There are now two times in your life where you’ll need to check and see if your phone supports eSIM. The first is if you are travelling outside Europe and want to use a service like Airalo or Sim Local. When I travelled to China, I used the former and absolutely loved it. It worked a charm. The other time you’ll be likely wondering if your phone supports an eSIM or not is this weekend ahead of Lidl Connect launching in Ireland, with unlimited calls, texts, data and 50GB of roaming data for just €8.99.
And finding out if your phone does support eSIM or not, couldn’t be easier.
How to check if your phone supports eSIM
You can see if your phone supports eSIM by opening your dialler. This is where you would usually call people from. And instead of typing in a phone number, type in *#06#.
This will automatically bring up a screen showing your phones IMEI and some other information.
What you are hoping to see is an EID Number. If your phone has one of these, it supports eSIM.
It’s worth noting that some phones will require you to manually activate eSIM before this EID number will appear. So if you have a fairly new phone and no EID, it’s worth searching SIM in your settings and looking for an option to generally activate eSIM.
What phones support eSIM?
eSIM is supported by most modern smartphones being released over the past few years. However, that doesn’t neccesarily stretch to mid-range or entry-levels smartphones, alongside some older models too. It’s best you don’t assume your phone supports eSIM, and that you check using the above instructions.
eSIM became broadly available on new phones as far back as the iPhone XR, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. Today, the likes of the iPhone Air, iPhone Duo and some new Google Pixel phones in the U.S. are launching without any physical SIM support at all, so this is generally the way the market is going.
Why does eSIM matter with Lidl Connect?
Lidl wants to keep the costs of running Lidl Connect as low as possible so the network can bring you the price of just €8.99 at launch. This is also why they charge €0.99 for a physical SIM card in store. It’s all about the cost, and it’s a fair trade to keep that price so incredibly low. You will be able to purchase your Lidl Connect eSIM directly in the Lidl Plus app, without having to go to a store at all. You can learn more about Lidl Connect over on our YouTube Channel.
