For who wonders about the waving cat: These are used a lot at hacker conferences to check if the cams are still working (and not frozen). Shenanigans on the network are of course common at these events :) So they are put on the stages while nothing is on.
This was a big success and it turned out to be a bit of a mascotte :P They've become a permanent fixture now.
My master's thesis from 2008 [0] gives some insight into the early design and strategic considerations (from a Nokia perspective) behind eSIM technology, in case anyone's curious.
Any idea how one can get hands on consumer-profile eUICC cards (or chips)? I've wanted to play around with eSIM (and perhaps use it for travel purposes), but don't want to upgrade my phone just yet.
https://esim.me is selling an eUICC-on-a-physical-SIM card. The only part that sucks is that you have to provision eSIM profiles through their proprietary Android app. Someone please reverse engineer it?
Seems like it should be possible to solder an eUICC chip to a SIM-card form factor board and use it with OpenEUICC. [1] Somebody is even selling those pre-soldered on Taobao: https://shop104192953.world.taobao.com/
Later in that thread, somebody also reported that OpenEUICC works with eSIM.me's cards, too. If you have one of these, can you give it a try perhaps?
Anyone know what the cost of starting a thin e-sim only "MVNO" would be? I've seen offerings like https://gigs.com but I assume due to NDAs there's no public pricing. Wondering what it would take to to offer something along the lines of Airalo or like the "me.ONE" plan offered on esim.me.
I've had a great experience with eSIMs these past few days during a trip to Europe (coming from the US). It's so convenient to be able to arrive at a city and use airport wifi to download a mobile data package for a few bucks. The process is slightly clunky but not bad at all.
I'm in Europe and I've had very poor experiences with local carriers in getting an eSIM :( Most of them outright refuse unless you are on a mobile contract plan with them (I'm not, I hate contracts so I only use prepay). On prepay they don't want to support it here in Spain for whatever stupid reason even though I've had my prepay number for 10 years. They also levy much more restrictions on the whole ordeal: Usually only locally sold models are allowed. So you can't use a Dutch Samsung phone with a Spanish eSIM. I'm really annoyed with this because the whole idea of eSIM was to make things easier for the customer, not harder and more restrictive.
Perhaps the carriers that specialise in temporary data contracts for travelers are ok, but local permanent carriers are crap with this.
> the whole idea of eSIM was to make things easier for the customer, not harder and more restrictive.
I remember reading an article in a French newspaper about how carriers were "uncomfortable" with the eSIM because it severed "the last connection" between them and their customers. The latter would basically no longer have a reason to "interact" with the former.
I don't quite see how that's a bad thing. The less you have to deal with "those people" (and this works from either side), the better it is, no? In my case, the last time I've "interacted" with my carrier was some 10 years ago when my phone got stolen, and I had to get a new SIM. Other than that, I pay them every month and they make sure my phone works every month.
At least with my carrier, it's cheaper to get an eSIM than a physical SIM. I didn't actually get one, since I've had my current SIM for a very long time. They basically charge for the "SIM service", and there's a separate charge for the physical part if you get it in a brick & mortar store, or for shipping if you want it delivered.
> Usually only locally sold models are allowed.
How can they tell, are there still country-specific models? I know people from the US and from Russia coming to France, popping a local SIM in and being in business. These were all iPhones, though.
But how is the carrier going to "engage" you? How are all the people involved in sales and marketing there going to justify their job?
A carrier that operates fully automatically with minimal customer interaction could indeed be more profitable, but it's politically impossible for any established company to transition to such a model since it would obviate the need for many positions there - those same positions rely on the current status-quo (no matter how mediocre) and will fight any attempts at improving efficiency.
(this is not limited to carriers, any large legacy company has the same issues - lots of positions are just there to create work to sustain other, equally-useless positions, while the new output of the system being zero or even negative).
> because it severed "the last connection" between them and their customers. The latter would basically no longer have a reason to "interact" with the former.
I love how they put this because it's exactly how I phrase my general objection to and avoidance of SaaS and other kinds of services. I do NOT want to have a relationship with every single vendor. Managing relationships is costly. Most of the time, those relationships are highly abusive towards the customer. And they're almost always artificial anyway; they exist entirely to let the vendor keep a sales channel open. That's exactly what I do not want as a customer.
>I remember reading an article in a French newspaper about how carriers were "uncomfortable" with the eSIM because it severed "the last connection" between them and their customers.
That's a very delicate euphemism for "eSIM makes it easier to switch networks, which would increase churn and eat into our margins".
People use Airalo app to buy eSIMs, wherever they travel to. One can buy eSIM even before you land in foreign lands. I don't have experience with Airalo, but many recommended that app on this site.
For instance, Eurolink eSIM card with 180 days validity can be had for 180 euros on Airalo.com. They also have re-chargeable eSIMs, just you need to top up just before it expires.
I can get a local SIM with 50GB data that is available with a 10 euro topup each month.
Don't forget the purchasing power in Europe is much lower than in the US (especially southern Europe). For this reason local carriers are a lot cheaper too.
Vodafone in Germany was happy to give me an eSIM for a prepaid plan, not even a store visit required (but it did require taking a photo of my ID and a identity verification video call where someone checks your video against the ID).
I guess with AI-based video manipulation, a store visit may be required in the future...
Or not, considering how store employees are treated and paid. It's probably much cheaper to bribe some low-level clerk than build & deploy a convincing AI spoofing solution.
They’re very useful. Although it’s sometimes hard to get eSIMs direct from carriers internationally since many only grant them on post-paid contracts.
SIM cards also have their place, however, which is why Apple’s take on it is weird. When traveling, especially with so much MFA (for better or worse) is linked to a phone number, it makes having your phone damaged a major issue. You can’t simply pop out the SIM and move it across to a new phone.
Even if you manage to get a new eSIM, most of the time you can’t activate it until you’re back in your origin country.
This as an issue (carrier or otherwise) needs to be addressed with some urgency.
The USA versions of Apple's flagship phones (iPhone 14 and up) have ZERO physical SIM slots. They are dual eSIM only.
Models sold elsewhere in the world retain a single physical SIM slot.
Yes you read that correctly. They made multiple versions and the American one is deliberately crippled.
I'm certain the space regained by removing the SIM slot in a US-only variant has been repurposed for...absolutely nothing.
It defies logic why they would do this, beyond some grand social experiment they can execute with little risk due to cult-like monopoly control of the market.
I refuse to believe that they sold more than 12 of these SIM-less phones.
What?? I had no idea about this. I have not had an iPhone since the 6 so I haven't followed it that closely. I remember they offered eSIM for dualsim, I had no idea they were eSIM only in the US even for primary SIM use. Wow. This will so not work over here.
> I'm certain the space regained by removing the SIM slot in a US-only variant has been repurposed for...absolutely nothing.
Yeah, after all the specs are no different in any other way I guess?
Samsung is doing something similar here though. They leave out the mmWave antennas. On US models you can see the antenna cutouts on their premium models but in Europe there is nothing in that space, just empty.
It's a shame because while mmWave is not a thing here right now I don't buy my phones for just one year.
I don't have the time to look, but I saw a YouTube video where someone swapped the dual physical sim daughterboard from a Chinese iPhone into an American one. It fit and it worked. I'm about 80% sure it was a dual eSIM only American model (14), but it's possible it was a single SIM/single eSIM one (13 and below). Anyways, I am pretty sure the space is there and is just unused.
> They’re very useful. Although it’s sometimes hard to get eSIMs direct from carriers internationally since many only grant them on post-paid contracts.
Exactly, this is a huge problem for me because I don't do post-paid (after one bill with unintended overage charges, I much prefer them just cutting me off until I pay again).
The sim swapping being controlled by the provider (every time you need a new QR and they need to 'grant' it to you) is more restrictive too, and they usually enforce only models they sell directly. It's a real loss of flexibility that we used to have with hardware SIMs.
They're trying to kill physical SIM cards like they did with CDs. They only have their place insofar as you can say 'I can touch this, and also swap it out with another one' / otherwise 'tangible computing'.
Killing off physical SIMs is like arguing in favor of soldered RAM.
Because that's all eSIMs are you know. They are not software SIMs. They are physical components with the additional capability of being provisioned remotely by the end user with a friendly UI that sometimes works.
Moving physical SIMs (and thus your service) from a damaged, inoperable phone to a new one takes approximately 5 seconds. This cannot be improved upon with eSIM.
That said, eSIMs have their place too, especially in the industrial IoT space. But completely eliminating physical SIMs from consumer handsets is beyond stupid.
Unfortunately, the support for transferring eSIM between devices is not universal and some operators choose not to support it and charge money for each transfer(i.e. charge money to generate a QR code). The tech is fine but the greedy telcos don't miss the opportunity to screw us over.
Really makes me appreciate how good we have it here phone-wise in ireland. You can't be charged for number porting, and the carrier gets a fine if they can't do it in 24 hours. (usually instantaneous) No idea if it's the same with eSIM.
Plus, you can usually keep using the sim from your old carrier and the same number when you switch providers. (sometimes sims need replacing when network upgrades happen)
They didn't. This is from Chaos Communication Camp, which takes place every fourth summer. It's the annual Conference that happens in December. The dates for this Camp was announced prior to Defcon dates.
If the conflict is actually intentional after all, I'd also be curious around the history of that.
Newer lineup is not even close to a good phone because of:
1. Materials - newer phones are not even close in durability to 3310.
2. Logic of menu - old Nokias can be used without looking at display, new phones can update some UI statements after purchasing.
3. Display - colour displays are always less durable and almost always phones with such display has issues with too little font on some critical places. Compare any UI framework of any modern feature phone with a conception of three-line display where a letter/digit is never less than 1/3 of display height. Some versions of Nokias have increased font in typing a phone number case, I mean the numbers become 1/2 of display height which is handy for a low-sight person. Modern UI progress is a batshit compared to Nokia 1280.
We really dodged a bullet on eSIM. The implementation could have really sucked if the carriers controlled it from the start. Apple do a lot of dumb shit but they set a really high bar for an eSIM implementation for others to match.
But they do control it. This is a big problem in Europe. You can't get one on a prepay contract with most of the local carriers, they limit the phones they will allow them to be used on to only locally sold versions, and they often charge for a SIM swap or limit the amount of times you can change phones per month.
None of these limitations were present with physical SIMs.
> You can't get one on a prepay contract with most of the local carriers,
To be fair, on this particular point it can be incompetence. Telecoms have absolutely no skilled engineering capacity (third-world body shop is as good as it gets) and the entire thing runs on decades of duct tape and outdated, unsupported and vulnerable software.
The most likely reason for this not to be possible on prepay is that prepay and postpay are managed by completely different systems and making the prepay system work with eSIMs would be too difficult, or maybe they tried, it broke, they rolled it back and have a "TODO" to fix that (of course the TODO will never be addressed).
For GSM carriers, esims add a layer of complexity because they are apparently bound to a phone. As you probably know, SIM cards can generally be swapped in.
This makes provisioning more complicated, because roaming. I never bothered to understand how GSM addressing and routing works, but I'm assuming this requirement makes things even harder to deal with.
In Thailand anytime a new SIM is activated an ID check is required. In the past I kept a SIM and I used to just move it between phones. Now when I want to move my eSIM between phones I need to go to the shop with my passport or do a video call with tech support and show my passport to them over the call. Such a pain in the ass.
This was a big success and it turned out to be a bit of a mascotte :P They've become a permanent fixture now.