Apple has kickstarted the rollout of iOS 12.1 all over the world. The software update brings plenty of new features to the table, the biggest of which are Group FaceTime, dual-SIM support, 70 new emoji, real-time Depth Control, and fixes for Beauty/Charge Gate.
iOS 12.1 weighs in at 387.5MB, although this may change depending on the iPhone model. Anyone who owns the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR will finally be able to add a second eSIM to their device. However, this depends entirely on whether the carriers in their country support digital SIMs.
iPhone Dual-SIM Carrier Support
Apple has a list of compatible network operators here. Reliance Jio and Airtel are the only two on board in India. As noted by MacRumors, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are supposed to work with eSIMs, but each of them have made excuses and said that they’ll roll out support on their end at some unspecified point in the future.
This is pretty disappointing news for people who were looking forward to using two numbers on the same iPhone. Apple should ideally have waited till the point where eSIMs became more common across the world. It’s not like it can’t put twin SIM card slots in an iPhone. China got special editions of the 2018 iPhones which had such a provision.
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Anyone lucky enough to have both an iPhone XS/XS Max/XR and a supportive carrier can read more about how to set up their dual-SIM functionality on Apple’s support page. As for iOS 12.1’s other major new addition, all iPhone owners can look forward to chatting with up to 32 people simultaneously using Group FaceTime.
iPhone X and above users can even transform themselves into an Animoji or Memoji when they’re talking to someone. You can check if you’ve gotten iOS 12.1 in your iPhone or iPad by heading to Settings > General > Software Update.