While traditional phones use physical cards called SIM cards to connect to cellular networks, eSIM digital cards, which are being pushed, are not making much progress, in part because Android is not well supported. According to a new report from Esper, Google is likely to push for eSIM in Android 13 to drive adoption of the technology.
Esper reports that Android 13’s code base contains a patent filed by Google in 2020 that allows the use of multiple SIM profiles on a single embedded chip.
According to the patent description, it is achieved by splitting a single physical data bus between a modem and an eSIM chip into multiple logical interfaces, which are multiplexed over a single physical interface. It sounds a bit like modern cpus splitting physical CPU cores into logical CPU cores to perform more tasks at once.
Unlike a physical SIM card, which requires a slot, eSIM requires only one widget on the motherboard, which leaves more room for a larger battery, camera hardware or other components. However, not many phones are abandoning the physical SIM card slot entirely.
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Google hasn’t mentioned this feature publicly, but if it does make it into the final version of Android 13, it would be a big boost for eSIM cards.