It's just to give more control to the carriers. They say it's a feature for travel but realistically how many people and how many countries does that actually apply to? Some places require ID to buy a SIM card, many places don't even offer plans travelers would want to use (who wants to pay $80 for 1 month of unlimited data instead of $5 for 1GB for a week?), and there's also the question of how many travelers are there vs locals? Are the travelers the majority of users? The majority of profit? Why don't the travelers' local phone companies have travel plans to gouge the travelers themselves?
Anyway all this is to say this is just carrier lock in, it's the return of CDMA.
Maybe it's just bad luck, but the last time I tried to swap a physical SIM, I inserted the removal tool in the hole, and then the mechanism somehow broke. So I cannot swap my SIM from my current phone to any other phone, unless I have eSim. Unfortunately, my current phone does not have eSim.
physical sims can be swapped regardless of OS or whatever arbitrary limitation they impose on us.
i still dont get why esims are a thing besides imposing more control over us
It's just to give more control to the carriers. They say it's a feature for travel but realistically how many people and how many countries does that actually apply to? Some places require ID to buy a SIM card, many places don't even offer plans travelers would want to use (who wants to pay $80 for 1 month of unlimited data instead of $5 for 1GB for a week?), and there's also the question of how many travelers are there vs locals? Are the travelers the majority of users? The majority of profit? Why don't the travelers' local phone companies have travel plans to gouge the travelers themselves?
Anyway all this is to say this is just carrier lock in, it's the return of CDMA.
Maybe it's just bad luck, but the last time I tried to swap a physical SIM, I inserted the removal tool in the hole, and then the mechanism somehow broke. So I cannot swap my SIM from my current phone to any other phone, unless I have eSim. Unfortunately, my current phone does not have eSim.