What is an eSIM Card? A Full Guide to Features and Benefits

SIM cards have been around long enough for everyone to recognize them at once. In fact, you may remember more than one generation of these small pieces of plastic that connect you to the web. The progress doesn’t sleep, and the new generation known as eSim is already part of our lives and top-notch devices.

So let’s figure out what is eSim card, what are its advantages over its predecessors, and how and where you can use it today.

Figuring Out the Acronym Soup

To understand what is an eSim in a phone we need a short guide on terminology. Most of you probably have no difficulty imagining a regular Sim card. Yet, almost nobody can say what this name actually stands for, not to mention other abbreviations used in this context. Here’s a primer:

SIM stands for subscriber identification module — the technology that verifies the user’s identity. Basically, it is your digital signature that tells your device you have the right to use the phone number. SIM is actually a tiny module held inside a PVC card most people associate with the acronym.

UICC is an abbreviation you might see alongside other technical terms related to SIM cards. It stands for a universal integrated circuit card, an official name for the thing we call a SIM card.

eSim meaning is the same as that of a regular SIM, just with the word “embedded” in front. This already tells us the most significant difference — instead of being removable, eSims are built into the device. However, an e sim card is a lot more sophisticated than its predecessors, both in functionality and convenience, and opens up exciting possibilities (more on that later).

SM-DP, SM-SR, LPA — various services and protocols that enable your e sim card to connect to the network. Most of the technical stuff happens under the hood, so you have a pretty low chance of stumbling upon these terms, aside from maybe entering an activation code once.

Evolution of Sim Cards

It soon became clear that all that plastic just takes extra space, so an abridged version came along. 2FFs were only an inch long and were used in most commercial phones up to early iPhone versions. They are what most of us recognize as a regular SIM card.

As phones got smaller, so did the cards. The plastic borders were trimmed down even more in 3FF and removed entirely in 4FF. These variants, known as micro-SIM and nano-SIM, respectively, are twice smaller than regular ones.

At this point, the cards seemingly hit the bottom — the size of the connector didn’t allow it to go any smaller. So for the eSim card, it was decided to get rid of the connector entirely. This allowed eSims to become even tinier, less than a quarter of an inch. Of course, if it can qualify as a card at all — an “e sim card” is just a chip soldered directly onto a circuit board.

What is the Benefit of eSim?

The embedded design is another eSim benefit; it is mostly relevant for hardware designers , though. Soldering the chip directly onto the board not only eliminates a bulky connector but also makes the device much more robust and less prone to malfunction.

From the consumer standpoint, it also means fewer holes in the device, making it less susceptible to moisture and dust and more visually appealing.

eSim vs Physical Sim

With all of the eSim benefits listed above, it would be easy to imagine it has completely pushed earlier versions out of the market. However, it is not the case. Neither all manufacturers are eager to use this relatively expensive solution, nor all customers understand how to use an eSim embedded in the products. As long as e sim and physical cards continue to co-exist, let’s have a look at how they differ…

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