• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Has anyone successfully activated an eSIM?

dorlow

Android Enthusiast
Ok, I have two phones. Both are personal phones. I pay for them out of my own finances. But, I consider one my personal phone and one for business. My personal phone is an AT&T Samsung S22. My business phone is a Verizon S20 FE phone. I have the two phones and I made sure that one was through AT&T and one through Verizon because I work from home. I am the breadwinner of this family. We don't have any high speed internet even avaialble to the house outside of 4g.

I've always said I need two ways to get online. If one fails, I always need a backup. Having unreliable internet is like having a job with an unreliable car. After so long of you not showing up because your car breaks down, they'll find someone else with a reliable car.

About 8 months ago, we moved from a house that had fiber to this house. We took a huge gamble. We needed a bigger house. We wanted land. So, I decided 4g would be good enough and, for the most part it has. I have a pretty nice 4g setup at home. I put a 4g antenna on a tv antenna pole above the roofline pointed at a local cell tower and ran that into the house. my wife is a cop so we get firstnet unlimited hotspot with no data caps at all. On the same pole, I also installed a 4G repeater to reamplify at&t cell signal in the house. So, it works out pretty well.

We use at&t 4g as our primary 4g connection because AT&T in our area works significantly better than verizon. But, verizon does work... just slower and less signal at our house. Driving around, verizon has a ton of dead spots.

But there has been multiple times where AT&T 4G was down in the area. One of the last times it went down, I jumped in my car and went to a verizon store and got a verizon phone so I had a second option when at&t was down. I've needed it a few times now.

Ok, for other reasons I don't want to go into on this thread, I cannot leave an unattended smart device in our house. My kids have done some really bad things. I have the smart devices under control in the house as long as I always carry this verizon phone on my person at all times. But, the phone is constantly falling out of my pocket. It's so annoying to carry two phones.

A few weeks ago, I called verizon and asked them how I can convert my verizon sim to an esim. I spent hours on the phone. transfer after transfer, no one could understand what I wanted. They kept wanting to port the number from verizon to at&t as a second line. I said to them... no. I don't want that. I'm told my samsung s22 ultra is not carrier specific. I want, when I make a call on the at&t phone that it uses at&t and the hotspot is at&t. But, if at&t is down, I want to switch to the esim and then the same phone I was just using with at&t becomes a verizon phone and makes calls using verizon towers and the hotspot is using verizon towers. So, if an at&t outage is happening, I'm not dead in the water. They just couldn't understand it. I was transferred and transferred... hungup on because they didn't know how to transfer... calling back transferred again. I spent like 5 hours on the phone. I finally talked to one person. It seemed like she knew what I was wanting.

When I go on the S22 phone and start the process of adding an esim, it wants me to scan a QR code. Even though the lady on the phone seemed to understand what I was wanting, she didn't know how to generate the QR code that my phone was wanting. After another hour or so working with her, I gave up.

But, I really would like to do this. Has anyone successfully used a SIM and eSIM on the same phone using two different carriers?
 
So, I went to a Verizon store today. They got it figured out. It took about every employee working to make it work. First I get there. Guy says work with this lady. She knows exactly what you want to do. I sit down and tell her and she kept hearing me as porting the number over. I said no. I want to move my verizon sim to an esim to put it in my att phone. She then tried to set me up for a new plan completely. After a while, I'm like you can do that and I'll cancel the old one. But I'd rather keep the number and not get a new line. Well after about 15 more minutes and the manager over they finally figured it out. It's a little quirky. When I tried earlier and disabled the att sim and only using Verizon it could call but no data. Hopefully that works itself out. My boot logo of the phone changed from att to Verizon and verizon preloaded apps auto loaded. I have two cell signal bars now.
 
Just to clarify, are you attempting to use the same phone number with both AT&T and Verizon? If yes, that's the problem so no need to blame your SIM card or eSIM. A different, unique phone number for each carrier service is a requirement.
 
I haven't had success at all. I am on Verizon Prepaid, and they acted like I came from another planet when I asked if it were possible to activate a Galaxy Watch 4 Cellular model. They didn't know what an 'eSIM' was, and said 'we only allow activation of our own BYOP SIMs or a Verizon phone for prepaid.' All the customer service lines are Indian and no offense to them, but they're terrible if anything is outside their script and don't speak good English. I wish I knew the secret to get American support who would understand tech a bit better than the usual 'have you tried restarting your dewice!?' or 'dat phone is unsupport! u need Werizon brand phone!'

I gave up. Besides, I don't like the idea of the SIM being embedded. That makes the device disposable once you cancel service since SIMs can't be reused.
 
A qualified yes:

#1: This was on an iPhone 12 Pro Max, not an Android phone.

#2: The two diffident carriers were Mint Mobile and it's former parent company, Ultra Mobile. It was probably more akin to having two SIM cards from the same carrier.

#3: My Ultra physical SIM-card was only in my iPhone briefly, because I wanted to test my iPhone's ability to work with two SIM cards. My Ultra SIM usually stays in my backup phone (Ultra's Pay-Go plan is good for backup phones).

That said: It worked fine. My iPhone 12 did a fine job of juggling the two SIM cards (one physical SIM, one e-SIM).

On a related note: I had no trouble activating an e-SIM from Mint Mobile, their app made it easy. I was also able to transfer the e-SIM from my iPhone 12, to my backup phone (an iPhone 6), and back to the 12 easily enough. That's good, because it means I can switch my main line to my backup phone if my iPhone 12 breaks or something. Point is: My e-SIM experience was the opposite of yours, my carrier makes e-SIMs pain-free!
 
Last edited:
What happens once you cancel services? since SIMs can't be reactivated after some time, and being embedded, makes the phone disposable and can't do SIM swaps if you accidentally break it (but have an otherwise capable backup at home)
 
What happens once you cancel services? since SIMs can't be reactivated after some time, and being embedded, makes the phone disposable and can't do SIM swaps if you accidentally break it (but have an otherwise capable backup at home)
Isn't the point of eSIMs that they're software, not hardware? So it's not like a phone's stuck with an unusable SIM card, seeing as the SIM card is wiped, and ready to be replaced.
 
I've used e-SIMs a few times for data only, when travelling internationally. As I undestand things, an e-SIM is basically a software token. That's generated in the phone when carrier service is registered and activated, and is erased when carrier service is ceased. They're certainly not permanent, and can be repeated indefinitely AFAIK.

This uses e-SIMs, where I can buy an international data package, that's used in addition to my own carrier service.
Screenshot_20230227_110833_Samsung Data Store.jpg
 
Last edited:
So like soldered RAM then? no thanks. I've had enough SIMs fail that I can actually replace to not need yet another frustration in my life. Heck being able to SIM swap is even better and far more convenient for swapping carriers or phones. It also comes in handy should your phone end up dropped, sat on (if in the back pocket) or eaten by animals (don't ask!) and you have a backup in a drawer O'phones like I got.
 
Yes, many people have successfully activated eSIMs (embedded SIM cards) for their devices. eSIM technology has become increasingly popular in recent years, and it offers several advantages, such as flexibility and convenience, compared to traditional physical SIM cards.

Here's a general outline of the steps to activate an eSIM:

  1. Check Device Compatibility: Ensure that your device supports eSIM technology. Most modern smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches from major manufacturers offer eSIM support.
  2. Contact Your Mobile Carrier: Reach out to your mobile carrier and inquire if they support eSIM activation. Not all carriers support eSIMs, so it's essential to confirm this with your carrier.
  3. Receive a QR Code or Activation Details: Your carrier will provide you with either a QR code or activation details (e.g., a numerical code) that you will use to activate the eSIM.....................
I don't mind using ChatGPT to assist in making good quality posts. But don't blindly post what she says, and don't cut her off by only posting the first part and leaving a "....................." in the middle of step 3!

Edit: Also give her credit, if the post is entirely her own words.
 
Last edited:
Yes, many people have successfully activated eSIMs (embedded SIM cards) for their mobile devices, which offers the flexibility of switching carriers or phone numbers without a physical SIM card. Activation processes may vary depending on the carrier and device, but it's a commonly used technology for mobile connectivity.
 
Like Mike, I've used eSIMs when travelling to countries where I don't have free international roaming(*). Data-only, since that's all I need. Very simple to buy and set up, and far cheaper than the carrier's international roaming. My regular SIM still works when this is operational, I just tell the phone to use the eSIM's connection for data (to be safe I tell it not to fall back on my regular SIM for data), and tell the people most likely to phone me to use WhatsApp while I'm away (to avoid paying excessive rates for incoming voice calls on my regular SIM). I leave the regular SIM live for telephony in case there's an important call from someone who doesn't know, or an SMS from my bank to verify a transaction (though the card I'll use when travelling uses a different 2FA system so that's not likely to be needed). Never had a problem with eSIMs.

Setup involves scanning a QR code, but the people I've used also provide information you can enter manually if that doesn't work (I've never had a problem with QR codes). The problem sounds like Dorlow's provider either didn't have their systems set up or hadn't told their staff how to use them.

(*) I use a legacy contract which, since the terms were set before brexit, gives me free roaming in the EU and EEA. Despite promises not to, most UK networks reimposed roaming charges in the EU once they were legally able to, so a new contract would cost me more no matter what else they offer. Turns out it was not just the brexit-supporting politicians who lied about what it would mean ;)
 
So like soldered RAM then? no thanks. I've had enough SIMs fail that I can actually replace to not need yet another frustration in my life. Heck being able to SIM swap is even better and far more convenient for swapping carriers or phones. It also comes in handy should your phone end up dropped, sat on (if in the back pocket) or eaten by animals (don't ask!) and you have a backup in a drawer O'phones like I got.


Absolutely nothing like soldered RAM. An eSIM is just a piece of data, i.e. software, that is downloaded, stored, and then deleted when finished with.
 
Still not nearly as convenient as popping a SIM out of a broken phone and popping it into a backup and going about my day in an instant. Now I would have to phone terrible Indian support and coax them through a process that takes ten times longer and is ten times more frustrating.

is that the point of everything 'modern' now? to make the process more frustrating? We seemed to have gone past the era of a newer thing being better than the older thing ages ago. Now it's just change for change's sake.

Also I am really despising QR codes. everywhere. they're like flies, just as ubiquitous. wouldn't be surprised to find a teeny one on a fly one day. really Black Mirror like and creepy. as if we need more reasons to be addicted to our phones than we already are.

I still hope someone sets off an EMP and we get a legit great reset--back to the '50s. let people talk face to face again, be a community again instead of everyone being buried into a screen everywhere like zombies, unable to think without pulling it out and Googling it.

I just want to live in a real-life Mayberry. not a future dystopia. Heaven forbid that I photograph a deer one day at a sanctuary and end up having some info about deer show up, if that happens I wouldn't know if the animal were even real or some AI robot. just euthanize me should that ever become a thing.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom