Oh that’s great news! Now I also need two whatsapp clients on my mac and the world would be awesome again :))
Well… at least on Windows computer I use Firefox and Chrome and have them each login using web.whatsapp.com and I have both on my computer. When I am on my Mac I am not working so I use only the client synced with my personal number. Is a bit crazy but it help me with my day.
Thanks for the post. I am wondering if I could do this as I currently have work and personal iPhones.
I don’t see why not. On the same topic and to keep mental sanity, I have Outlook app for work email and Mail for Personal… I’ve been having a great experience. Is important to build the wall between work and personal with one device.
This seems like it might be a logical place for this question.
I have an iPhone 12. I live in Thailand and have a SIM card from my Thai carrier. If I wanted to have a US number for people to contact me from a US number, can I do it with an e-SIM? If so, how would I go about that? Calls would be rather infrequent since my family uses FaceTime, so it wouldn’t be worth paying too much. Obviously, I wouldn’t need any data plan. Just a plain old telephone number with no bells and whistles.
I have a service that gives me a US number and works through an app. However, it seems to be somewhat unreliable, so I thought an e-SIM might be preferable.
Thanks.
Tony
You’d have to buy cell service from a US carrier that supports eSIMs, but I think that international roaming might get pretty expensive.
Thanks. Just a thought. Guess I’ll stick with the service I’m using.
Not sure what plan do you expect, but if you get one with cheap international call you can always forward the calls to your local number. For me it still a bit gray how this works but you can maybe do more research.
I don’t know which app you’re currently using for this, but Google Voice or Skype (paid) may work more reliably. I use a service called Fongo for this kind of thing and it works very well, but I believe that it’s limited to Canadian phone numbers.
I was going to suggest Google Voice, which seems to work okay enough for the most part, but you are looking for an alternative to an app solution.
Might I suggest Google Fi then?
They recently rolled out eSIM support for iPhone (at least for new connections).
I have a number there as well, but chiefly for its excellent international roaming that just works everywhere.
It’s about $20/month baseline for calls/text in the US, with international calls being pretty expensive but totally avoidable if you have FaceTime/WhatsApp/etc. for calling instead. Data cost is $10/GB and it’s billed per MB as you go — so you’re not paying for anything you don’t use.
This is under the flexible plan. I haven’t had a use for my number in months, so I’ve just ‘paused’ the service in my Fi app and don’t even need to pay the $20 (it gets credited back). It’s tremendously versatile.
The only Achilles heel of Fi used to be their international roaming limit of 6-9 months of constant non-US usage. There were ways to get around this, but I think they’ve relaxed this restriction since late last year (they had got a lot of heat for cutting out users stuck abroad).
I’ve decided to stay with the service I’m using. I have a US number, and I just buy a chunk of minutes and don’t pay more until I use them up. For as few calls as I get or make where I need to go to a landline, it just doesn’t make sense to pay a monthly charge, especially in the range of $20 + overseas charges (which is where mine go).
Thanks to all for your comments.
Tony
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