Phones question: Has anyone here bought an international iPhone 14 (with a SIM card) for use in the US? If so, which one did you choose and why?

Submitted by twovests in just_post

The latest iPhones (14 and 15) lack a SIM card slot in the United States. Most international models have a sim card slot, and some models have dual sim (at the expense of satellite connection features.)

These differences are in addition to the usual ones, which are cellular bands. The same phone sold in different countries support different sets of 5G and LTE bands. See: https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone/cellular/

I'm wondering if anyone here has bought an iPhone 14 (or 15) from outside the US for use within the US, and if so, which one did you buy? How did you buy it?

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hollyhoppet wrote

what's your ultimate goal here? i ask because most if not all carriers need you to contact them these days to pair a sim card with a smartphone anyway, so if your goal is to get an iphone so you can pop your sim in you'll be disappointed that it doesn't work out of the box

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twovests OP wrote (edited )

Replying to hollyhoppet (#16,947)

I carry two phones and I swap the SIM cards between them pretty regularly, sometimes several times a day. Besides the initial activation, I've not had an issue.

On the other hand, every eSim transfer I've had took >12 hours and at least one contact to customer support. My most recent experience with eSim was so bad the story would sound fake, so I'm avoiding it for now.

My ultimate goal is that I'm phones shopping, and I'm trying to figure if iPhones will be an option for me or not

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