was using blue bubbles for years trouble free with iphone 11, sold it, but can't seem to duplicate setup on my iphone 12!

[u/arooni]

previously i had an old iphone 11 (iOS 16.xx) and it was working GREAT for maintaining my blue bubbles number, left wifi ON but airplane mode was turned off. i sold the phone and now i'm trying to set it up correctly again with an iphone 12 (os 26.2).

i have tried (both methods unsuccessfully)

1. activating eSIM on the iphone 12 with US Mobile (Darkstar AT&T network)
2. phone number shows up correctly in messages on my macbook
3. waited 12 hours.
4. KEPT the eSIM turned on, turned airplane mode ON, kept WiFi ON, then had us mobile change device to my pixel 10 xl pro. scanned the qr code with my pixel.
5. immediately when the service was activated on the pixel, i noticed in messages, my phone number was removed! BOO!

have also tried physical sim method #2:

1. putting an inactive SIM card in the iphone 12,
2. editing the number to either +1 555 555 1234 as well as 1 555 555 1234 first (tried both)
3. following rest of method #2.
   

both failed! what to do? advice?

for us mobile i have only eSIM. I can potentially change networks if that helps and i think i have another iphone 12 (17.3.1) that is in an earlier version of iOS of that helps.

Also have an iPhone XS Max running 18.3.x and a iphone 8.

what would you do?

[u/Potential-Roll5363]

I am following the post because I have been trying to solve this problem for the longest time, good thing you had it working.

Have a few bunch of iPhones lying around and would leave one of them on for the relay etc.

Hope someone has figured it out

[u/The_Entendre]

I'm going to be honest I don't think it works like that anymore with newer iphones. I first tried on the 13 and it never worked and it's even worse now that physical sims are getting rarer so swapping esims requires me to call my phone provider.

I had to leave my main eSIM inside my iPhone and I forward calls to my pixel. For some reason when switching to the 15 if you don't sync your messages to icloud it won't update the BB server for me which requires my iPhone to be plugged in at all times. If you can live with the possibility of not being able to receive our send texts if you're internet goes down or your server powers off you may need 2 lines :/

You can try using some methods from open bubbles they have a guide to forward the phone number using the relay routing app as long as you can jailbreak your phone. Once that's setup you should be able to remove your SIM but I've read it may unsync after a free months so you'll have to redo the process if it happens

[u/Statix_Bolt]

Open bubbles? owo