Forget headphone jacks and “Courage.” Look past the shiny Jet Black finish and beyond the minimized antenna lines. Sure, quad-LED flash and dual cameras are nice—but dual-SIM would’ve been much better.
Dual-SIM support in the iPhone 7 had been rumored for months leading up to the big event, and a lot of people were eagerly anticipating the change.
As the name would suggest, this move would have allowed you to plug two different SIM cards into your iPhone. While that might not sound exciting on the surface, it could have opened up lots of possibilities that would have saved money on cell service and simplified your life—so there are several examples of how Apple missed a golden opportunity here.
Example 1: Multiple Phone Numbers on One Device
If your job provides a phone for you, it comes with several strings attached. Sometimes, they’ll expect you to be on call for most of your waking hours, and at the very least, you can’t be using company property to play Pokémon GO.
So this means you have to juggle two phones—one for work, and the other for your personal life. But if the iPhone 7 had included dual-SIM support, you could simply slide your secondary SIM into the same slot and ditch the extra phone. You’d need to use your own personal iPhone as a work cell, but at least in most cases, one phone would be all you’d need.
Example 2: Travel & Border Towns
As a resident of San Diego, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found my phone roaming onto the neighboring Mexican cell networks of nearby Tijuana. The main problem here is that carriers charge an arm and a leg for data usage while you’re roaming, and I’ve been hit with quite a few of these fees just driving through town.
With a dual-SIM setup, however, I could simply order a Mexican SIM card, pop it into the secondary slot, and get cheaper rates when my phone connects to these same networks. So folks who live in border towns across the globe would stand to gain coverage while losing the roaming fees.
The same principles apply if you’re a frequent flyer who does a lot of business travel. Instead of swapping out your SIM card every time you head overseas, you could keep the secondary card in the dual-SIM slot, then just switch over at the press of a button when you get off your plane.
Example 3: Cheaper Cell Service
In many countries, unlimited talk and text isn’t a foregone conclusion with cellular service providers. As a result, one carrier might have the best deal for mobile data, while a separate company is offering the most minutes for the lowest price.
With a dual-SIM phone, you could take full advantage of the best deals on the market. Just set up one plan for talk and text, then another for mobile data, and pop both SIM cards into your phone at the same time. You’d have to dig around in the Settings menu to set your preferred network for each function, but this feature could have definitely saved a lot of money.
Just updated your iPhone? You’ll find new emoji, enhanced security, podcast transcripts, Apple Cash virtual numbers, and other useful features. There are even new additions hidden within Safari. Find out what’s new and changed on your iPhone with the iOS 17.4 update.
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