The Airalo Discover+ Global eSIM | COMPLETE Guide & Review

AO has released a new Global eim that connects to networks in 130 countries all under the same plan not only does this eim provide International mobile data like all their other plans do it also includes the ability to send standard SMS text messages and place standard phone calls by assigning you a global phone number in this video I'll walk you through the process of purchasing installing activating and using this Global eim as well as review my personal experience using it in a few different countries including my home country of the United States hey hi this is future Brian here briefly interrupting our scheduled programming to let you know that in addition to all of these heow videos you see on this channel we also have travel Vlogs location guides day trip guides and all other things related to travel you seem like someone who's interested in travel I saw you flirting with a subscribe button so whether or not you click it that's up to you but I saw you looking thought I would let you know help you make a decision one way or the other anyway on to the purchase process let's start by opening up the AO app on the main store Page here we have local eims Regional eims and then you have Global eims which essentially cover all the countries in heow network under the same exact SIM card they've had these Global eims for a while but the ability to place calls and send SMS text is new and that's in this section right here that says data calls text so I'm going to tap on that and these are the new discover plus eims coverage is 130 countries that's insane if I tap on that I can see all the countries that are covered obviously quite a long list of countries and it's likely that wherever you're going is going to be covered but doesn't hurt to take the extra couple seconds and check Steph and I are going to Portugal and Spain which is where I'm going to be testing this for the first time one other thing I want to keep in mind for myself is that the United States is covered which I'll mention why that's important in a little bit the layout of this eim store card looks very similar to Arlo's other ones with the only difference being now that you have this calls row and this text row showing you how many minutes you'll be allowed and how many texts you'll be allotted Under This Global eim plan looks like their most introductory plan is 10 minutes and 10 SMS text messages it's good for 7 days and includes 1 gig of data and then of course they offer the ability to purchase more data calls and texts up front as well as you can see the validity period as I scroll through here is extending which is how long you have to use your allotment of data calls and texts after you initially activate the eim I'm going to go ahead and install this second option so I'm going to tap on that at the top here it's giving another opportunity to look at the countries that this eim covers we can also see the data calls and text allotment that we're getting as well scrolling down a bit more you'll see the additional information section I'm going to click show more so we can check this out networks at the Top If we tap that you'll see per country which networks your phone could connect to activation policy I want to focus on this one a lot it says the validity period starts when the eim connects to any supported networks the vast majority of ao's other e plans don't typically include coverage for the country that we are physically in right now this is why when we were looking at the supported countries earlier I mentioned to keep in mind that the United States was in there because for me I am in the United States so if the US is a supported country and the activation policy says the validity period starts when the eim connects to any supported networks to me that means once I install this eim here in the United States the eim is going to activate and my validity period is going to start because the US is a supported country I guess we'll find out together in a few minutes last thing I'll point out here is other info it says this eim comes with a Plus 43 phone number for Global usage call forwarding and voicemail are not supported so if you're used to using one of those two features you're not going to have it with this eim so something to be aware of let's get out of this okay so I'm going to click buy now they give me one more opportunity to make sure this is the eim I want for payment methods you have a few different options such as credit card and Apple pay then you got this section down here where you can apply a discount code if you have one or you can use mine if you'd like checking the box for terms and conditions and then checking a box that is essentially you acknowledging that you've confirmed your device is eim compatible and unlocked there's a resource you can use down in the description that shows all of the eim compatible phones for airlo also double check and make sure your phone's unlocked if you don't know how to do this I have a resource in the description which will walk you through how to check and make sure your phone is unlocked definitely do both those things before completing your purchase okay so I'll hit pay okay great got a confirmation receipt to my email and an order ID so now let's move on to installing it okay I'm back on the home screen of the AO app I'm going to click the my eims at the bottom to start the installation process I'm going to tap details cool so I've got my new global phone number here at the top left I've obviously blurred mine out but for you that's going to be the phone number you'll give friends and family who you are going to be exchanging SMS text messages and calls with scrolling down we've got this usage section during your trip this is a super helpful resource to use to see how much data you've used and how much you have left and now on the these Global eims you can see how many minutes worth of calls you've used how much of that you have left and same with the text messages all of these meters are helpful in understanding how quickly you're going through your esims resources and whether or not you think you're going to need to purchase a topup package which if you do need a topup package at any point you'll come into the same screen and you can purchase one from down here and that's just refilling the existing SIM card that you've already purchased and installed so you don't have to go through those processes again I can also see here my packages I can see the one I just purchased and it's showing is not activated let's go into the instructions for for eim installation you can see there's three different methods for installing an eim here at the top direct is certainly the easiest and most straightforward of the three options here and the one we're going to use right now I won't bore you reading through all these instructions since I'm just going to give you the visual demonstration and talk through it like we've been doing I'm going to tap install eim at the bottom here Arlo's little step-by-step guide will come up you can swipe through this and hit install eim cuz we're about to talk through all these steps we're going to hit continue twice and then wait for a few minutes you'll want to make sure before doing this that your phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network so let's it continue and then hit continue one more time and this can take several minutes to complete so just be patient with it and make sure you leave the app open the whole time cellular setup complete your Dre eim is now active on this iPhone I'm going to hit done so I have the option to pick which is going to be my default line between my primary Sim of Verizon or my new secondary Sim which is the AO eim you can see here it says you can customize this later in settings your Sims might be labeled differently for example your top one might say primary which is the default label for the first and primary SIM card on your phone for now I recommend selecting your primary SIM card which will likely be the top option again for me it says Verizon and the reason I do that is because I want to continue to use my Verizon plan while I'm here in the United States once we begin our trip in a few days and actually land in Portugal that's when I'll switch this over to the new airlo Global eim so I can begin using the international services at that point which I'll show you how to do in the settings of your phone a little bit later on in this video it's the same exact Logic for iMessage and FaceTime I'm going to use my current SIM card until we actually begin our trip we'll tap continue again same exact logic as the previous two screens I'm going to use cellular data from my primary Verizon SIM card until I start my trip allow cellular data switching I personally always leave this off when we're traveling internationally I turn off my primary Verizon SIM card and solely rely on the AO eim for all of my International needs if I forgot to turn off my Verizon SIM card for some reason and this setting was turned on at some point throughout the trip my phone might decide that the Verizon SIM card is stronger than the AO e SIM card start using the Verizon sim card and in turn caus me to start incurring International charges which kind of defeats the purpose of even buying an AO eim that's why I leave that setting off and I would say 99% of you should probably leave that setting off as well so we'll click continue here all right it says your eim has been successfully installed let's go ahead and jump into our Settings app and take a look at the new eim before jumping into the settings app I want to see if that installation process activated my eim so I'm going to check the heow app I'm going to tap my eims at the bottom here's the Discover plus global eim I just bought I'm going to click this if I scroll down wow it did not activate that's actually really great news I was mentioning earlier how because I'm in the United States and the United States is listed as a supported country on This Global eim that once I installed the eim it would immediately activate because technically my phone does have the ability to connect to a network here in the US and in turn activate but it doesn't look like it has and I have two theories as to why this may be one is that I'm on Wi-Fi so my phone is using data from my Wi-Fi network here at home rather than trying to go and get data from a cell network associ assciated with this AOW eim because if it did try to get data through the AOW eim that would ultimately activate it the second is that I chose to keep my Verizon sim as the default line for my cellular data during the installation process and I also kept that allow cellular data switching turned off even if my phone was trying to access data right now and it was not connected to a Wi-Fi network it would be doing so through my Verizon plan and not the AO e plan and because that allow cellular data switching setting is turned off there's no chance that my cellular data could switch from my Verizon plan right now to my airlo e plan and in turn activate the plan this is great news because it means I was able to get ahead a little bit and install this eim prior to my trip but my validity period hasn't started yet so those 15 days I got have not started counting down okay let's pop open the settings app and see what the damage is I'm going to tap on cellular here you can see my two sims here so we've got the Verizon one which is my primary plan in the United States and then the one that says secondary is that Arlo eim plan we just installed so let's go ahead and click on that the first thing I do is I rename the eim so that I can identify it when I'm going to switch my eims on and off so let's tap on cellular plan label you've got some default labels you can choose from at the top here like travel for example but I'm just going to custom name mine I'm going to call it airlo Global and I'll come out of here Network selection you can see that says AT&T right now if you tap that you'll see it set to automatic what this means is that your phone will connect you to the strongest available Network depending on where you are so for example if I was in Belgium there's three different heow networks that can be connected to there my phone will just choose the strongest available one depending on where I physically am in Belgium to give me the best service I tend to leave this as automatic cuz I feel like it does a better job than me at picking networks my number let's tap that doesn't look like heow has pre-populated this for us so we'll need to go back to the AO app grab that phone number and paste it in here back in the AO app I'll tap my eims click on my eim and then at the top there's that phone number and a little copy button so I'm just going to tap that back in the settings section I'm going to paste this and hit save let's check out this data mode section I recommend reading the descriptions for these three options so you can determine which one works best for you the good news is you can switch these options as frequently as you want I will probably switch back and forth between standard and low data mode you'll likely not want to use the top option just cuz that's going to drain your data faster last thing to mention on this page is data roaming turn that on data roaming being on is what's going to allow your phone to rotate through the different available Networks On This Global eim As you move throughout different countries or even within the same country that has multiple networks available so that you have the best connection at any given time now that the eim is fully installed and set up in the settings app I'm going to temporarily turn it off by switching off the turn on this line the reason I'm doing that is to be absolutely sure that my eim will not prematurely activate by accident prior to starting our trip in a few days once you've arrived at your destination and you're ready to start using your new eim you'll come into the cellular screen and under the Sim section you'll switch your primary SIM from on to off and you'll switch your new AO e SIM from off to on again this is what's going to prevent you from incurring International charges through your primary service provider and it's also going to be the final step that AO needs to finish its AC activation process it could take up to 30 minutes though for me the average amount of time this process has taken is about 5 to 10 minutes and then my phone is ready to use hey y'all future Brian here again I return to you now bearing many thoughts about my recent experiences using this Global eim first here's what I've done with it I've used mobile data in the US UK Spain and Portugal I've initiated calls back to the United States from Spain and the UK I called a hotel in Spain while I was also in Spain and I exchanged SMS texts with friends back in the United States while I was in the UK Spain and Portugal starting with the pros and probably most importantly everything functioned as expected and worked very well call connectivity was good SMS texts were sent and received just fine access to data was identical to my other experiences with AO and overall I felt it was a reliable product second it was undeniably easy and convenient to set up and having all three of these mobile services under the same plan was ideal I've always enjoyed having the ability to see how much data I have left on an AOW plan within their app so being able to see how many call minutes and texts I had remaining was also helpful the only real drawback to this eim for us personally was the service to price ratio for context the way Steph and I use AOW is that we'll purchase a single plan on my phone and then when she needs access to data she'll do so through the hotspot on my phone that said we go through data faster than most because we essentially have two phones on the same a low plan and on average we use roughly 1 Gabite of data per day while leveraging this setup granted we can be somewhat liberal with how much we're posting photos online and not the most diligent when it comes to closing out of our apps or avoiding data heavy activities in general while not on Wi-Fi so don't necessarily take that 1 gab per day number as a benchmark for your situation additionally we've become so conditioned to using data only apps while traveling internationally that we not only get by completely fine in doing so but we kind of tend to prefer it all that in mind relying solely on the Discover plus eim doesn't make the most sense for us cost-wise here are some cost comparisons using the 5 GB plan as an example we use the European Regional eim for the most part so comparing that to the Discover plus plan we would essentially be paying $30 more in exchange for 50 call minutes and 50 outbound SMS texts and sure we get another 30 days to use these services but our reality is that we're going to use up all that data within a week and then what buy a $50 topup package to refill 5 GB worth of data probably not probably not plus placing regular phone calls and sending an SMS text message would be an extremely rare occurrence for us what I would love to see AOW provide in the future is an option to refill each of these Services individually perhaps I could offer a topup option on this eim that allows you to strictly refill your data at a discounted rate with any unused text and minutes rolling over also this isn't specific to heow but something to keep in mind even though you are covered when it comes to International costs through this particular eim or through an international plan through your home provider for that matter it does not mean that your friends and family are covered in other words friends and family back home can receive inbound SMS texts and calls from you while you're abroad without getting charged but if they were to initiate an SMS or a call back to you there is a chance at that point that they could incur an international charge so it may be worth giving friends and family who you plan on communicating with while you're gone a heads up so that they can either check and see if they have any International benefits through their current cell phone plan or at least Beware of the charges that they may incur by initiating Communications back to you while you're gone again based on our current International mobile service needs I will not be relying solely on this eim personally that said I have kept the eim installed on my phone should we ever run into a situation where we quickly need a handful of minutes to place a call because the heow app makes it so easy to buy a topup package and be ready to use in seconds do I recommend this product to you though that's the real question as with most YouTube product reviews I am more or less obligated to say it depends I'm sorry I don't make the rules I just work here if you're someone who's mindful of their data usage and having the ability to send and receive standard phone calls is important to you then this could be a great fit on the other hand if you're someone who can exclusively use iMessage Text Now WhatsApp Facebook messenger and any other data only communication app while traveling internationally then maybe one of the data only plans is a better fit for you it'll save you a few bucks to go spend on a tuck tuck ride or that souvenir magnet set you've been seeing that they're selling on every single corner look I don't know what you spend your money on during your trips okay I just work here everyone's travel situation is different so there's really no point for me to sit here and push a product on you that is ultimately not going to properly fit your needs though I can't give you a definitive answer without knowing your exact situation I will give you a few tips that may help you decide which eim will best suit your needs first get an estimate of how much data your phone is using in doing this you may find you don't need as much data as you think which might help you justify purchasing a plan with some call minutes and SMS like the Discover plus plan you can check out this video at this timestamp where I walk through exactly how to do this on an iPhone take the number you get from doing that experiment with a grain of salt though while you can certainly connect to Wi-Fi networks while traveling internationally to help you save some data I personally have found that my data usage is a bit higher while traveling internationally because when I'm at home in the states my phone is usually connected to a Wi-Fi network second make a list of situations where you think you might need call minutes or SMS and see if there's a workaround as mentioned before there are tons of data only communication apps out there that allow you to send messages and an iate video chats or voice only calls for free additionally iPhones do not require that you have any call minutes in order to place an emergency services call should that ever be needed if you receive frequent SMS text messages for two-factor authentication for your bank for example and don't mind adding a bit of complexity to your setup you could always leave your primary SIM card turned on with data roaming turned off on that line this will allow you to receive those inbound international text messages which with most providers should not cost you anything But be sure to double check with your personal provider should you plan on going that route just to be sure typically only outbound International SMS text messages could incur charges if you find that you don't need the call minutes or SMS text messages then maybe consider picking up one of those data only plans and save yourself a bit of money finally if after all of that self-reflection you determine that you do need some text messages and some call minutes check with your current provider to see if you have any International benefits already seriously just do it cuz this absolute buffoon you're staring at just learned a few days ago that the current tier we have with Verizon includes and I quote unlimited texts to over 200 countries it's worth checking it's also worth comparing your primary sell providers International offerings with these Global eim packages for example for us Verizon charges $10 per day per line for unlimited calls texts and data let's say you're relying on AO for data only and you find yourself in a situation where you unexpectedly need to make a call temporarily switching your Verizon line back on and paying the $10 for unlimited everything and then switching it back off before the 24-hour Mark may be the more cost-effective approach for you trust me a few minutes of research upfront is a lot easier than trying to figure this all out once you leave the country this video is not directly sponsored by heow but we do have an affiliate link down in the description that you can pair with my code in order to get a discount on your first heow eim purchase which is an easy way to save a couple bucks and help support the channel any and all support to the channel is very much appreciated thank you very much until next time safe travels friends [Music]

Channel: Brian & Steph

Views: 12,219

Keywords: airalo, esim, airolo, airalo esim activation, airalo esim review, airalo esim setup, airalo esim review iphone, airalo internet, global sim card, travel sim card, travel sim card europe, airalo esim, esim travel review, air alo, airalo global esim, airalo tutorial, international data plan, airalo app, airalo iphone, best international data plan, airalo guide, airalo how to, travel sim, airalo review, travel data, tutorial esim, how to set up airalo, how to install airalo

Id: 6eccJhrNV3Q

Length: 18min 10sec (1090 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 02 2024