an esim is an electronic sim card, meaning it can function as a sim card without being physically in your phone. this also means you can activate and use your esim and its data/voice line immediately after purchasing and installing on your phone. as of july 2025, you cannot use an esim on a desktop or laptop computer without specialized hardware and software

but for mint mobile, atleast, its as easy as installing the app, paying the 45$ for 3 months of services (which includes unlimited talk and 5gb data throughout paid service) and configuring on your smart phone, which does include android smart phones, and you should be able to make and recieve calls and data on your phone

what i honestly suggest is buying a new smart phone, the motorola moto is a good, high quality phone for under 200$/shipped the next day from amazon, but if you have a smartphone with an existing line from verizon, att, or even tmobile, you can setup a secondary line for whatever purposes, may it be for social media or to communicate with your friends. mint mobile also allows you to pick a differnet area code from your billing zip.

att requires going through their website, i personally havent bought an esim from att, but yeah, it should be pretty straight forward, and with mint all you need to do is download their app from your phones app store

there are different tiers, and yeah, its pretty good for emergencies, or if you get banned from social media and would like back up phone, or just for an emergency cloud back up key (make sure you buy atleast a year upfront for the icloud encrypted backup thing, if you lose that key you lose your icloud account!)

atleast for iphones, the way to dial a secondary number is to open the phone app, and select the new line from the upper left hand corner, and you should be ab le to dial out there

there are configuration options, and they are in the iphone settings, including changing the default phone number or setting a custom icon for the phone number in the phone selection app

good if you need a secondary line for under 50$!

unidef