Downside is that in a lot of less developed countries esims are not available from the phone companies. We've seen this with a lot of Africa travellers in the facebook groups.

I use an esim for my home number and reserve the physical sim for local ones when travelling

Fair enough - although I just checked Airalo and they even offer a 26-country all-Africa eSIM.

Some older Android phones have dual SIM slots where you can keep your existing SIM and add a second one. What’s more usual nowadays is for phones to be able to simulate having a dual SIM by having an electronic version (eSIM is how cellular support is provided on the Apple Watch). There should be no price difference between the two methods of connectivity delivery.

All US models of the iPhone 14 use only eSIMS, there's no physical SIM slot. There are predictions that the iPhone 15 due in Sep/Oct 2023 might follow the same trend in Europe, at least in France and UK. At the moment many service providers in less developed countries don't offer eSIMs, or only offer the service if you visit their shops. Morocco is an example of this.

iPhones that support eSIM include ALL models from the SE 2020, XR and XS onwards (so also iPhone 11, 12, 13, 14). You can store eight or more eSIMs on an iPhone, ready to use, and you can have two eSIMs active on supported iPhone models at the same time—say one for home, the other for the place you are visiting.

You can swap which of your stored eSIMs are active simply by changing your selections in Settings. This might be helpful if you travel regularly to the same places.I currently use an iPhone 11 Pro Max and my UK service is via an EE eSIM, leaving my physical slot free for my Lobster nano SIM in Spain or Maroc Telecom in Morocco.

When you have multiple SIMs enabled (whether SIM or eSIM), you normally choose which one is used for mobile data and outgoing telephone calls, however you can have both services activated at once for incoming and outgoing telephone calls. You can also configure mobile data switching so you use whichever has the better coverage but you probably don’t want this as you would incur additional charges from your home service.

If you have both SIMs active, when you come to make a normal telephone call, the SIM you are about to use is shown at the top of the screen and you can change that if you wish.

More from Apple.

Airalo is one of the vendors mentioned in the article above. As far as Morocco is concerned, Airalo's eSIM works on Maroc Telecom's network, however be aware there's no voice calls and the data allowance is just 1GB before needing to be topped up, so it's an expensive option compared to a local Maroc Telecom/Inwi/Orange solution,

__________________
"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Tthey are also a lot more expensive. Airalo charge 10x as much for data in Morocco as Maroc Telecom

That's exactly what I do.

You can be sure of always being able to get a physical SIM card in a foreign country, but you can't be sure of getting an eSIM. On top of that, the process for "installing" and activating an eSIM can be tricky - I had a heck of a time getting the eSIM for my home (Canadian) carrier activated when I first obtained a phone with dual eSIM & physical SIM capability.

Best to follow the KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) philosophy when travelling.

Michael