OCTOBER 2019 MACWORLD 49friends (or, at least, those on the
Apple platform). It’s a shame it’s
not available more widely.
SIM WORLD
This trip was my first opportunity
to travel outside the U.S. with a
phone that supports dual SIMs,
and it’s been a real win. Earlier
this year I converted my iPhone
XS’s main AT&T number to an
eSIM, which freed up the SIM
slot for traveling. And thanks to
U.K. provider Three, I was able
to buy one SIM which worked for all of my
European travel needs.
Even better, the Dual SIM mode in iOS
means that you can still use your original
phone number for iMessage and FaceTime
even while using your travel SIM for data.
That solves a huge headache, as anybody
who’s ever swapped SIMs knows; since
those features still tie in to your phone
number, you could potentially miss out on
messages and calls from people who only
have your usual phone number. (The Dual
SIM feature also means you still get SMS
texts to your primary phone number as
well, which are fortunately often free to
receive while overseas.)
I will say, though, that I found some of
the user interface to be a little obtuse. For
example, I set it up to use data only
through my travel SIM, but I had to double
Dual SIM mode in iOS is very useful while traveling.check several times before I was satisfied
that leaving iMessage/FaceTime on my
primary SIM wouldn’t accidentally use data
from my primary phone plan. (It works
correctly, but the wording is a bit
confusing, given that iMessage and
FaceTime are, of course, data.) And
changing my AT&T SIM to an eSIM was
surprisingly annoying, though that was
more about the carrier than Apple. There
certainly might be some streamlining that
can be done to setting up two SIMs, but it
still ended up being a net win.AUGMENTED TRAVEL
I like learning things when I’m traveling,
but I also don’t want to be staring at my
phone all the time, so one thing I found
myself really wanting on this trip was a
piece of passive augmented reality