Does my child's phone support eSIM? How to check before you travel

An eSIM is a SIM card that lives inside the phone. Instead of pushing a small plastic card into a tray, you download a profile, and the phone treats it as an extra line. Most recent phones can do this. Not all of them can, and the ones that cannot are often the phones children end up with.

A child's phone is often a parent's old one, a budget model bought for the start of secondary school, or something passed down from a cousin. Any of these might be too old, might be a version sold without eSIM, or might still be locked to the network it came from. It is far better to find that out now than on arrival.

Checking an iPhone

iPhones from the XS and XR onwards generally support eSIM, although some models sold in certain regions do not. The quickest check is on the phone itself. Open Settings, then General, then About, and scroll down. If the phone supports eSIM, you should see an EID, a long number that identifies its eSIM chip.

Apple renames menu items between versions of iOS. If the wording is not quite what you see, look in the mobile data section of Settings for an option to add an eSIM. If it is there, the phone can take one.

Checking an Android phone

Android is less uniform. Every manufacturer arranges its settings differently, and the same model can be sold with or without eSIM in different countries. Two checks work on most phones.

First, open the phone's dialler and type *#06#. On many phones this lists the device's identifiers, and if an EID is among them, the phone has an eSIM chip. Second, look in Settings, under the network or connections section, for a SIM manager or an option to add or download an eSIM.

If neither turns anything up, search for the exact model number with the word eSIM. You will find the model number in Settings, under About phone. The name on the box can cover several versions, and only some of them may support eSIM.

The lock you might not know about

A phone that supports eSIM can still refuse one from another provider if it is locked to its original network. Phones bought outright are usually unlocked. Phones that came with a contract, or second-hand, sometimes are not.

The settings do not always make this obvious. The reliable answer comes from the network the phone was bought on, and many will unlock a phone on request. Ask early. An unlock can take a few days, and it is not something to be chasing on holiday.

If a phone cannot take one

Sometimes the answer is simply no. The phone is too old, or it is a version without eSIM. That is not a failure of planning. It just changes the plan.

There are other ways to manage. A child can share a parent's connection through a personal hotspot when you are together, if the plan allows it. They can rely on wifi where you are staying. Or they can borrow a spare phone that does support eSIM for the length of the trip. What does not help is getting an eSIM for a phone that cannot install it, so check the phone first.

Check everyone at once

The easiest way to do this is with every phone in the family on the table together. For each person, note the phone model, whether it shows an EID, and whether it is unlocked. It takes a few minutes a phone, and it avoids a surprise for the one person nobody thought to check.

With that list done, setting things up in PERDIEM is straightforward. Each family member needs only a name, and an email address if you want to add one. Once you know a person's phone can take an eSIM, pick the destination and a plan for them, and the SIM appears in your console ready to install.