eSIM, aka embedded SIM cards, a new form of SIM cards. The traditional SIM cards are essentially a Java Card with customized applet on it. You need to use this card in order to connect to the cellular network. But as time goes by, these little plastic SIM cards seem to be out-of-fashion. That’s when eSIM comes into play. You can straight download your carrier’s profile onto your phone and enable it. Puff! It works just like the traditional SIM card.

This is quite a new technology and although many phone manufacturers are gradually installing the eUICC chips (which is the chip needed to emulate the traditional SIM card) into your phones, it’s still not in the majority.

Natually, a lot of companies saw this situation and decided to make the alternatives. The concept are simple, they make the eUICC chips themselves and cut it into the size and shape of a regular nano-SIM card so you can just plug it in your phone. They just need to program it to make your phone actually recognize it. Thankfully, it’s possible and a lot of people are using it, including me.

There are really a lot of choices on the market, but the solutions are basically the following two.

1. Manufactured by Eastcompeace, they engineered and manufactured the eUICC chips and then made it into the eSIM alternative cards (which is the name that I will call these cards).

2. Disassembled iPhone. Yes you hear me right. You might know that currently the iPhones that are being sold in the United States are eSIM-only. So there won’t be any sort of physical SIM slots. Which basically makes it impossible to use in other countries. But the price of iPhones in the US is way cheaper in some regions like China. So the smugglers will smuggle these cheap iPhones to China. But currently, the ISPs in China’s mainland don’t support eSIM. So they have to figure out a way to make these phones usable. Thanks to the smugglers, they have successfully figured out a way to tear down the phone and jam a traditional SIM slot in it. The eUICC chips are then taken out and being made into the product I’m going to talk about.

Benefits

The benefits are obviously simple, you can make your currently eSIM-uncapable phone into a phone that can use eSIM (sort of). And it’s even easier to change your devices since all the profiles are stored on the card itself, rather than in the eUICC chip on your phone.

Downsides

Currently, basically no ISPs had said no to these solutions, cuz it’s rather none of their business. But keep in mind that this solution is far from perfect.

Some profiles may crash the entire card. For example profiles from Redbull Mobile in Austria. The reasons are unknown.

So always do in caution.

Need-to-know

Every eSIM profile takes up space. And the eUICC chip has a limit. Different cards and, of course, profiles have different capacities and sizes.

You can check out the amazing post written by my friend at here, to learn more about the sizes of some major ISPs’ profiles.

As for cards, it differs.

Which one should you buy?

I’ll compare some popular solutions, but it’s not a fixed answer. Different people may prefer different solutions. Do it at your own risk and experience.

None of the merchants have ever paid me, nor do I have affiliate relationships with them.

eSIM.me

eSIM.me is the first one to make these cards. Here’s a table of their pricing.

Tax and shipping are excluded from this price.

Marketing name	Capacity	Downloads	Additional fees	Price
Single	5 profiles*	Unlimited	10 EUR when changing devices	24.95 EUR
Multi	10 profiles*	Unlimited	10 EUR when changing devices	39.95 EUR
Omni	15 profiles*	Unlimited	N/A	69.95 EUR

*: The amount of profiles is only the limit applicable in their software.

Yeah it’s very expensive and VERY OVERPRICED. Their cards are made by a Chinese company named Eastcompeace, which we have mentioned earlier.

All 3 versions are the same physically, and they didn’t even bother to limit it in the cards’ firmware. If you happen to have rooted your phone or you have a CCID card reader. Then you can bypass that easily by using OpenEUICC (for Android, ROOT required, need to be installed using Magisk) or EasyLPAC (for Windows/macOS/Linux, you need to compile the LPAC binary yourself on Linux).

Suggestion: Don’t buy it. They are recently laying stress on their competitors and threatening competitors’ customers. It’s a terrible brand and they charge for an unacceptable price for shipping, leading to nearly 150 EUR for a card like that. Heck, I can buy a brand-new iPhone SE 3 at that price.

Caution: If you are using iPhones, you can’t use it.

You can, but you can’t modify the profiles on it. You still need an Android phone or a CCID card reader to download or delete profiles on it. It’s still fine to use the currently-enabled profile, it’s just like a normal SIM card.

I didn’t buy it, cuz it’s way too expensive.

5ber.eSIM

5ber.eSIM is the one that actually opened the market. They are using the same solution as the eSIM.me one. Both using the Eastcompeace ones, and the EID are both started in 890860. But 5ber ones are much, much cheaper.

Marketing name	Capacity	Downloads	Additional fees	Price
Standard	~ 500 KB	2	pay to get more downloads	12 USD
Premium	~ 500 KB	Unlimited	N/A	25 USD

Similarly, the two cards are identical in terms of physical card and firmware. The download limit only applies to their own software.

Suggestion: Buy it if you are lazy enough. A lot of people have this because they also entered the market fairly early. Their company is based in Hong Kong SAR China and they ship from Guangzhou, China. They didn’t charge me for domestic shipping but they used the best shipping courier here in China. I’m not sure for international shipping but I doubt it’s not expensive either. If you have the penny to afford a Premium one then I’m sure you will like it. Their customer support is 24/7 and, guess what, amazing. Their app is also very intuitive and easy-to-use. But if you are savvy enough, you may not want it.

Caution: It seems that 5ber’s firmware has some problems. All the profiles that are written to it are slightly larger (like 10 to 15 kilobytes larger).

Caution 2: If you are using iPhones, you can’t use it.

You can, but you can’t modify the profiles on it. You still need an Android phone or a CCID card reader to download or delete profiles on it. It’s still fine to use the currently-enabled profile, it’s just like a normal SIM card.

I bought it, so it’s based on my experience.

eSTK.me

eSTK.me is currently the BEST solution on market. They literally pushed the market. Let’s just bring the prices up.

Marketing Name	Capacity	Downloads	Additional fees	Price
ESTKme-ECO Lite	420 KB	Unlimited	N/A	89 HKD
ESTKme-ECO	420 KB	Unlimited	N/A	189 HKD

Similarly, the two cards are the same thing physically but it’s not the same when it comes to firmware.

Lite Version: ATR Mode fixed to Generic ARA-M fixed to EasyEUICC, No vEID support, No customize MOTD support, No STK Bypass, Only 3 profiles can be switched in STK menu(No limit by using PC/SC or OMAPI APP), No Cloud Enhance support,

All limited function can be purchased separately, get license code to unlock more!

In simple words, no fancy features. Management only possible through their EasyEUICC app or via a CCID card reader.

The EasyEUICC app doesn’t need ROOT, but it’s only available in Android. If you are using an Android phone, you can perfectly live with an ECO Lite.

FANCY FEATURES

The most amazing part is their management menu. Their management menu is the SIM Toolkit. Yes, the SIM toolkit that may take the space of an icon on your home screen. Their Cloud Enhance is truly amazing. You can open the SIM toolkit and give it your LPA activation string and it will automatically download the profile onto the card.

There’s a risk, because, as the name goes, Cloud Enhance. It utilized the cloud server, commonly hosted at rlpa.estk.me. They will download the profile to your card. You can think it like an OTA upgrade. I’m not sure about the details, but trust me, it’s amazing.

Above is the SIM toolkit menu. And that’s why you CAN use it on any device, because basically every device will display this menu.

Funnily enough, the EasyLPAC software itself is written by eSTK team.

Their solution is not the commonly-used Eastcompeace solution. Instead, they used disassembled Apple chips. As you can see in the EasyLPAC screenshot. They used these recycled chips and re-engineered them.

Suggestion: BUY IT!!! They don’t pay me and won’t pay me, but it’s just goooooooooood. Especially if you have an iPhone but happen to haven’t supported eSIM. It’s relatively more expensive compared with 5ber.eSIM, but trust me, you will love it.

I bought it because it’s good.

ST33j eUICC

This is not exactly a card. ST33j is just an eUICC chip, but being soldered to an empty plastic board and cut it into the shape and size of a SIM card so you can use. It contains basically nothing. But as you can tell, it’s not expensive.

There are two versions, one is 420 kilobytes one, and the other is ST33j1m, which has a whopping 1 MEGABYTE of space. The Taobao merchant that I found (currently the only one selling these things, and I heard they have close relationship with eSTK.me) costs 45 CNY for the 420 KB one and 58 CNY for the 1 MB one, shipping not included. It’s crazy cheap.

Caution: You can’t even get it detected on iPhones. Because these chips are also just disassembled iPhone chips. Probably due to the geo-lock problem, iPhone will refuse to detect it. eSTK.me did some magic to let iPhones detect it and being able to use it, but plain ST33j won’t. So only buy it if you have an Android phone.

I also have an LTE modem, which is a Quectel EC20CEFAG, a modem that uses Qualcomm baseband. It refused to detect this card, so do it at your own risk.

Suggestion: You need to be very savvy in order to use this. But if you really need to store a lot of profiles (basically all existing solutions are using 420 KB cards), you can consider it.

eSTK.me boss said (in his own group chat) that they are also developing the firmware for 1 MB model but there are a lot of bugs. But they are also adopting from the iPhone chips, aka these st33j chips, so similarly these half-done cards should also have some bugs. DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK

READ THIS IF YOU ARE LAZY

Don’t buy eSIM.me cards. If you want great UI, great customer support and are using Android phones, buy 5ber.eSIM. If you can accept a little bit of tinkering and are using iPhones, buy eSTK.me. If you are really an enthusiast, buy these half-done st33j cards (I won’t provide a link for these half-done cards, contact me over email or Telegram if you want one).

Last but not least

Buy eSTK.me, thanks. It’s the greatest.

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