Pixel 10 series eSIM, and whether the SIM tray is on the way out

The answer, and the caveat

The Pixel 10 series supports eSIM. It also, as we record it, keeps a physical SIM tray, which means you can run a home SIM and a travel plan at the same time.

The caveat belongs on any very recent handset rather than on this one specifically: manufacturers revise hardware within a generation and sell different configurations into different markets. What we hold is the status as checked, and our figures carry the date they were checked on. If your unit came from an unusual channel, look at the phone rather than at us — dial *#06# for an EID, and open the tray.

What Apple did, and why Pixel owners should care

Every iPhone 14 and later sold in the US ships with no SIM tray at all. The same models sold elsewhere kept theirs. That is the clearest sign yet that the tray is treated as removable once a market's carriers are ready.

The consequence is not academic. On a tray-free phone, the local prepaid SIM sold at an airport counter is not an expensive option or an inconvenient one — it is physically impossible. Whatever data you get abroad has to arrive as a downloaded profile, which means it has to be arranged over a working internet connection.

Where the Pixel 10 sits today

On the right side of that line. Both routes are open: install an eSIM before you go, or land, look at what the local shops charge, and buy a card if it beats what you were quoted online. In several countries it does, and we say so on the country pages where it happens.

Treat the tray as an insurance policy rather than a feature you will use. Most trips it stays shut. The one where the eSIM you bought turns out to ride a network with nothing outside the capital, it is the reason the trip still works.

What two lines actually buy you

Having both is not about redundancy for its own sake. It solves a specific problem: your home number is where your bank, your airline and your building's delivery notifications will reach you, and none of them will be moved to a temporary foreign number for a fortnight.

So the home SIM stays in the tray, live for calls and texts, with data roaming switched off so it cannot bill you in the background. The eSIM carries data at a fraction of the price. You are reachable on the number people already have, and paying local rates for everything that matters.

That is the whole argument for dual SIM, and it holds on a brand-new Pixel exactly as it did on a five-year-old one. The feature has not improved; the plans available to put on it have.

What we are not going to tell you

Whether Google follows Apple in dropping the tray. We do not know, we have not seen it confirmed, and guessing about unreleased hardware is exactly the kind of filler this site exists not to publish.

What we can say is what to check when the time comes: whether the model you are buying has a tray in your market, because that has already turned out to differ by country once.

Buying a plan for a brand-new phone

Compatibility is not your constraint here, so spend the effort on price and network instead. The gap between the best and worst value plan in a single country is routinely several times over, and providers vary in whether they will even tell you which local carrier carries your data.

Our cheapest eSIM plans has the arithmetic, how we test explains where the numbers come from, and the compatibility checker covers older phones in the household.