Does your phone support eSIM?

What makes a phone eSIM capable

Three things, and all three have to be true. A chip soldered to the board, which does the job the plastic card used to do. A carrier that does not block foreign profiles. An operating system new enough to show you the menu.

The plastic card carried a profile, a small file that identifies you to a network. The soldered chip holds several of those files at once and switches between them in software. That hardware has shipped since 2018. You also need iOS 12.1 or later, or Android 10 or later.

Check the EID yourself, in ten seconds

Do not trust any list, including ours. Your phone will tell you directly, and it takes one dialled code.

• Open the keypad and dial star hash zero six hash.
• An EID printed beside the IMEI means there is an eSIM in that handset.
• On iPhone the same number sits in Settings, General, About.
• On Android it is usually in Settings, About phone, Status. No EID means no eSIM.

Carrier locking, the most common reason a supported phone refuses

A carrier locked handset refuses a foreign profile even though the hardware is fine. Ask your home operator to remove the lock. That usually takes a day and is free once the contract is paid up. In the United States it is usually free once the device is paid off.

The second cause is the regional variant. Several United States Galaxy S21 units shipped with eSIM disabled. Chinese domestic Xiaomi models have no eSIM where the global version of the same phone does. Some operator branded Pixel 4 units had it disabled in firmware.

Two profiles at once, and the devices that manage one

Stored and active are two different numbers, and confusing them causes most failed installs. A recent iPhone stores 8 profiles and runs 2 at once. A typical Android in this list stores 5 and runs 2. The Huawei P40 stores 1 and runs 1.

The failure is quiet. You install in Japan, then Thailand, then Portugal, delete none of them, and the fourth install fails because the chip is full. Delete the profiles you have finished with and it works immediately. The Orbislo Passport installs once, so there is no slot pressure.

Tablets, and the thing we do not sell

Two iPads are in the list, the iPad Pro M4 and the iPad Air M2, and they install exactly the same profile the same way. A tablet has no voice line to keep alive, so none of the two line juggling applies.

No watch is in our list and we do not sell a watch plan. If a watch is the only device you want data on, we are not the answer. We would rather say that here than take the order.

When a supported model still refuses

Work through these in order. Most failed installs are fixed by the first two, and a failure costs you nothing either way.

If none of the five below works, ask Ori. It answers with no connection at all, and a human replies in under 60 seconds at any hour.

• Delete a profile you have finished with. A full chip refuses new ones.
• Confirm the handset is not carrier locked, then ask your operator to remove the lock.
• Run the download on stable wifi. An interrupted download is the second most common cause.
• Update the operating system. Old builds have the hardware and not the menu.
• Retry. A provisioning failure is refunded automatically inside 60 seconds.

Profiles by device class

Counted from the 67 models across 7 manufacturers listed on this page, not from spec sheets.

Questions people ask