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Apple May Include Support For a Second SIM Card in New iPhones (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the up-next dept.

Could Apple be planning on support for dual SIM cards with the new iPhone? It's possible. From a report: 9to5Mac was taking iOS 12 developer beta 5 out for a test drive and noticed something interesting in diagnostic report generation. There are clearly references to a "second SIM status." iPhones currently support eSIMs along with normal SIMs, so this could be nothing. But the diagnostic report also references "second SIM tray status," which signals that Apple could be planning on including support for a second physical SIM card with new iPhones.

43 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. But I thought... by reanjr · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Expensive phones don't have dual SIMs because people who travel and need dual SIMs just buy a secondary phone.

    Traveling internationally, isn't it better to just use a burner anyway?

    Not sure of the target demo...

    1. Re:But I thought... by amorsen · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It isn't for travelling. It's for having a work account and a private account without having to deal with two phones.

      Dual SIM is a must-have.

      The S9 is available in dual-SIM by the way, and it isn't exactly dirt cheap.

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    2. Re:But I thought... by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      There is a far better reason for a dual-sim phone: Private + work sims.

      I don't want to hand out my private phone number at work. My boss has it for emergencies, and he's fortunately responsible enough to treat it as such. But I have to have a work phone. So what do I have? Two phones that offer no benefit over a single phone with two SIMs.

      Essentially, that would be the first actually useful feature in an iPhone in a long, long time.

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    3. Re:But I thought... by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There is a far better reason for a dual-sim phone: Private + work sims.

      That's not a good reason. You should have wholly separate phones. Yeah, nobody wants to do that. But it's necessary from a security standpoint. Work should not permit your personal phone on their network, and they should not allow you to install your choice of apps on your work phone. If they have any other policy, they're asking for trouble.

      So what do I have? Two phones that offer no benefit over a single phone with two SIMs.

      Compartmentalization is a tangible benefit.

      --
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    4. Re:But I thought... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      You can get that already with things like Work Mode on Android - I can't see it being too much of a stretch for Apple to do something similar in iOS

      Do you really trust that, given the CPU vulnerabilities that are coming out of late?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re: But I thought... by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      In this age of BYOD? If you have more material like that, you could work as a standup.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    6. Re:But I thought... by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Why would I use a phone to access the work network? I have a laptop. Complete with a keyboard you can actually use without the growing urge to hurl the device into the next wall.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    7. Re: But I thought... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There are many millions of people who work independently, as freelancers, contractors, through their own small businesses, etc. Carrying one phone with two numbers instead of two phones would potentially be helpful to almost all of those people.

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    8. Re: But I thought... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      You do actual work that requires typing? What a pleb!

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    9. Re: But I thought... by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Work? Well... yeah, let's call it work.

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      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    10. Re:But I thought... by Solandri · · Score: 1

      Wait. So they have enough space to add a second SIM slot for the small percentage of people who have to keep their work phone separate from their personal phone. But they don't have enough space for a headphone jack for the large percentage of people who'd rather plug in than go wireless?

    11. Re: But I thought... by houghi · · Score: 1

      There are plenty of phones who have dual SIM tat are not Samsung or Apple. The downside will be that everybody will able to read your data, except the US, instead of everybody.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    12. Re:But I thought... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      I bought a pocket wifi hotspot for traveling.
      A second phone is a no go, why should I spent another $500 or more for another smartphone?
      I won't buy another iPhone unless it is dual SIM.
      My old iPhone 4S is just fine, has a new battery since 6 month, too.

      --
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    13. Re:But I thought... by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      Yes that's one major benefit - decoupling a voice plan from a data plan.

      In certain BYO SIM markets, it may be cheaper to stick with a basic calls and text plan and use the second SIM for data from a different provider.

    14. Re: But I thought... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      You want your private phone to be under the âoeremote wipeâ purview of your corporate / government security officer? No thanks.

      Why? You can wipe my phone right now and I would lose nothing. Honestly people who keep critical important things they may want to lose on a mobile device that is taken everywhere in public and a big target for thieves are basically asking for it.

      Do you think your security officer wants to make it even easier for you to misappropriate company proprietary / government classified information? I donâ(TM)t see this as being a remotely acceptable configuration for anyone but the most freewheeling Silicon Valley startup with âoefirst nameâ email addresses.

      I can see you don't have a clue how systems like Knox or other secure systems that link corporate accounts on personal devices work.

  2. Boring by datavirtue · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Endless stories about Apple supporting features everyone else has offered for years....are Apple customers ever pleasantly surprised?

    --
    I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    1. Re:Boring by Excelcia · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How about using the space for the useless second sim card for a real headphone jack?

      There was a business report on Apple talking about the slowdown with their phones, and how Apple was smart and foresaw that and pushed harder for their online streaming revenues. Nice. People are getting tired of their hardware, and they know it.

      In reality, though, little gimmicks like this aren't intended to actually entice users - it's just intended to keep them in the news. It's advertising.

    2. Re:Boring by ganjadude · · Score: 2

      or a microSD slot

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    3. Re:Boring by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      How about using the space for the useless second sim card for a real headphone jack?

      Why not both? The SIM card slot is unlikely to be on the very edge of the phone where the headphone jack would be. Also, given it would also require a similar amount of space to a SIM card slot (ie, virtually none) what about a microSD card slot?

      I might even consider considering (sic) an iPhone then not getting it because it's still too locked down if they did that.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    4. Re:Boring by Parker+Lewis · · Score: 1

      If the feature is displayed in a stage with a nice showman, of course, yes! "Now let me talk about this amazing new feature... the dual sim support!"

    5. Re:Boring by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 2

      Endless stories about Apple supporting features everyone else has offered for years....are Apple customers ever pleasantly surprised?

      Yes they are.

      Everytime they use their iPhone and iPad, and everytime they use their Mac.

    6. Re:Boring by Mr_Silver · · Score: 2

      Endless stories about Apple supporting features everyone else has offered for years....are Apple customers ever pleasantly surprised?

      The Apple of yesteryear would take the dual SIM functionality (that everyone else has) and then add a couple of additional features (that no-one has) which would make the experience far better.

      However, having seen what little effort they put into resolving the issues with notifications (they just basically copied the bare minimum from Google), I'm not convinced that they are of the add-something-special mindset any more.

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    7. Re:Boring by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      Would that be the FaceID camera that replaced functionality that for many users works better, rather than augmenting it, the Apple pencil that only works on a small subset of iOS devices, TruMotion that's a feature of LG TV sets, the A-series chips that exist primarily so Apple doesn't find themselves dependent on a chipmaker that can't meet their needs like they did with the PowerPC, or the HomePod that, despite its higher sound quality, nearly every reviewer says isn't nearly as usable as Amazon Alexa or Google Home?

      I'm not saying that Apple has lost its spark, but those aren't very good examples. :-)

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      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    8. Re:Boring by tsa · · Score: 1

      We haven't been simce Steve died.

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    9. Re:Boring by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Well sure, if you ignore the FaceID IR camera

      Windows Hello was first, and took longer to crack (if it's even been cracked; last time I checked, well after FaceID had been, it hadn't been).

      the Apple pencil

      Adonit made active stylii for iOS long before Apple themselves did, and they work with all iOS devices, not just the iPad Pro. In fact, the two I have work better than the Apple Pencil I gave to a friend who bought an iPad Pro recently; that's why I gave it away.

      Trumotion

      The feature of LG TVs that Apple had nothing to do with? Or did you mean TrueMotion, which is an app not developed by Apple that can also be found on Android? Google turns up nothing relevant.

      A-series chips

      I'll think about granting that one, though they're just ARM modules assembled in interesting ways. I'm not sure one lego building is really any more interesting than another; certainly not enough so that I's say it "adds something special".

      HomePod

      The only something special Apple added there was the price and a white ring on your countertop.

      Got any more of those? This is fun.

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      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    10. Re:Boring by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Their motivation for building A-series somehow invalidates the fact that it is industry-leading?

      We haven't seen a comparison of iOS running on other modern ARM chips, or of Android running on an A-series. We don't actually know that it's industry-leading; in fact, depending on how you define industry-leading (usually performance, which is what we don't have a valid benchmark for, or sales), it's far from industry-leading.

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      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    11. Re:Boring by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Oh?

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      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    12. Re:Boring by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      The pencil is only in high-end iPads so far, therefore it is a bad product?

      It isn't that the product is bad, so much as that Apple's policy of creating artificial differentiation between similar products (beyond what is inherent to a larger screen) is bad, and the pencil is a lot less useful (or at least useful to a lot fewer people) because of it. Or maybe they were just having yield problems, and that kept demand down. *shrugs*

      The focus of HomePod was audio, which is what I was referring to. Siri remains a weak point for Apple.

      The problem is, the audio quality is the easy part. Realistically, the extra 1000% of effort required for the spatial modeling versus just producing a large enough driver to do the job is the sort of polish that maybe one tenth of one percent of your users care about. And even with the relatively large amount of effort required, it is still a drop in the bucket compared with the effort that would be required to bring Siri up to the level of the other products in that space.

      And this assumes that it would even be possible for Apple to catch up. The way Amazon and Google have improved their products so quickly is by analyzing boatloads of analytics data and finding out which queries worked and which ones didn't. As long as Apple treats queries as private, that sort of analysis likely isn't possible, and the platform cannot easily improve.

      If all you care about is having a speaker, that's great, but there are plenty of other companies in that space whose sole focus is building great audio systems. Adding Apple to that saturated market didn't really add anything, IMO. It seems like Apple shipped the HomePod solely because everybody else was building one, and they didn't want to be left out. That really isn't a good enough reason to make a product, IMO.

      If Apple had invested that time and effort into making Amazon and Google tech integrate better with iOS, I think iOS users would have been a lot happier with the result. Apple should focus on what it does best — hardware — and stop wasting time and effort trying to compete with Internet service companies like Google and Amazon in areas where those sorts of companies inherently do a better job.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    13. Re: Boring by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      A capacitive touch screen is the same tech whether it's on a PC or a phone. A camera is the same tech whether it's on a PC or a phone. Flash storage is the same tech whether it's on a PC or a phone. A battery is the same tech whether it's in a PC or a phone. You see where I'm going with this?

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    14. Re: Boring by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      #nailedit

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    15. Re:Boring by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      LOL BGR. The second biggest apple dickpuppet next to you.

      Ok, I assume all THESE are not "Dickpuppets", Hater:

      https://www.anandtech.com/show...

      https://www.thestreet.com/mark...

      https://www.marketwatch.com/st...

      https://www.channelweb.co.uk/c...

  3. Re:Wow by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's not courageous. Courageous is taking something away, this is adding something.

    Apple is losing its way, I tell you...

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    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. makes sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Most iPhone users are into dual penetration, why not dual sims?

  5. Re:False rumor. by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    apple would much rather sell you two overpriced phones instead of just one. This doesn't fit with their corporate philosophy.

    You mean this doesn't fit with your Hater narrative.

  6. One for the user by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    one for PRISM?

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  7. I bet it's the same as every other dual SIM phone. by thevirtualcat · · Score: 1

    What I'd want to see:

    * For sale at stores in North America
    * Works on all carriers.
    * Optional isolation between the two SIM cards.

    What it will probably be:

    * For "emerging markets" only. (You can import it, though.)
    * GSM Only.
    * Paid app for isolation. (Available six months after release, integrated in the next major version of iOS.)

    Part of me hopes that Apple does their usual "take something that exists and up the game," but if I keep expectations low I won't be disappointed when it's the same as every other Android dual SIM phone in existence.

  8. Blu phones have dual SIM. Some for less than $100. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 2

    "... international roaming..."

    Roaming is expensive.

    Many Blu phones have dual SIMs and cost less than $100. Quoting: Dual SIM:

    A Dual SIM gives you several advantages... If you have two SIM slots in your mobile device, you don't need to worry about these issues: (The writing on the Blu web site is poor. I improved it.)
    1) Exchanging SIM cards from one phone to another.
    2) Carrying two phones in your pocket.
    3) Remembering to charge two devices.
    4) You can take advantage of different voice/data plans for better rates, better coverage, and separate bills.
    5) You can separate personal and business phone calls.
    6) For the international traveler, a Dual SIM phone can avoid roaming charges by having a domestic carrier SIM and an international carrier SIM.

  9. 2nd SIM slot by pablo_max · · Score: 1

    I would be pretty surprised if Apple offered a 2nd SIM via an actual SIM tray. Likely the tray will still be one SIM, whilst the 2nd SIM will be an embedded SIM with OTA provisioning.
    Apple has pushing PTCRB to accept embedded SIMs only for years and they were heavily involved in the steering groups and standards committees for embedded SIMs. I doubt they did that just for fun.

  10. ATT used to change $15-$20 a meg for roaming by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    ATT used to change $15-$20 a meg for roaming just think if the iphone was still att only.

  11. MicroSD? by hawguy · · Score: 1

    Since they apparently have room to spare, I'd much rather have a MicroSD slot than a second SIM slot.

  12. Re:Blu phones have dual SIM. Some for less than $1 by dgatwood · · Score: 1

    None of those are compelling for me, even as someone who carries a second phone for work (because I don't want my employer to be allowed to wipe my device, not because separating work calls matters).

    The thing is, ten years ago, I would have jumped on the opportunity to have a second SIM card in my iPhone. I had an international SIM that saved a lot of money when making phone calls and using data overseas. These days, my main Sprint plan is cheaper in Europe than that European SIM card. It seems unlikely that I'll ever bother swapping SIM cards again, even though I bought my phone fully unlocked so I could if I needed to.

    The only way I would be interested in a second SIM card on iOS would be if Apple coupled it with proper Google Project Fi support. The one thing I've noticed since I started carrying a second phone is that my Google Pixel has much more consistent cellular data service than my iPhone, because it uses Project Fi, which lets it transparently roam across multiple carriers (Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular) based on who has the strongest signal, rather than strongly favoring a single carrier's tower even when it has only a single bar (which, for data purposes, is effectively "No Service"). Weak spots in one carrier's service tend not to be weak on the others, so it gives me a much better, more consistent user experience. And that's not just out in the boonies, either. I get better and more consistent service in Cupertino with my Pixel than with my iPhone.

    If I could get that sort of seamless networking experience on iOS, it might be worth sticking a Project Fi sim in the second SIM slot. But as long as Apple doesn't support Project Fi and won't create their own equivalent, I'd much rather have a headphone jack than a second SIM slot. At least that's something that I and a significant percentage of other iPhone users would actually use.

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    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  13. Room for a second SIM tray... by BronsCon · · Score: 1

    But still no room for an SD card? Hmm...

    --
    APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  14. You lost your headphone jack for this. by AbRASiON · · Score: 1

    I get some people don't care for 2 SIM cards.

    I'm one of them, I know what I'd prefer.

    Idiots.