day. With iPhone and more and more phone manufacturers praising about eSIMs, not anymore.
Country B/C/D etc may have extremely complex or underwhelming infrastructure/process to support e-SIMs. Lots of issues with “network reception not working” to troubleshooting the signup process. Heck, there are additional charges in some countries for eSIM vs. physical sim.