Does the iPhone 12 have eSIM?

Yes — and the tray is the interesting half

The iPhone 12 supports eSIM. It also has a physical SIM tray. In 2026 the second half of that sentence is quietly the more valuable one.

Apple started removing the tray from US iPhones with the 14 in 2022, and every US model since has shipped without one. An American traveller with a recent iPhone has no way to use a local prepaid SIM — not because it is inconvenient, but because there is physically nowhere to put it. An eSIM is the only option available to them.

You still have both. That means you can treat connectivity abroad as a price comparison rather than a foregone conclusion.

How to decide which one to buy

There is no universal answer, and anyone who gives you one is selling something. The honest version splits along a few lines.

A travel eSIM usually wins when the trip is short, when it crosses more than one country, when you want to land already connected, or when you would rather not spend an hour of a holiday in a phone shop with your passport out.

A local prepaid SIM usually wins when you are staying for weeks rather than days, when you need a local number that businesses and taxi apps will accept, or when the local prepaid market is genuinely cheap — which in some countries it dramatically is, and in others it is not.

That last point is the one that cannot be generalised. In some markets the local SIM undercuts every travel eSIM we track by a wide margin. In others the eSIMs are cheaper per gigabyte than anything a visitor can buy on the ground. It is a per-country question, which is exactly why we publish per-country pages rather than one blanket recommendation.

Where the iPhone 12 sits in Apple's timeline

Useful context for anyone trying to work out whether their phone is on the wrong side of a cutoff:

The 12 sits comfortably in the middle band: eSIM as an option, not an obligation.

Running both at once

If you decide on the eSIM, the standard arrangement is worth setting up before you leave. Home SIM stays in the tray so your number keeps working for incoming calls and bank verification texts. Travel eSIM becomes the mobile data line. Data roaming switched off on the home line, so a patch of weak signal cannot hand your browsing back to your home carrier at roaming rates.

Install the profile at home, on Wi-Fi. It has to be downloaded, and you cannot download it with the connection you are trying to set up.

Longevity

A 2020 handset raises a fair question about how long this keeps working. The eSIM hardware does not expire, and profiles you have already installed stay installed. The moving parts are iOS support, which Apple will eventually stop extending to a phone of this age, and provider apps, which sometimes drop older iOS releases. Neither is a reason to act now; both are reasons to keep the phone updated while updates are still offered.

Check any other handset on the eSIM compatible phones page. For the arithmetic behind our plan rankings, the cheapest eSIM comparison shows cost per gigabyte, and how we test explains where the figures come from.