this is super cool ! i kinda want to get it, but I don’t have a direct need for it.
I wish it was possible to export esims
We bought phones that support eSIM because we do a lot of travelling. Canadian mobile companies charge usurious rates for roaming: $15/day! Times two phones. I can get 2 weeks of data only for Europe for about $11 total on an eSIM. With voice it goes up to about $25. Total.
It has changed our lives when we travel.
Which eSIM do you buy for the EU?
I have an Orange eSIM with a France number that I have kept alive by reactivating it at least once every 6 months. It’s good for all Europe, without roaming charges, so that’s easy to do. Having the same number all the time is convenient, but more importantly I have gone through the hassle of providing passport info to Orange, which is a government requirement if you want a number for more than a couple of weeks. I think that’s an EU thing.
The local number is good for calling hotels and for making restaurant reservations. Just having that is a game changer.
For my wife’s we don’t need a number, so I just use Nomad for her data only eSIM, and get a new one each time. The cost is about $12-15, and you get whatever carrier you get, but the service has been good so far no I keep using Nomad.
We can text each other using WhatsApp, and you can even use WhatsApp for voice calls. The sound quality is acceptable.
It’s good for all Europe, without roaming charges
Watch out: roaming costs are a thing of the past in the EU, not in Europe. Vistising Switzerland, the UK, and various other European countries outside of the (expanded) EU area can/will cause roaming charges.
This can be especially annoying when near the border, as your phone can easily pick up a non-EU cell tower and you’ve probably enabled roaming already (as you are in a different country after all). With a bad carrier combo this can cost you whole euros per call or text.
You’ll probably never run into this problem, but with how good we’ve got it here in the EU, it’s easy to forget about the existence of roaming costs as a tourist.
The travel eSIMs are a bit different. My Orange plan covers Turkey and the UK, which I specifically wanted, and probably Switzerland as well. For my wife, I needed to get a “world” plan that covered Turkey, otherwise the Europe plan would have covered the UK.
But that’s an important point. The travel plans are NOT the same as regular plans in some ways.
Thanks!
Do you think you will buy this esim sim card?
I would have a couple years ago. In a flash. We replaced our phones a while back specifically to have eSIMs. It truth, considering the cost of Canadian roaming plans the phones have already paid for themselves.
Both of our old phones were single SIM, so using a local SIM would mean disconnecting our Canadian numbers which would put us out of touch with people back home. Which means that this card wouldn’t have work for us either.
I was at the point of looking at buying a portable WiFi hot-spot, when I found out about eSIMs. So we went that route.
Initially I didn’t see it on the package in the image, so before reading the article it looked like a prank product, just an empty case to hold your eSIM.
Not gonna lie, if this were a real product, I’d be tempted. You see, for Android phones, ESIM registration uses propriety Google code. A programmable device that can present to the phone as a regular SIM would be a boon.
https://jmp.chat/esim-adapter it’s realer than you think and it works. Do you have a source to some documentation that says eSIM works only with the proprietary Google code?
I’m not the person you’re asking, but I have some evidence to support the case that making it work without proprietary code is a problem. GrapheneOS, a privacy-oriented Android-based smartphone OS, write in their usage guide:
By default, GrapheneOS has always shipped with baseline support for eSIM, where users can use any eSIMs installed previously on the device. However, in order to manage and add eSIMs, proprietary Google functionality is needed. This is fully disabled by default.
eSIM support on GrapheneOS doesn’t require any dependency on Google Play, and never shares data to Google Play even when installed.
Edit: The fact that they haven’t implemented eSIM functionality without using the proprietary Google stuff, indicates to me that it’s either impossible/blocked or simply too hard with practically nothing in return to have been prioritised (yet?)
Grapheneos people have said so repeatedly in their documentation. At least for the activation part. Once the eSIM is downloaded/installed, it’s no longer needed i think.
Oh, wait… I didn’t think about this and didn’t know it was closed source, even though when I think about what google is doing lately it’s no surprise.
You could just not use a esim
Not so sure that will work. ESIMs are really convenient and cost effective for travelers and people who flit between countries. You can even load up an ESIM before leaving for a country. Your other option is to pay through the nose for roaming. Or arranging a pay as you go SIM in a country where you may not have a full grasp of the language.
