My kid's phone was stolen from his bag at school the other day. We suspect it was someone who has stolen phones before, because the first thing they did was remove the SIM card as soon as we put the phone in lost mode, meaning Find My Phone stopped working. Thankfully, the phone was passed around through various hands and eventually ended up at another school, where an honest kid realised it had been stolen and contacted me to return it.

Now, I never really thought about it before, but removing the SIM card is a pretty low-tech defeat to Find My Phone, and unless it's connected to a wifi network, it's gone. If it was an eSIM, it would have stayed findable until the battery ran out, or until they put it in a faraday cage or whatever, which I'm hoping would be beyond the capabilities of the 9-year-old thief.

Anyway, unfortunately my kid's phone is GSM, so I can't switch it to an eSIM yet, but will be making sure the rest of the phones in the family are moved over as soon as they can.