this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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This is a problem for somebody reviewing phones, but how much of a problem is it actually for the average user who will change phones once every few years? And will probably be doing so at a phone store where they can support it.
I haven't been to a phone store in 15 years
points at Lineage boot logo
not you
Speaking of Lineage...
I wonder, how long will it be before you're not "allowed" to install esims on phones with custom firmware?
Either due to the esim application not installing/running on modified firmware, or the phone will just not allow it.
If that stops Lineage from being practical on that phone, then fuck that phone in particular.
If eventually, that is every phone, then grab a hotspot and get tethering.
We are well on our way. The EU is holding the manufacturer liable if a cellphone radio is "modded", thus manufacturers are blocking the ability to unlock bootloaders.
I did have a chuckle at the thought of having a cellphone for your (modded) cellphone... but then I thought about it: "meh, yeah... it's not a bad idea. I'd do it."
Well then goal achieved, custom roms will be even harder to use, and from when I've seen I've got every reason to belive that every phone will get to that point.
In most countries, getting a phone in a store is something done only by people happy to pay lots extra for a little human help, surely? The average user now signs up online and gets a phone in the mailbox.
If I asked my mom for her SIM card, she'd ask for her purse so she could attempt to find a credit card that doesn't exist.
She has no idea how a phone works in any capacity. I'm not being insulting about it, I am informing you of blatant and honest truth.
My cousins, people my age are a hard maybe, I know two family members who went in-store recently. They treat their phones like cars. They use them and that's as deep as it goes.
That's not so informative without any idea of your age and thereby the ages of your examples.
Many of them could still follow the assembly/card insertion instruction sheet with pictures that comes in the mail from the phone company, even without knowing which part is called a SIM.
And maybe your area's phone stores aren't as notorious for overcharging as the UK's.
I'm not teaching a class, here, bud. If you need me to tell you that running LineageOS isn't somehow a skill equivalent to walking into a store, then we have some serious cultural differences between the US and EU regarding average luddite phone ownership.
The stores don't charge for helping you, no. It's the same cost for service instore as out, at least in my experience. For all I know Tmobile started charging 'install fees' for putting sim cards in.
America, age 37, nerd-coded
You're the one talking about LineageOS, not me. I'm only saying the average user now in most countries isn't walking into a store any more, but buying their phone online, having it shipped to them and following the pictorial setup instructions.
Stores here don't directly charge for helping you, but they charge more for things: phones in store are often much more expensive than online (especially phone network shops - some of the broker shops sell closer to online prices), and they only sell a limited range of plans which usually don't include the cheapest ones. The days of networks selling their locked phones much cheaper than unlocked ones seem to be over, when you add up all the charges over the minimum contract term.
Even the website of a phone company can be much cheaper than their own stores, and sometimes you can still get help from the stores if you have problems. The phone companies now all operate multiple brands and the brands without stores are even cheaper (Smarty and Voxi from VodafoneThree, Giffgaff from Virgin-O2, and so on).
I go to a phone store every time I get a new phone!
checks when my last phone was bought… 2018
I go to a phone store every six or seven years!
6,7!
Kill me, kill me slowly.
Last time I went into a store was 3 years ago, specifically looking for an iPhone 13 mini as an upgrade to my iPhone XR. They didn't have any in stock, attempted to sell me a few different, more expensive devices, then just told me to try online.
Ended up going with a different provider.
I'm fairness the only time I remember being in a phone store in the last decade was because I got an esim when I got my new phone, phone company didn't send me a qr code to get the esim and I lost access to my account because I couldn't receive an SMS because my old physical SIM was disabled.
I think it's just highlighted by someone doing it regularly, it'll happen the same % of times when someone else does it, maybe more since they don't know the process.
I also don't know how many people change phones in a store, I never have, but I'm not average. And even then, maybe a carrier store can help you, but I doubt the generic shop or branded supermarket can offer much support for an issue with a carrier.
It is also a problem for us IT guys, when we need to migrate users from one phone to another it is super annoying to deal with eSIMs
That’s odd, I just swapped phones. Old phone was eSIM, it literally couldn’t have been easier.
The issue is often that the phones take a long time to download the apps the user needs, most of our users are on the go, and can't rely wifi, so they need mobile data, with a physical SIM we can easily tell them how to swap on their own, it is done in 10-15s, and can quickly be moved back, with an eSIM you have to dig through menus and hope it works, if not, the user is left with two phones without a SIM.
AI
Those of us who swap SIMs when travelling are also affected. I travel outside my country several times a year and must say that eSIMs sound like a good idea until you actually deal with them. Spending vacation time debugging an eSIM is an annoying distraction.
Can't your phone store multiple esims? I thought that was actually one of the selling points of the stuff.
It's a software implementation though, so if you have a rooted phone or use another Android OS, you have limited options in apps that implement eSim for you.
OpenEUICC is a good one, but sometimes requires magisk modules to work.
I remember it took me half a day of fiddling to get my eSim working under Lineage.
People forget that your phone supporting "feature X" means that even though it has all the hardware to do X, it still needs to software, which might not be part of the devicetree.
For example paying for items with your phone's NFC does not happen because of NFC capability. There are no open source solutions to Google Pay. It's an agreement brokered between Google and Banks that allow the bankcard to be "cloned" and used via NFC, not the NFC doing any cloning of your actual bankcard
That's not a problem with eSims, that's just a problem with your custom ROM not shipping with absolutely basic functionality
Much more likely to be the phone vendor not releasing this "absolutely basic functionality" to customisers. Some vendors hate their customers having freedoms.
I don't think it was a basic problem, but something to do with vendor's implementation of it not being in the device tree and so it could not just be copied over as a binary blob
It can, but both my Fairphone and old pixel could have a physical sim and an eSIM. I daily drive both with my old US number and my current EU number. Can't have two active eSIM cards at once though
I buy eSIMs every two months when I travel. I only had issues when I fucked it up by deleting one myself. I'm on eSIM like 20
This never happens
My parents came to visit my over xmas and installed Airalo to get a local SIM. Activation failed, the support AI bot re-issued the eSIM, activation failed again, it got escalated to human support, they asked for a refund, and 12 hours later randomly the phone popped up an "eSIM activated!" message. That would have sucked if you actually relied on needing the SIM on landing.