Before I went for a holiday to the Philippines last year, I saw an advertisement of a mobile network company offering an eSIM. I was curious so I did a bit of digging. The eSIM is a type of digital SIM that allows you to set-up your mobile network without inserting a physical SIM card into your phone. Great, isn’t it?
I was with Virgin mobile at that time. Unfortunately, they don’t offer eSIMs yet. The agent mentioned about 02 (Virgin and 02 have merged) offering that type of SIM. I can also change to 02 network without fuss and retain my number which was great. So, I told them they can go ahead and I want an eSIM. It took a few days to receive my eSIM.
Setting up the eSIM on my phone was easy. However, I faced some network issues which was sorted after a few days.
A week after I arrived in the Philippines, I went to the local Globe store to buy a SIM card. Unfortunately, Globe eSIMs are only available on postpaid plans so they can only offer me a physical SIM card. I then inserted the physical SIM card and both networks worked!
It’s been almost a year now since using and taking advantage of the dual SIM feature on my phone. It’s very handy to have a Philippine number which I can use when I go for a holiday. If you own a Philippine bank account, it’s useful because it can also receive OTPs. Make sure you activate the roaming feature so you can still use your Globe SIM abroad.
I also managed to set-up a GCash account which was very convenient when paying for Pag-IBIG, other bills or by just transferring money to another account.
To avoid deactivation of my Globe SIM card, I set-up an alarm every 50 days (as a safety net) to remind me to reload. I believe the minimum amount you can load is 5php. You can also send load using GCash which is very easy and convenient too!
NOTE: eSIM feature is available on iPhone models XS, XS Max, XR and later.
Hi read ur post about using esim and regular Sim I just bought galaxy s22 ultra with this feature,. Moving to Philippines from. u. S. In Feb 2024. Need this explained again and what to buy for how you are using this. ( also is it better to have 2 esims or 1 esim and regular Sim) Thanks
Author
Hi Chase, thanks for visiting my blog!
The eSIM feature is good if your phone has only 1 physical SIM card slot. My Apple iPhone has only 1 SIM card slot. Since I wanted a local (PH) number, one of the SIM cards needs to be an eSIM (digital SIM card). Thus, getting a UK eSIM because Globe Network (Philippine) only offers eSIM for their postpaid plans. I don’t want a postpaid plan since my residence is here in the UK.
Looks like the Samsung Galaxy S22 support dual SIM cards. On this case, if you need a local SIM card in the Philippines for certain circumstances (e.g. easier and cheaper way of communication, take advantage of the e-wallet feature, use it to receive OTP [One Time Password] for online local banks/local shopping transactions, etc), you are fine since your phone can take 2 physical SIM cards. Hope this helps!