Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra: eSIM, six years on

Yes, and it was early

The Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra both support eSIM, alongside the physical SIM tray. They arrived in 2020, the same year Samsung's flagship line first got the feature, so the Note 20 was in on it from the start rather than picking it up later.

That part is settled. The interesting question about a Note 20 in 2026 is not whether the hardware is there. It is whether anything else is standing in the way.

On a six-year-old handset, the lock is the likelier problem

A carrier lock will stop a third-party eSIM installing even when the hardware works perfectly. A phone bought on contract or subsidised in 2020 may still be carrying one, and the symptom is easy to misread: the profile fails at the point of installation, which looks a lot like "this phone can't do eSIM" if you are not expecting it.

The distinction matters because the fix is trivial. Most carriers unlock a device on request once it is paid off, and a Note 20 on a 2020 contract almost certainly is. It is a form or a phone call, not a purchase.

If you are unsure which problem you have, run *#06# first. An EID in that panel means the hardware is present and the obstacle is elsewhere.

Buying one second-hand? Two things to check

Note 20s change hands a lot at this point in their life, and there are exactly two things worth asking about:

1. Lock status. Ask directly. "Is it unlocked?" is a question sellers answer honestly far more often than people expect, and it decides whether the phone does what you want.
2. Leftover profiles. A handset that has been used with eSIM may still list the previous owner's plan. Removing a profile is not reversible from the handset's side, so delete only what you are certain you do not need — and if a plan with data left on it is sitting there, that is the previous owner's property, not a bonus.

Everything else about a used Note 20 — battery health, screen burn, what it will cost to repair — is a normal second-hand phone question and has nothing to do with eSIM. Those two are the only ones that decide whether it will do the job this page is about.

The menus have moved

One UI has been through several versions since 2020, and the eSIM settings have not stayed in one place. Rather than following a step-by-step written for an older release, look for the option by meaning: somewhere in mobile network or SIM manager settings there is a way to add a plan or add an eSIM. That is the one, whatever it is called on your build.

Installation itself has not changed. You buy a plan, you get a QR code, you scan it, and the profile downloads over wifi in under a minute. Do it before you fly — the install needs a working connection, which is precisely what you will not have when you land.

Still a perfectly good travel phone

Nothing about the Note 20's age degrades the thing that matters here. The eSIM standard has not moved on in a way that leaves it behind, and a profile installed on a Note 20 behaves the same as one installed on a phone bought this year.

Set the travel plan as your data line, keep the home SIM in the tray for calls and texts, and switch data roaming off on the home line. That last one is the setting that stops your old carrier quietly billing you for data while the eSIM sits there unused.

The compatibility checker covers the rest of Samsung's range, and our price comparison is where to look once you know your handset takes one.