Beginning with the iPhone 14, Apple has removed the physical SIM card
slot from iPhones sold in the U.S.. This is a major bit of decontenting.

This decontenting is especially bad for international travelers from the
U.S. that purchase inexpensive prepaid SIM cards for use in their
destination country. This forces those travelers to use more expensive
and/or less fully-featured international roaming options. Postpaid
carriers offer high-cost international roaming, with low limits for
high-speed data; the carriers may have urged Apple to remove the
physical SIM slot for this reason. This also prevents non-U.S. residents
from purchasing U.S. iPhone modes for use outside the U.S., since eSIM
support outside the U.S. is very limited.

There are several vendors of data-only eSIMS for international roaming
which do not include a foreign phone number to use for calls or SMS
(though your U.S. number will work with the foreign data-only eSIM for data-based calling and texting). These data-only eSIMs are almost always
much more expensive per GB than prepaid physical SIM cards. Most MVNOs
and carrier-based prepaid services do not offer international roaming at
all, though some provide Mexico and/or Canada roaming. Many U.S. MVNOs
do not yet offer eSIM support though presumably the iPhone 14’s lack of
a physical SIM slot will force them to provide eSIM support.

U.S. consumers can purchase an iPhone 14 in Canada, Mexico, or any
non-U.S. country, to obtain a full-featured phone with both a physical
SIM and eSIM support, but non-U.S. iPhone 14 models lack mmWave 5G.

Unlike the loss of the headphone jack, there is no easy workaround for
the loss of the physical SIM slot. One solution would be to bring along
a separate phone with a SIM slot and use it as a hotspot for the iPhone 14.

I added this to the document <https://tinyurl.com/iOS-Android-Features>
as #188a on page 86.

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