Pixel 2 and 2 XL: the eSIM is there, and you can't use it

A yes that behaves like a no

The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL contain an eSIM. That is not a rumour or a regional quirk — Google put the chip in, and the phone will report it.

It is also, for the purpose that brings most people to this page, useless. Google built that eSIM to serve Google Fi, its own US network, and never opened it to other providers. A profile bought from a travel eSIM company has nowhere to install itself on this handset. The hardware is present and the door to it was never unlocked.

So if you have arrived from a compatibility list showing "Pixel 2 — eSIM: yes", that list is not lying to you. It is answering a narrower question than the one you asked. Because Fi is a US service, whether the eSIM in your particular Pixel 2 ever did anything at all comes down to where it was sold and which network it lived on. Outside that, it has always been inert.

Why the usual hardware test misleads here

The standard check for eSIM is to dial *#06# and look for an EID alongside the IMEI. An EID means the phone has an eSIM chip. On almost every handset we cover, that is the end of the matter.

The Pixel 2 is the exception that shows what the test actually measures. It tells you the silicon exists. It tells you nothing about whether the manufacturer or the carrier will permit a third party's profile onto it. Those are separate questions, and on this one handset they give opposite answers.

If you want the general version of that check across other phones, the eSIM compatibility checker is the right place to start.

What to do instead: use the tray

The Pixel 2 has a nano-SIM tray, and nothing about it is restricted. That is your route to cheap data abroad.

The differences from an eSIM are real but manageable:

• You have to buy in person, or order a travel SIM before you leave and wait for the post.
• Registration rules vary by country. Some want a passport at the counter, some want nothing.
• Your home SIM comes out. There is one slot, so while the local SIM is in, your home number is unreachable.

That last point removes the arrangement most travel advice assumes — home number for calls, eSIM for data, both live at once. On a Pixel 2 you choose one. If two-factor codes arrive by SMS to your home number, decide before you fly how you will get them, because swapping the tray at an airport with your bank waiting is a bad place to work it out.

Keep the home SIM in something you will not lose. The plastic card it came in, in your wallet, not loose in a hotel drawer.

Whether a 2017 phone should be your travel phone

We do not track battery health or update status per handset, and we are not going to guess at what an eight-year-old unit does. Two things are worth checking before a long trip, though, and neither is about SIMs.

Does it still get security updates? And does the battery survive a day of maps, photos and translation apps, which is a heavier load than most phones see at home?

There is also a signal question. Older handsets support fewer radio bands than current ones, and a foreign network may lean on bands your unit does not have. Coverage that looks fine on a map can still be thin in your hand. We cannot tell you which bands your specific Pixel 2 carries — that varies with the model number it was sold under.

If you are replacing it

The Pixel line's eSIM story properly begins one generation later. The Pixel 3, 3 XL and 3a were the first with eSIM open to any provider, and even a second-hand one clears the bar that the Pixel 2 does not.

Once you have a handset that takes one, the plans themselves are the cheap part — see the cheapest eSIM plans we track.