Can one sim stay in airplane mode and the other esim stay turned off?

vesta822 wrote:

MrHoffman:

This is unrelated to eSIM versus SIM. Per your original post here, this has to do with ensuring you're not getting roaming charges from the remote plan, and—when you're roaming internationally—quite possibly having the "other" eSIM or SIM disabled, as you wanted to discuss airplane mode, which also means you are not online, which means incoming SMS might or might not be queued for as long as you'd prefer while you're offline.

Is the above a problem that can be solved? If airplane mode applies to the device overall & cell roaming does too, then even if I turn them both off/on when I'm in the intl sim then its possible I will get roaming charges when in the esim (unless i"m in wifi).

My understanding (perhaps wrong) is that when I switch from "primary" to "secondary (e-sim int'l)" then I have deactivated the primary account: (vice-versa) is this so?

How do you solve this problem? What do you do?

Summary: Airplane mode is device-wide and shuts off all SIMs and eSIMs present and not per-SIM or eSIM and doesn’t do what you likely want here and does not shut off one SIM or eSIM, switching to the local SIM or local eSIM will remove most of the roaming costs issues, while shutting off the non-local SIM or non-local eSIM can mean the SMS messages will not reliably arrive as they’re not indefinitely queued, physically removing the non-local SIM ensures you won’t get billed for roaming with that carrier connection, the eSIM cannot be easily removed as compared with a removing a SIM, and that paying the roaming charges is probably going to be easiest here if you really, really, really need to be SMS reachable and not miss messages, and if you really, really, really need to be SMS reachable always you’ll want to set up a call-handling service such as Twilio.

Alternatives include non-SMS paths using cellular data, but now you have to get your contacts over to that communications path.

TL;DR: If you aren’t willing or able or interested in roaming charges, send the calls to voicemail and ignore (and possibly miss) the SMS. Otherwise, there’s a reasonable chance you’ll miss at least some calls and some SMS messages. And if staying in contact is that critical, a service such as Twilio can be your friend.

Airplane mode is not SIM (or eSIM) specific; it controls the radios across the entire device.

And an eSIM will work similarly to a SIM, though you cannot easily remove the eSIM.

And removal is a feature you might want to have, here.

Airplane mode? No.

You can use the cellular data settings, though:

Using Dual SIM with two nano-SIM cards - Apple Support

Cellular data uses only one plan at a time, which should get you where you want with the Allow Cellular Data Switching setting disabled.

If you’re in the US or anywhere else lacking dual physical SIM iPhone availability, (re)locate AT&T into an eSIM, and locate whatever you’re thinking of swapping in the nanoSIM slot.

It’s a few steps to clear the eSIM and to then later then re-scan and re-add it, as compared with opening the drawer and swapping out the nanoSIM. The carrier also has to allow you to toggle the eSIM existence for each swap too, and encountering some form of carrier fraud detection or some other limit or misfeature with eSIM swapping wouldn’t surprise me. If the SIM isn’t loaded, it isn’t active.

felciano wrote:

HI @vesta822 I'm curious: with your new configuration, will you still be able to receive SMS messages (green, not blue) to your US number while traveling in Europe on the int'l prepaid sim?

SMS messages will not get queued past some carrier-specific time interval while the associated telephone number is offline, and will get dropped.

vesta822 wrote:

ATT says that the ATT e-sim works exactly the same as a nano sim, so yes my texts/imessages will be in my message box. As I understand it, I won't need to check them any sooner/later than what I do now with the nano sim.

This is unrelated to eSIM versus SIM. Per your original post here, this has to do with ensuring you're not getting roaming charges from the remote plan, and—when you're roaming internationally—quite possibly having the "other" eSIM or SIM disabled, as you wanted to discuss airplane mode, which also means you are not online, which means incoming SMS might or might not be queued for as long as you'd prefer while you're offline.

rep even said that the e-sim is more reliable b/c they get alot customers who have damaged nano-sims.

Cheaper for the carrier, too. Unrelated to roaming charges, and avoiding same.

On a related topic, many friends use What's App for calling to US/international, free as far as I hear. Is this so? Seems a bit too good to be true...any comments/limitations to What's App? I downloaded at one time, but found it superfluous unless I am calling int'l.

Apple Messages, FaceTime, Signal, Meta and its metastases including WhatsApp, and other communications apps all use data services, and not carrier SMS nor carrier telephone. So long as there is data coverage via Wi-Fi or carrier data plan or such, these other apps will have connectivity.

Yes, we've been looking at that as well. However we're a family of 3, and the billing cycle ends right in the middle of a 23-day trip, so I believe that means all 3 of us could run up a full 10-day usage across both billing cycles, so we're looking at $400. Hence exploring the alternatives