Phones traditionally use physical cards called SIM cards to connect to mobile networks, but there has been slow progress in recent years in moving to a digital version called eSIM. One of the reasons we haven’t seen more phones that have completely dropped the SIM card slot is that Android doesn’t have great support for multiple eSIMs, which must happen before most manufacturers can switch to this technology. The upcoming Android 13 update seems to be laying the groundwork for that “issue”.
MULTIPLE eSIMs
The codebase for Android 13 contains an implementation of a patent filed by Google in 2020, which allows the use of multiple SIM profiles on a single embedded chip. This works by splitting a single physical data bus between a modem and an eSIM chip into multiple logical interfaces that are multiplexed on a single physical interface. It’s like the way most modern CPUs divide physical CPU cores into logical CPU cores so that multiple tasks can be performed at the same time.
Unlike physical SIM cards, which require a large slot on the side of the phone or tablet, eSIM requires only a small component on the device’s motherboard. This leaves more space in the phone for a larger battery, camera hardware, or anything else. However, there were not many phones that completely dropped the physical SIM card slot – partly because many operators still do not support eSIM, and partly because many devices sold internationally must have two SIM cards of some kind. Two eSIMs are an option offered by the iPhone 13 series, but that adds more complexity.
Google hasn’t publicly mentioned this feature yet, but if it remains as an option in Android 13, for the final release, we’ll probably have more information soon. The new functionality could lead to wider support for eSIM on all phones.
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