What Are eSIMs? Explained!

[Music] there's been a lot of talk about e-sims lately and although it's not a new technology with the iPhone 14s going completely East SIM for a lot of you it's become a much more important and relevant topic so today I want to explain what e-sims are why they exist and how they'll change how you use smartphones [Music] hi everybody Fox Nomad here and today I want to help you travel smarter by explaining what e-sims are now you may have seen my previous video called GE Sims explained and this video is an update to that to catch you up on the latest the SIM card the physical version is something you're probably familiar with it stands for subscriber identity module and is a thin piece of plastic with a gold plate on it I'm guessing you've seen one of these before and technically this is a micro SIM card the smallest form of physical SIM card that's made SIM cards used to be bigger with more plastic surrounding that little gold plate space inside of smartphones is at a premium it's one of the reasons Apple removed the headphone jack from the iPhone for example because less space for things like a SIM card mean more space for other things like electronics and bigger batteries so over time the plastic around the SIM card was cut down to the essential leaving us to what we have today the micro SIM which is just enough plastic to support the gold plate on it and that's it so why is this little piece of gold and plastic so important for starters a SIM card contains data like the international mobile subscriber identity number that's the imsi which is used to identify your phone on a mobile network a SIM card basically lets a mobile network know whether or not your phone can use it in most places there are cell towers all around you with lots of mobile providers and they need a way to know if your phone is allowed on their Network and that identity is also tied to your phone plan like how much data and texting and talk time you've paid for all of that so for example with SIM cards if you're using atnt and you want to switch to T-Mobile you would simply replace the physical at T SIM card in your phone with the physical T-Mobile SIM card which would then give you another ID to use on the T-Mobile network and the same thing applies for international travel let's say you're going to Denmark or Thailand if you want to use your phone there without paying international roaming you'd get a local SIM card and just swap out the one that's already in your phone with physical SIM cards of course you have to make sure that you don't lose your original SIM card if you want to still use it when you're swapping it out for another card otherwise you'd then have to go back to your mobile carrier and get a new card issued to you in the United States SIM cards weren't standard on phones until about the early 2010s which meant that if you were traveling internationally for example you couldn't just take your phone from home and then go to Germany and then use your phone there whereas in the rest of the world that was pretty common you would just swap out your sim card depending on where you were going so you could use your local SIM for your home country and then use another SIM when you take a trip to somewhere else and that is a major advantage of SIM cards they keep that identification data on this little card rather than hard coding it on your phone so for those of you are old enough to remember phones before they had SIM cards if you were traveling internationally with your phone you wouldn't be able to just use your phone in some other country because all that identification data was tied to the phone with SIM cards all you have to do is just swap out the card put in another card whether it's a local card or just from some other mobile network and boom there you go you're ready to use a new network you can think of mobile networks like Apartments you have say T-Mobile apartment and to get access to the building you have your T-Mobile SIM once you're inside the T-Mobile building your phone's particular identification on the SIM card is what gives you access to your particular apartment the apartment being the Talk data and text plan that you specifically paid for and knowing the history of physical SIM cards and what they're used for makes understanding e-sims that much easier [Music] what changed is that in 2016 what's known as the universal integrated circuit card or the uuic that is embedded on the SIM cards was standardized into the e-sim which uses an euic chip that's hardwired onto newer phones pretty much any smartphone made in the last few years all have an euic chip which makes them e-sim compatible and what that does is give you a lot of flexibility because now if you want to switch mobile network either at home or when you're traveling you don't need to swap out a physical SIM card instead you just load up an e-sim most mobile network service providers all offer some type of e-sim you can install on your phone so do most mobile virtual Network operators nvnos for short like mint Mobile in the US and they're also a growing number of esim providers like air low and Dent which allow you to install short-term e-sims directly from an app on your phone those esim providers are used useful when you're traveling to another country for example and you want to get a local phone number or have internet without paying roaming charges any instance where you'd have to swap out physical SIM cards let's say you're taking a vacation to Mexico and you want local data or you want a local phone number any instance where you would be swapping out physical SIM cards with an e-sim you just have to scan a QR code or download an app to your phone basically pay just a little bit of money and then your e-sim is all configured and set and you can load multiple e-sims on your phone activate and deactivate them as needed and overall it's a lot faster and more efficient you can even use multiple e Sims domestically for example when your mobile provider say mint doesn't have good coverage in Nebraska you can just simply load up an atnt or Verizon e-sim to ensure that you have coverage another benefit is that you can use multiple e-sims at the same time choose which is your primary connection and the other one to fall back on if needed now there are two ways you can think about e-cent up until this point a lot of us have become familiar with e-sims as short-term cards that we use when we travel internationally so you get a seven day or a 30-day card you load that up on your phone before you're going to Switzerland for example and then you're set with your local data and the other way to think of e-sims is the SIM card the physical SIM card that's already in your phone with whatever data plan you happen to be using is also going e-sim so SIM cards and e-sims aren't necessarily something that's used for short term basically esims are simply taking over the place and the function that SIM cards do right now and now you have a lot of esim operators a lot of esm choices a lot of esim apps you can download and that's because the costs are pretty low they don't have to put physical offices in all these countries around the world It's All Digital and with the major mobile providers they are slowly rolling out ways to Port your physical SIM card over to a digital version usually it involves going to their site logging in and scanning a QR code once you do that now you don't have to worry about keeping or losing a physical SIM card and the process of installing an e-sim has gotten a lot easier over the last few years before there were a few steps in between that made it a little bit difficult you needed multiple devices but now it's pretty much just scanning a QR code or downloading an app on your phone and that's it you also now have more esim providers than ever before and with the iPhone 14s going completely e-sim you can be sure that most mobile network providers pretty much all over the world if they haven't already are going to be supporting esims pretty soon and don't worry most mobile providers are going to continue to support physical sim cards for the foreseeable future and some people have compared Apple's removing the physical SIM card tray in the iPhone 14s for example like they've removed the headphone jack but the headphone jack actually has some real advantages over just using wireless headphones or earbuds whereas the SIM card the physical SIM card is like a dinosaur or an evolutionary dead end eventually they'll be phased out and the meteor that made the first strike might very well be the iPhone 14. so if you've been putting off e-sims and not wanting to deal with them at all like it or not they're coming to a phone near you and probably pretty soon hopefully though after watching this video e-sims are less intimidating and confusing topic but if you have any questions feel free to let me know down in the comments below and while you're down there hit the like And subscribe buttons I'll have new videos for you every week and I'll see you in the next video foreign

Channel: foXnoMad

Views: 37,443

Keywords: foxnomad, travel, travel tech, travel blogger, travel blog, anil polat, travel inspiration, travel gear, travel tech review, travel gear review, esims, esim, sim, sim card, sim cards

Id: O6C4iWsQcgo

Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2022