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Apple Event

Apple's letting you embrace your inner duality with your iPhone. At Wednesday's Apple event, the company announced the launch of dual-SIM support for the iPhone. Both the iPhone XS and the iPhone XS Max will offer the dual SIM card option.

This will allow you to have two different phone numbers and two different carriers on the same phone. While that sounds like a feature you'd only use if you have something to hide, it'll be quite useful if you want to make your personal phone and work phone the same device. During an incoming call, you'll even see which number the call is for, so you can ignore it if it's a work call during your vacation. Potentially, you also could keep your regular phone number when on a trip out of the country and buy a prepaid SIM from a local carrier for cheaper calls and data use.

The dual SIM support is possible because Apple's newest iPhones will have an eSIM as well as a regular nano SIM card. The eSIM means you won't have to swap out a physical SIM card if you want to switch carriers or plans. An eSIM will make it easier to take advantage of the dual-SIM capabilities and swap out a second number if you change jobs or carriers.

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Recent iPads also have dual-SIM support and the cellular Apple Watch has an eSIM, so this upgrade makes sense for the iPhone. This feature has rolled out prominently overseas over the course of the past couple of years, so we're excited to see it finally gaining traction here in the US, and it'll be interesting to note how US carriers respond to it.

The carriers in the picture above will support the feature at launch, with Sprint noticeably absent from the list. However, a Sprint spokesperson assured CNET that the company will support the dual-SIM feature in the near future.

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