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Apple Removes SIM Card Tray on All iPhone 14 Models in U.S.
- dougmwne 4y agoBlah. I travel internationally quite a bit and a physical SIM is a must-have. eSim carrier support is getting better, but it's by no means 100% globally yet. Currently running dual eSim and a SIM from different carriers. I crossed a border for a few hours this weekend and the secondary SIM picked up without a hitch. I wonder if you can run dual eSIM.
- clairity 4y agodual eSIM[0] has been available from apple already, but more than that is in question, though they did use the term "multiple eSIMs" in the presentation. i'm bummed about the removal of the sim tray too. [0]: Using Dual SIM with an eSIM ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209044 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209044 )
- dougmwne 4y agoThanks, that's good to know. I was thinking more about how eSIM really limits you and adds carrier control. For example, my partner has a cell plan that allows you a big bucket of data, then lets you link multiple SIMs to that data. The idea is it's for your tablets, watches, etc. But I use a secondary SIM from his plan on my phone to add to my data for free. But there's no way to install an eSIM for this plan on a secondary device as it wasn't an "intended use" to use multiple phones. With a physical SIM, I can use this data on any device I choose. eSIM is a very nice convenient feature, but not at the expense of a physical SIM.
- clairity 4y agoyah, the move to eSIM is about consolidating control for apple and the carriers at the expense of the consumer. it's also an anti-privacy move (you can buy SIMs anonymously with cash, but not eSIMs), but of course, apple didn't announce that little nugget of information.
- discostrings 4y agoCan QR codes for eSIMs be sold like traditional SIMs? I haven't actually gone through the eSIM registration process, but I assumed this should be possible.
- clairity 4y agodoubt they'd support that. it's surely technically possible, but apple & the carriers like to gatekeep the eSIM provisioning process to make you reveal your identity.
- oarmstrong 4y agoIt is possible to buy an anonymous eSIM, the only provider I have come across won’t allow outbound SMS or calls though. Inbound SMS and calls as well as data are fully functioning. (Therefore can be used for messaging services that require a verified phone number). I know that’s not exactly what everyone would want, but for some use cases that may suffice.
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- metadat 4y agoIn my experience, eSIM is only good when things go as expected. If things get messed up on the carrier end, you'll have to go to the cellphone store to get it fixed. Every. Time. They cannot ship you a replacement sim card. Losing the ability to easily swap physical SIM cards seems like a major loss in functionality and robustness for consumers. All for a minor convenience during first setup. Am I missing something?
- mattnewton 4y ago> All for a minor convenience during first setup. Am I missing something? Probably also comes with a minor reduction in material / manufacturing costs? One less port and moving part that has to be waterproofed.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoPlus I think there's still plenty of countries where eSIMs aren't even an option yet
- Nextgrid 4y ago> Am I missing something? The ability to move SIM cards around isn't something the carrier likes. eSIMs give them that control back. The ability for you to easily pick up a local SIM while travelling isn't something either the local carrier wants (they'd rather be paid 10x as much in roaming fees) nor your primary carrier wants (they'd rather have you roaming which means they can now tack on a bigger margin on the roaming fees). eSIM involves the carrier during the provisioning step (the QR code you get is one-time-use) and I don't believe you can move them, which means to move the eSIM the carrier needs to be involved again to give you a new QR code. This could involve fees or other unreasonable requirements.
- fomine3 4y agoGood point. Careers don't want to have another SIM slot because they don't want cross-shopping, so naturally they had also against to eSIM. Now eSIM is available anyway so it looks smart to move to eSIM only to avoid cross-shopping for physical SIM only operator.
- trafficante 4y agoI was on various CDMA (and IDEN, rip Nextel) carriers for the first 15 years of this century. Bar none, my absolute favorite thing about finally switching to T-Mobile was the physical SIM. Cell provider websites are almost universally garbage and swapping IMEIs to activate different phone hardware was a complete nightmare that bugged out far too often. If the eSIM swapping process is at all similar, this feels like a step backwards even if you don’t travel a lot.
- jackson1442 4y agoI used the eSIM swap feature a few months ago and it was surprisingly seamless. Once I set up my new phone, I got a prompt on my old one asking if I wanted to convert my physical SIM to eSIM, hit approve, entered PIN, and the eSIM was instantly available on my new phone.
- csdvrx 4y agoRight now I see 1 comment (yours) that says it worked fine , and way more than lists problems and issues eSIM seems to be good for the carrier (who doesn't have to ship anything or manage a database of SIMs for sale: provision on demand) but not for the customer. Personally, I will not buy anything that doesn't offer an option for an actual SIM. SIM? Yes! eSIM+SIM? Sure! eSIM only? Nope. It's like these services that ask "for your safety, please enter" (whatever, say the SSN): in general, when it says that, it's the opposite: it's for the safety of the service provider, putting the user at risk, and adding inconvenience. Just like "The Democratic Republic of..." old joke: if it needs to say so and to add that in its name, it's likely neither a democracy nor a republic.
- marwatk 4y agoThis prevents me (a Tello user) from getting the new phone. There are only like 3 US MVNOs that support eSIM. I wonder how long that will remain the case now that the writing is on the wall. I tried Google Fi eSIM a while back prior to traveling and even after working on the phone with Google support they had to ship me a physical SIM to bootstrap the eSIM.
- CogitoCogito 4y agoSo I guess buy your iPhone 14 in Europe then?
- discostrings 4y agoIf you don't care about mmWave 5G... and there are other bands missing as well.
- knownastron 4y agoAny word on Canadian iPhone 14 models?
- wintorez 4y agoBased on the pictures, Canadian models will have sim tray.
- discostrings 4y agoCanada models have a SIM slot, but they don't support 5G mmWave bands.
- pgib 4y agoPhew! I'm not sure about Rogers and Bell, but Telus doesn't seem to grasp what the "e" stands for in eSIM. You have to go to a store and buy a physical card with the eSIM QR code printed on it. Instant online-delivery? Naw, that's too hard. (I opted for an eSIM with my iPad Pro.)
- graypegg 4y agoVidéotron doesn’t support eSIM and as far as I know doesn’t have any plans to support it, so hopefully the SIM slot remains here.
- laurencerowe 4y agoI've spent time in both the UK and Mexico this year and simply picked up a local physical pre-pay SIM card. No local pre-pay eSIMs were available. Hopefully that will change in time but currently the only options appear to be expensive global eSIMs which cost 5-10x as much per gigabyte.
- quitit 4y agoThere's currently 15 providers of those global data eSims, and I find the one I use significantly cheaper than local providers. The trick is not to buy "global data", but just data for the country you are visiting. For example compare TruPhone to O2. TruPhone eSim: 16 EUR for 20GB, 30 day validity (this is the most expensive option.) O2 Sim-only: 15 GBP for 5GB, 12 month validity. (this is the cheapest option.) A traveller doesn't need 12 months of validity, they need data - Local providers rip off travellers by not making reasonable plans available. The biggest scam are the "1pound" plans in Tesco, which are not 1 pound plans, but just the cost to buy the sim card which then requires a costly plan.
- smn1234 4y agojust looked at Colombia and Brazil on TruPhone, and the costs for the 30 days 5GB plan are way more than what I paid for a physical sim in-country
- laurencerowe 4y agoThat O2 price seems very expensive - I just walked into a Vodafone shop and got a free SIM and 20GB 30 day plan for £10. That Truphone deal is not bad but outside of Europe the plans are much more expensive. Mexico is US$24 for 5GB whereas a local SIM works at US$10 with 6GB and unlimited Facebook/WhatsApp/Twitter. Edit: looking at O2 it seems to be £15 for 20GB. Not sure where your figure is from.
- jacobp100 4y agoHopefully this moment gets remembered the same way we remember the floppy drive getting removed Hopefully
- parkingrift 4y agoDoes this apply to iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro? This is a total dealbreaker for me as I travel internationally too often.
- paxys 4y agoI don't know about others, but what would have been a day one purchase for me is now going to be put off because of this one limitation. Flying into some random country, buying a prepaid SIM card at the airport or some street corner and popping it into my phone is something I do multiple times a year, but this phone seems to only have been designed with the major US carriers in mind (and not even most MVNOs). eSIM is not at all prevalent in most of the world. In fact Apple knows this themselves, which is why international iPhone 14 models are going to keep the SIM tray. Removing it from US models is such a bizarre decision to me. Does the target iPhone user in the US just not travel?
- ericmay 4y agoOr maybe you land in a new country, the iPhone is like "hey I see you're in a new country, want a data package?" and you could just opt-in to something straight from your phone and be connected before you even get off the plane without needing to buy a disposable SIM card. With that being said, I think it would be better if carriers were just global tbh. But that's a dream.
- cma 4y agoMaybe Apple could get a 30% cut of plans sold that way. Since they made the phone it's only fair.
- ericmay 4y agoI think that makes sense b/c they’re basically “doing the sale” similar to how a retailer might advertise a product that they up sell from a wholesale price.
- colin_mccabe 4y agoIs this sarcasm, or do you really think Apple should get 30% of the revenue from all phone plans?
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- jscheel 4y agoYeah, this is a huge issue for me. Absolutely bonkers that they've made this decision. This is incredible consumer-hostile.
- wilg 4y agoVerizon has bungled up my phone activation horribly every single time I have tried to use eSIM.
- thebitstick 4y agoSO many of the comments are so short-sighted. The minute Apple does something everyone else follows. Just because iPhone isn't the majority in other countries doesn't mean every single new Android phone won't also exclude physical SIMs and thus force telcos everywhere to adopt eSIMs.
- ryeights 4y agoBut is this a good thing?
- cbsks 4y agoAre there any pay-as-you-go eSIM carriers that offer voice, i.e. an actual phone number?
- bubblethink 4y agous mobile has a bunch of plans. Some can be quite cheap (a few bucks a month).
- hedora 4y agohttps://www.metrobyt-mobile.com/esim https://www.metrobyt-mobile.com/esim
- cbozeman 4y agoI'm fond of Mint Mobile. $360 for a year of 35 GB of 5G data, 5 GB hotspot data, and unlimited talk and text is nice.
- pcdoodle 4y agoI hate it. Phone is dead. Don't know why. Just swap sim to old phone. No IVR. No talking to CSR. Life is good. Sim card is life.
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoDoes this open the door to potential IMEI randomization? That could prove to be a privacy improvement for American travelers to countries who are much more aggressive with tracking people around with their phones
- propogandist 4y agono way they will ever do this. Apple talks big game on privacy, but it's mostly a marketing trick. eSIM is also tied to IMEI.
- TT-392 4y ago>dual esim why why why why why why why is this a thing. Pleeeaaaase, why why why limit it to 2. I'm sure there is no unovercomable reason to just make that like 20
- TT-392 4y agoLike seriously, this is how the world will be now, limited to 2 virtual sims for no good reason, because apple did it
- bubblethink 4y agoYou do realize that number of simultaneous connections to different networks is an actual hardware thing, not just an arbitrary limit, right ? And what's the use case for more than 2 at the same time ?
- csdvrx 4y agoIn the US, ATT + VZW = generally good service everywhere If you preferent results to excuses, you get a dual sim phone and use whichever line has the most bars (I keep a Tmobile 5G access point for my computer stuff)
- TT-392 4y agoI don't live in the US, and I don't care about good service.
- TT-392 4y agoYes, I do know that is a hardware thing, but I am pretty sure you already connect to more than 2 towers at the same time, even with a single sim. As for, what is the point of more than 2 at the same time. There are already plenty of people who use 2 sims to, for example, separate work and personal life, or personal stuff, and stuff like microsofts stupid 2 factor. Also, when traveling, it would be great to be able to add more sims, without disconnecting your previous sims, which may be connected to subscriptions which you might want to keep running, though, to be honest, I don't know much about how stuff like that works with esims. Even if you could only have 1 or 2 active at the same time, lots of esims you can switch on or off would be great. Also, having a bunch of burner prepaid sims which you can turn on and off is really nice.
- 0xDEFACED 4y agoI see this leading to a huge spike in the prevalence of SIM-swapping scams. I can’t remember the last time I needed to have my carrier move my number from one SIM card to another, but if this becomes the norm I’ll need to ask them do it for me every time I get a new phone. Or am I missing something?
- hedora 4y agoThe old iphone can transfer the sim to another iphone using local radios and a 2PC involving the UI on the two phones (like airdrop, but for simcards).
- quitit 4y agoI think the downsides of travel are being overblown, moving overseas however would present a problem if one is moving to a 3rd world country or China. Currently 82 countries have eSim support for iPhone, typically it is poorer countries that don't have eSim support. More reasonably one would utilise an inexpensive worldwide provider such as TruPhone for travelling - there are currently 15 worldwide eSim providers for iPhones.
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