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Comment by walidthedream | Hacker News Reader

I am quite annoyed by the people who don't see the issue with eSim because "they never had an issue" with it. It's like having one murder down your block and stating that you don't see the issue because nobody attempted to murder you so far. ESim are backed up as part of iCloud backups, had one dodgy carrier in Europe (Lyca) who never activated my eSim so I switched back to a new carrier but I had to get a transfer authorization from Lyca. Guess what , since I was no longer a customer I was sent to hell by their customer support. Best joke that it was impossible to remove on my iPhone. It was part of the backup, a reset attempt did not solve it so I had to drive 200km to an Apple store to get a hard reset and the Apple genius advising me against restoring my data "otherwise it would retrieve the faulty ESIM back in your phone" !!!

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> ESim are backed up as part of iCloud backups

You can’t actually backup an eSIM. If you could, they would be easy to clone. I know Apple uses that terminology, but that isn’t what is happening in the background. Same with transferring an eSIM. A new one is issued each time.

Isn't that just semantics? It's tied to the same phone number, and I assume the generation of a new eSIM invalidates any old one (as happens with my carrier.) It's essentially backed up, even if it's just a (carrier, number) pair. If the Lyca account is trashed, the rest is just an implementation detail.

But it's not, because some carriers explicitly don't allow eSIM transfers, or reuse of the initial QR code, or even the forced generation of a new eSIM without either customer support manually revoking the previous one, or deleting it yourself from the old device.

I think the problem here is: there's no consistent regulation on how a replacement eSIM can be provisioned on a new device.

True. Made a mistake of removing eSIM, need to visit a brick and mortar location for them to issue a new one. Crazy stuff.

>the rest is just an implementation detail.

Is the fact that you don't actually own a game you bought on steam, or a movie you bought on itunes (eg. if either of them went under, or you got banned) also "just semantics" and "implementation detail"?

NO. IT IS NOT. If it is a backup, then you should be able to restore it verbatim without involving a middle man 3rd party

eSIM profiles are not backed up, as the key never leaves the Secure Element. What might be backed up is a token allowing the reissuance of a replacement eSIM by the carrier.

Can you prove it tho? Apple controls the whole hardware and software stack. They absolutely could store these keys in icloud backup.

Would be awfully obvious to have a subscriber to whom you issued an eSIM profile to an eUICC with the Removable flag set to False later accessing your network with a different IMEI...

Many one-time eSIMs aren’t transferable, Nomad for example.

I occasionally buy travel data, and 3 of probably 8-ish instances had me on the phone with support for at least 20 minutes (and once an hour) to make an esim work. Perhaps the problem is android. But I've never had that experience with a physical sim. :shrug:

I have used the AirAlo app to buy data-only eSIMs for so many international trips. It works well but I have only tried it on iPhones.

Did this yesterday on Android when arriving into Indonesia. While my wife waited in immigration, I used the Smart Gates. I downloaded an eSim via Airalo in just 90 seconds, providing me with enough data to send her a "good luck" message and let her know I'd see her at the hotel if she cleared immigration.

So you left your wife behind at the airport to fend for herself?

Wow.

Turns out women can be independent and don't need 24/7 supervision. If you fly often, there are situations where it's easier to stick together and situation where it's better to go independently. Especially if one of you can take the kids the faster way.

Sure, but not when traveling together to a new country. Where women’s rights are… optional.

Well, if its related to the original poster, then how do you know it is their first time in indonesia? :)) Most likely, :)), it is Bali, and for sure, you can leave wifey alone.

Fair enough. Still rather odd thing to write without at least acknowledgment of this being unusual — I guess this is what had people somewhat triggered, because they made it sound as if this was a natural thing to. But we digress.

To clarify, I went to the hotel, she got through (eventually) and went to a conference. I collected her luggage. We met back at the hotel later that evening.

Traveling with kids is a different story, but there’s no mention of that here. Most people wouldn’t jettison a regular friend at passport control, text them “good luck” and head off to the hotel. This guy did it to his wife.

> I switched back to a new carrier but I had to get a transfer authorization from Lyca.

I don't understand. I am able to travel and load multiple eSims on my phone. If you wanted to load a second esim, what prevented you? After loading one esim, you dump the other, or disable it. Do you mean in terms of transferring ph number?

Is this because of an older version of iOS or specifically because of the shitty carrier? I can add and remove esims from my iPhone. I just recently added one for my new 17 Pro Max. It prompted me to login to Verizon and it "just worked". There is an option right there to delete the Verizon esim. Nothing restricted or difficult about it.

Try doing it without any sort of data connection, where the phone can't ask the carrier to deprovision the esim.

Given that this is a flag that the carrier has to explicitly set on the eSIM, you should blame the carriers that do this.

To be completely honest, if a hard reset removes the profile it should get reinstalled, it is actually not okay that a hard reset works.

Why is it like this? This is the way subsidized phones without physical sim work.

Yeah, eSIMs are built for high trust locations. I just use Google Fi and they’re pretty decent about it all. This whole “switching a carrier” business is kind of pointless busywork I don’t do any more.

Odd how it works out, but my work Pixel 8 on Google Fi forgets its eSIM about once every three Android updates. Usually takes 15 minutes to an hour to work itself out, with no indication as to what happened or why. Turned me off completely from eSIM-only devicess and Google Fi for personal use.

Hell, as I write this my on-call phone just notified me that its eSIM isn't valid. Good thing I'm not on call yet!

Classic Google. I’ve used the eSIM on iPhone flawlessly across numerous countries for 8+ years now. It’s typical that their stuff wouldn’t work on their own hardware.

I've been using esim only for years on my pixel 8 too, with no issues related to them at any point

I suspect all issues are ultimately caused by the carriers, not the esim technology itself.

Eh, it's more like: a dog pooped on a lawn down my block, but it hasn't happened to me yet, so I'm not too worked up about it.

> I am quite annoyed by the people who don't see the issue with eSim because "they never had an issue" with it. It's like having one murder down your block and stating that you don't see the issue because nobody attempted to murder you so far.

TBH that's most people on most subjects.

First one that comes to mind:

"I'm an honest citizen and never did anything wrong and never had a bank account frozen, hence it never happens to honest citizens who did nothing wrong".

Honest. But oh-so-very dumb.

But all of the issues people cite wrt esim have in some way been mentioned years ago too, just in relation with regular sim cards.

Seriously, the tech is massively over vilified in this thread. You can get issues, but the alternative isn't perfect either

It's partly luck and partly choosing high trust carriers what gets you a stable experience.

You sound like you had a murder down your block and you are scared (understandably), but if nobody else anywhere had any murders you should understand why they aren't scared.

My carrier lets me issue esims myself on their website. I can login, get a QR code, and scan it on my phone and the service just starts working.

Personally I find this preferable to having to go to a physical location, and the fact that I can issue a new sim card to myself anywhere in the world has been very helpful.

> It's like having one murder down your block and stating that you don't see the issue because nobody attempted to murder you so far

Yeah over exaggerations are probably not helping the cause. I’ll stick with eSim

Proving the OP's point. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean somebody else doesn't

That's not the point. eSIM failures are not even remotely comparable to murders in severity. These are paper cuts.

So don't do business with dodgy telcos and stick to the big ones?

And as a bonus the established players even have their own stores in every mall!

Yay for oligopolies!

Where when I go to cancel stuff, I am told, I would need to call for support to India for that.

Seems kind of pointless to have an eSim if you have to go to the goddamn mall. At least my dodgy carrier will mail me a physical card next day.

Or just stick to regular sims. They're very reliable, esims are not.

I don't really see the case for eSims. In theory they could save a bit of time: activating immediately upon ordering your subscription online, instead of waiting days for delivery, but my new telco still sends you a plastic card with a QR code to scan before you can download it, completely nullifying that advantage. Besides, when you want to keep your number, you can rarely activate the new subscription anyway. On top of that, there's too much that can go wrong, and recovering from problems is harder than with a regular sim which just works.

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