iPhone 15 Models Sold Outside U.S. Still Have Physical SIM Card Tray

eSim is cool and handy but I prefer Physical Sim Card Tray iPhones. Especially for those who travel internationally. Makes it so much easier.

Pretty stupid to have 2x SKU's just for the SIM tray. Just make it all with the SIM tray.

ESim is great in theory, but I travel abroad frequently for work and on more than one occasion I've bought an Airalo or Ubigi SIM that simply doesn't work, and then I can't even get my money back. It's a bad system for those who actually need to do frequent SIM changes. I'm actually in Japan right now, and I bought an Ubigi - it wouldn't activate for three days straight, leaving me no choice but to pay for expensive roaming.

I'm in Japan and getting an Ubigi sim card was extremely simple; activated right away for me. And similar issues can (and have) happened with physical sim cards as well.

I'm glad you had that experience, but this is literally my 8th time having an ESim fail out on me. It's happened a ton, particularly in Asia and Africa. It's simply not a reliable experience- or maybe my 14 is the issue (doubtful)

eSim is cool and handy but I prefer Sim Card Tray iPhones for those who travel internationally. Makes it so much easier.

Getting an e-Sim for traveling from an App seems easier to me, than buying one in a store and putting in the phone.
You can even do it before you get there and have one less thing to worry about when you arrive.

Is it just me or does eSIM in the U.S. only seem to be getting uptake with the full-price majors while most- but not all- of the relatively cheap MVNOs don't seem to be going there (or at least not very quickly)? It doesn't SEEM like a technology that would require MVNOs to spend a lot of money to support it (in fact, it seems like it could save them money for not having to make & mail SIM cards and provide support on installing them)... so I wonder why the uptake seems slow or even "no" after all this time?

Meanwhile, they all still support SIM cards. So if me, I'd want this kind of iPhone too... so I don't find myself having to choose between only a few players that mostly demand maximum profit plans in the U.S. Once I could see many value-minded MVNOs offering eSIM, this opinion would change. But before then, I'd want to keep my options as open as possible until many of them are on board.

Apparently the SIM-capable phone can do everything the SIM-less one can do and I don't read that it costs more either... so I see it as a phone with a money-saving bonus feature that can use eSIM or SIM vs. those only able to use one of them. So far eSIM in America feels like a "big 3" service provider cash grab to me.

Do I prefer an eSIM world? Yes, but let's get the value service players on board fast... instead of forcing the option that mostly the more expensive service providers can actually fulfill (in America). Since we can't do that with words posted in a bulletin board online, the action a consumer could take is to go to the trouble of getting a new phone that also has the SIM option too.