Esim suddenly stopped working - how to troubleshoot?

grapheneuser2534

Hey All,

I've done some googling but haven't been able to find a satisfactory solution to this issue yet.

I have an eSIM installed on my Pixel 6a running Graphene OS. It's been working fine for a number of years and then all of a sudden it's just stopped working. In Network and Internet settings I have eSIM support turned on but when I go into my sims the eSIM has been disabled.

When I try to activate it I get a pop-up that says "Set your sim preferences", but when I go through the screen to try and enable the eSim it says "Can't switch sims - something went wrong, can't switch sims". If I click okay it goes back to the sim screen.

I have tried to disable and then re-enable eSIM support and it hasn't worked.

I've tried to erase the eSIM so I could reinstall it and it says "Can't erase eSIM, something went wrong and this eSIM wasn't erased, restart your device and try again". Restarting the device doesn't do anything, I get the same issue trying to remove it again.

Is this a known issue? Are there any suggestions that I could try to troubleshoot it or will I have to nuke my Graphene OS installation and set things up again from scratch?

Thanks for any help in advance.

wizoatk

grapheneuser2534

Appears to be consistent with known issue specific to 6A:

Pixel 6a eSIM is disabled and unable to enable #6144
https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/6144

DeletedUser499

I use a P6a with several eSims and luckily have never encountered this.
my way to problem solve it aftre what you have already tried would be to navigate to
settings - system - reset options - reset mobile network settings
If that failed I would factory reset my phone and try with a new QR code for the eSim.
However I only have the additional problem of only one extra app to install, you may have several and a factory reset might be out of the question for you.

grapheneuser2534

DeletedUser499

Thanks for the suggestion, no change doing that unfortunately, and if I tick the box to delete eSIMs as part of resetting the network settings I get the same message saying "Can't erase eSIMs - something went wrong and your eSIMs weren't erased. Restart your device and try again".

Factory reset would be a pain in the butt, but I need the eSIM to work, so if I have to do it I will.

Bramphilips

I just had the same issue while travelling. Me and my partner both have a pixel 8 and they both had the same issues. eSIM constantly disconnects and then stopped working permanently. I figured out that you can delete it by putting the phone in flight mode and then rebooting, after reboot with airplane mode on it's possible to delete the sim.

Adding the sim again did nothing for me though. I got the sim working by setting "preferred network type" back to 5g (recommended), I always have it at 4g only but in my case this broke the eSIM in both pixel 8's. I dont know if this is the issue in your case but it's worth checking.

grapheneuser2534

Thanks - I usually have it set to 4G only and I'm traveling at the moment, so maybe that's what freaked it out.

I couldn't fix it following the same steps as you though unfortunately.

grapheneuser2534

wizoatk

Thanks yes - seems to be the same issue, I'll give the sideloader a shot and see if it works.

wizoatk

grapheneuser2534 I'll give the sideloader a shot and see if it works

That's an old test to see if a potential change made any difference. I don't think they ever found a root cause. We're already on newer releases.