Swapping eSIMs between Phones

Today, for fun, and out of curiousity I swapped eSIMS between two phones. If you’re old enough, you remember that swapping physical sims required turning it off and on again. it being both phones. Today, with eSIMS the process has been simplified since the last time I tried.

Today if you want to transfer an eSIM from phone to phone you simply go to Add eSIM on the destination phone and choose “Transfer from Nearby iPhone” and that’s almost it. You then need to select which sim you want to migrate, and then type in the username and password for your Swisscom account if you’re migrating from Swisscom or Wingo, or Galaxus if you’re migrating from those operators.

You can then select primary or secondary sim for calls, data and more and finally you’re done. It takes longer to type the instructions than to do.

In the past, when I wanted to migrate from phone to phone, with eSIMS I had to log in to the telecom operators website, request a new eSIM, wait for it to be approved, get an eSIM QR code, scan it, and then I’d be connected. That could take minutes, or even hours. Now it’s almost seamless.

In theory you can use the Android “Scan QR code option if you’re migrating an eSIM from iPhone to Android but I do not have an eSIM that I can run that experiment with.

With a physical eSIM if you’re ready to swap between two phones it’s easy, but you need to turn off phones. You also need the liquid metal tool to eject the sim from most iPhones, and certain other brand phones.

If you’re swapping between iPhones I hope this helps.