At least if you’re travelling to Europe there are far cheaper offers with local carriers for about €/£ 5 for 20GB/30days valid across the EU and often UK.

Lycamobile and Simyo usually have good deals though ended up needing to get a physical SIM in Spain as they require showing ID.

I forget if it was with Lyca or a similar brand, but they would deduct 5 cents for each sms before you setup a plan. I was incredibly careful to not do anything and disabled almost everything but apparently iPhone phones home in a way that’s totally hidden from the user and most providers hide and zero the charge but not these rando brands.

Another 5 EUR down to tube because I only had 4,95 for my 5 EUR plan.

Dunno why I put my SIM card in first but I guess I had to for some reason (was on wifi and had access to a computer)

> I was incredibly careful to not do anything and disabled almost everything but apparently iPhone phones home in a way that’s totally hidden from the user and most providers hide and zero the charge but not these rando brands.

It's not "totally hidden". You need to be extra careful to cancel the request to add the new SIM number to FaceTime/iMessage when prompted.

The prompt appears every time the phone is restarted though, and whenever the SIM is switched to.

I have Lyca as my main line but haven’t noticed this before. They do the whole ‘charge £0.01 to validate the card’ thing but that is instantly reversed and a separate transaction.

Overall their customer service is quite possibly the worst I’ve experienced but the network is good and their prices are fair - £10 a month for 25GB I can use in the EU and India.

True. This is what I used to do, but every country does this their SIM setup slightly different:

1. Do I need to show a passport yes/no?

2. Who sells the sim? Do I need to sit in a queue to purchase one? How do I top up?

3. Who is the best telco provider in the region I'm in?

4. etc etc

I'd prefer eSIM all day for that reason. Also, yes I can load up as many local/region eSIMs I want in case I need more, but honestly 20GB is plenty for a full year.

I prefer eSIM too and look forward to them becoming universal. The Lycamobile UK plan I used was an eSIM.

Have you checked out Eskimo esim?

They have coupons every so often on holidays for their worldwide esims. I believe they have one going for Chinese New Years that makes 30GB for $80. The data also has a 2 year expiration that rolls over on any global data purchase.

Downside is their esims (mostly? all?) terminate in Singapore, so higher latency outside of the Asia region.

What's the reason for the mudi device? Why not just use the esim in the iphone and have the iphone in hotspot mode? Just battery life?

A 4G/5G router creates a "real" WiFi network rather than a personal network.

Hotspotting is great for 1 or 2 devices, but devices are reluctant to connect to a personal hotspot automatically (Apple devices, at least). You have to manually select/tap the hotspot every time, which gets to be a pain when you have multiple devices and you're using it as your daily, primary internet connection.

I might also want to leave the house/hotel room/office for whatever reason with my phone but keep other devices connected. In this case the router can either be fixed in place (and plugged in) or travel with me on battery. Flexibility!

At least for me personally when I use my iPhone as a hotspot it tends to be one of two cases:

1) Tethering to my laptop when I need to check something for work in a pinch

2) Letting friends use my data if they don't have any or have a limited plan

In both cases, I think it makes sense to not automatically connect every time my phone is near.

This. Also, mudi can do everything from act as a WAN, input to a LAN and repeat, connect to a wifi and repeat, and use a SIM for its WAN. Phone hotspot only allows you to take the cell connection and repeat it to other devices via Wifi. It can't repeat a wifi or take a hard wire. Plus no advanced router/switch settings, it just says "use my cell connection and give it to anyone connected to me via wifi"

The Mudi sounds like a pretty great device, much more flexible than my Huawei (E6878-870) or the ZTE one that I also tried.

Too bad it's only 4G, though? I bought my 5G Huawei in 2019! Hopefully they'll come out with a 5G version soon.

> A 4G/5G router creates a "real" WiFi network rather than a personal network.

A properly functioning phone hotspot is a "real" WiFi network. The ones created by Android devices, at least, are running `hostapd`, which every Linux-based home router is running behind the scenes.

> devices are reluctant to connect to a personal hotspot automatically (Apple devices, at least).

Solution: don't use Apple devices.

Hotspot tether traffic on iPhone won't be tunneled over a VPN connection. This is what the Mudi router enables over LTE.

Lots of iOS stuff will bypass any configured VPN, including hotspot (but also APNS and other hardware-serial-linked OS stuff).

Nice, thanks for the reccomendations, the Mudi V2 looks great.

Any limitations / bumps in the road, or it "just works"?

Yes! I had to flash it with beta firmware since the eSim Manager disappears using Airalo.

https://dl.gl-inet.com/release/router/testing/e750/4.3.21

   Fixed the problem that esim manage page is lost after installing some esim profiles.

I own a Mudi v1, it is Chinese and 'just runs OpenWrt' (with mods). I had to use such device for a previous job (not w/eSIM tho). Battery life was good, but now not so much, and battery isn't user replaceable.

So would you not even need a plan for your phone and could do all voice/text/data through this device? Just keep it it with you at all times and running 24/7?