Do you use esims?

My Samsung has 1 physical sim and 1 esim an one or both can be active.

I need the physical Sim for the O2 Payg classic (top up balance and pay 3p min calls, 2p min texts, 1p per MB data). Need to make 1 paying action every 6 months to keep Sim active.

I use a SPUSU esim £2.90 per month for unlimited calls and text + 1GB data (500 mins calls per month to EU free as well). Uses EE network.

Neither is great for data but you can get data esims quite cheaply (so much data per day plans are quite good).

Nice thing about esims is you can have several active but can only use one at a time though. As far as I know you could have up to 16 esims active (quite why yiu would do this I have no idea lol).

My iphone has 1 nano sim plus 2 esims but only 2 of the three can be online at same time. You can have active multiple esim profiles (at least 8) but only 1 or 2 online at same time.

Oddly enough, recent US iphones do not have a nano Sim slot (only esims) which is fine I guees in US but could be a problem using it in rest of world where many cheap sim services are still nanosim only i.e. you may be forced to pay (generally) more expensive esim services if you want to avoid high roaming charges.

As far as I know, all androids have at least one nanosim slot.

Travel esims are often data only but you can make internet calls e.g. using whatsapp. These are generally fairly reasonable in costs.

What I really like about esims is you can often set them up in minutes and np waiting for physical sims to arrive.

Only slight downside is it can be cumbersome switching esims to a new phone especially if new phone is iphone instead of android or vice versa.

In one case, I had to get an iphone esim profile moved to a physical sim so I could use it on android as the service provider could not do it simply.

I’ve used travel eSIMs on both Samsung (Galaxy S22) and iPhone 16 (European build with nano SIM), and day-to-day they behave the same, the eSIM is just the data line, while the physical card stays active for calls (if needed). On iPhone the install was done in-app, no QR. On Samsung it was the usual QR setup.

Data-only travel eSIMs work fine if you’re happy using WhatsApp, iMessage, etc., and they’re easy to add or remove without touching your main SIM. Reinstalling on the same device has been fine when needed, but since travel eSIMs are temporary, they can’t be moved to another phone, which is rarely an issue on short trips. I also don't think price of eSIMs is an issue if you don't have a slot, global providers with data-only offers have solved it for me. Rogers charges 16 CAD/day for the US, while Ohayu eSIM plans for the USA start with $9.49/14 days, and it's even cheaper with the global plan. If data runs out, there are top-ups right in the app. Really wondering what carriers are going to do when more people learn about roaming alternatives.