The eSIM standard is set to take over from the classic plastic cards you insert into your smartphone. Here’s how to activate them
Most Italian phone operators have recently launched, or are preparing to do so, their eSIMs.
That is, virtual SIMs, which can be used only on phones compatible with this standard.
For example, Apple’s iPhones, Google’s recent Pixel and some other Android smartphone models. Which, however, will soon become many more because the eSIM standard is convenient, secure and allows you to make dual SIM a cell phone that has only one SIM slot, including iPhone. The procedure for activating an eSIM, by the way, is very simple on both Android and iOS. When we buy an eSIM we are given a card, equipped with a QR Code and, on the back, PIN and PUK codes. The same codes that we also find on traditional SIMs, with the exact same functions, but this time the SIM is not there.
How to activate an eSIM on Android
As always happens on Android, each smartphone manufacturer customizes the interface of the operating system in a more or less obvious way. We refer here to the procedure to activate the eSIM on a Pixel smartphone, with stock Android, so on other phones it might be a bit different.
The first thing to do is to go to Settings > Network and Internet > Mobile Network and tap on the “+” shown on the right. A screen will appear where, at the bottom, we can tap on “Do you want to download an eSIM?”. If we tap on it, Android will warn us if the phone can be used in dual SIM (provided that we have already inserted a physical SIM, otherwise it won’t). Immediately after that, the procedure to activate the eSIM will start, ending with the activation of the camera, through which we can frame the QR Code and “download” the eSIM.
How to activate an eSIM on iOS
Activating an eSIM on iOS is even easier than on Android. Just open the camera app and frame the QR Code: the operating system will immediately recognize that it’s a virtual SIM and tell us “Tap to preview this cellular plan.” This is the first step of the eSIM activation wizard, during which we will be able to assign a label to the new phone number.
This is very important, because on iPhone you can save more than one eSIM but you can only use one at a time (together with the physical SIM, so dual SIM but not three, four or more SIMs at the same time). After activating all the eSIMs we want on the iPhone we can choose which one to use by going to Settings > Mobile and tapping on the eSIM and then tapping on “Activate this line”.