I’ve now spent a couple of hours trying to get a Pixel 9 phone to work with GrapheneOS and Consumer Cellular. If you have ever beat your head against the wall trying to activate an eSIM on a Pixel 9, you should know that…
At least some Pixel 9 phones are defective, and you cannot activate an eSIM once you have unlocked the bootloader.
Reports are mixed as to whether reinstalling the factory bootloader and locking it restores eSIM functionality, but it seems likely that once the bootloader is unlocked, eSIM support is dead forever.
This is a pretty serious bug, but it works to Google’s advantage as it makes it frustrating and difficult to run your own software (rather than Google’s ad-infested spyware) on the phone. Thus, Google appears to have done nothing to mitigate the problem. There are a lot of very good reasons to run non-Google software on your phone, but even if there weren’t, that’s no excuse for Google to sell expensive but known-defective products. Worse, it appears they have tried to scrub references to the problem from the Web, which makes it even harder for people to figure out why their Pixel phones aren’t working. No doubt they’re trying to avoid the expense of having a lot of folks request refunds for their Pixel 9’s when they find out they cannot install an eSIM for, say, travel.
I’ve now transitioned my phone to Consumer Cellular by using a physical SIM card. It absolutely won’t activate an eSIM, giving the fabulously helpful error message “something went wrong.” While the new phone now seems to be working, I haven’t been able to test it thoroughly because the AT&T cellular network is still down in my area following Hurricane Lala.
Google. We’re evil now. Deal with it.
—2p