'I Switched To eSIM in 2025, and I am Full of Regret'

Google's Pixel 10 series arrived this year as the company's first eSIM-only lineup in the United States, forcing users who wanted to review or buy the new phones to abandon their physical SIM cards entirely. Ryan Whitwam, a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, made the switch and now regrets it, he says. 'In the three months since Google forced me to give up my physical SIM card, I've only needed to move my eSIM occasionally,' Whitwam wrote. 'Still, my phone number has ended up stuck in limbo on two occasions.'

The core problem is how carriers handle verification. When an eSIM transfer fails and you need support, carriers authenticate via SMS -- a message you cannot receive because your SIM is broken. 'What should have been 30 seconds of fiddling with a piece of plastic turned into an hour standing around a retail storefront,' Whitwam noted.

Apple started this trend by dropping the SIM slot on iPhone 14 in 2022. The space savings are modest: the international iPhone 17 has a smaller battery than its eSIM-only counterpart by only about 8%. Google's US Pixel 10 models offer no such trade-off -- they lack the SIM slot but 'unfortunately don't have more of anything compared to the international versions.' He concludes: 'A physical SIM is essentially foolproof, and eSIM is not.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.