Mere weeks before my pixel 8’s screen spontaneously died in Singapore I had switched it to eSIM, which was a huge mistake because my new* (second-hand) iPhone just couldn’t install eSIM profiles.
Given the seller was a guy from Taiwan studying in Australia, I thought the issue could be that the phone was from China, those have two physical sims and no eSim since eSim isn’t supported over there. But the model number ended in LL/A which means it was actually from the US. (it also didn’t have a dual-sim slot 😔) so it couldn’t’ve been that.
American iPhones though are meant to be eSIM only, but, for some reason mine did have a sim slot..?
There’s another thing, it also has a mmWave Modem ↓↓↓ these are meant to be US-only, which proves it’s from the US.
This phone’s a contradiction
So it’s got mmWave which only US iPhones have, while having a sim card slot which no US iPhone has.
Ontop of that the apple store """genius’es''' ontop of quoting me $10000 to fix it said it was extremely rare for the eSim to fail without the main sim failing, almost like someone had done it deliberately 🤔
I had a study-abroad coming up so I kinda just hoped really hard it would last for at-least 6 months, and it did!! (thankfully)
The battery health was cooked though. When I bought the phone the marketplace listing had it at 100% Battery Health and it was in settings.
It went down to 67% just in just 6 months, so in July this year while I was in Malaysia I finally got a battery replacement since I was kinda suspicious the guy I bought the phone from replaced the battery with a knock-off.
and the repair guy, this ⇣G.O.A.T⇣ had some revelations
Revelations
I learnt from him that US iPhones are apparently subsidized compared to the global ones, so much so that people from china buy them and bring them home to sell at a discount.
Little problem though, US iPhones are eSIM only, china doesn’t support eSIM, so how does one go about re-selling them?
Well, unlike the ‘genius’es he pointed out that the SIM card slot was on the wrong side of the phone, take a look again;
usually the SIM is on the side of the volume buttons.
This is because they drill a new sim-card into the phone then replace the eSIM (embeddedSIM) module with a real SIM tray, wire it up all the same way and badaーbing badaーboom～ your done.
The Catch
Turns out a sim tray is a little bigger than just the embeddedSIM itself, like, you can’t physically fit in the phone there’s battery in the way.
Turns out they just CUT OFF PART OF THE BATTERY to fit it in.*
so no wonder my battery was so bad…
I did take the old battery home, will update this with a pic of the real thing when i have it. but the highlighted region is around how big of a chunk the battery was missing.
*It’s actually a custom-made battery, the ⇡G.O.A.T⇡ was able to literally uber-eats—didi delivery drop off a custom-sized battery with 30% chopped off within like 20 minutes of realising he needed it.
On the guy being from Taiwan rather than mainland, people from Taiwan can go to the mainland (but not the other way around)
and they often do for good deals from the mainland.