I wish I knew if this would have helped me on a recent trip out of the U.S. In preparation, I upgraded my older, low-end smartphone to one with a more recent version of Android, NFC (for tap-to-pay), a headphone jack, and support for two physical SIMs.
So when I arrived at my destination, I was able to purchase a 30-day SIM for a local phone number and data, but my primary SIM was useless outside of the U.S. so no access to my primary phone number (I ended up using WhatsApp a lot). My carrier (Boost Mobile) advertised an add-on for "Global Roaming", but despite non-trivial time spent reading and talking to them on the phone, I got merely a vague impression that only an eSIM would have allowed me to continue to use my primary number out of the country. Would this solution have worked for me?
Meanwhile, I still have the (now deactivated) second SIM in my phone, hope that is not a security risk of some kind.
So when I arrived at my destination, I was able to purchase a 30-day SIM for a local phone number and data, but my primary SIM was useless outside of the U.S. so no access to my primary phone number (I ended up using WhatsApp a lot). My carrier (Boost Mobile) advertised an add-on for "Global Roaming", but despite non-trivial time spent reading and talking to them on the phone, I got merely a vague impression that only an eSIM would have allowed me to continue to use my primary number out of the country. Would this solution have worked for me?
Meanwhile, I still have the (now deactivated) second SIM in my phone, hope that is not a security risk of some kind.