I bought a samsung A55 5G because it has 2 sim card slots and supports esim and not super expensive, i think around $300 USD that i recall. I tried three esim providers claiming to have 5g network in Portugal, Saily, Maya and ByteSim. They all worked as far as getting network access but i never had a 5g connection, always LTE/4G except maybe briefly. These companies are not located in Portugal and not related to the networks. Saily is Lithuanian, Maya is US based and ByteSim is Hong Kong / China. they are all "partners" with NOS and Vodaphone, you can get on either network. partnership does not seem so strong. ByteSim claims to partner with MEO as well but i got access denied trying to connect to that network operator.
Maya seemed to be the most reliable service but i didn't get 5g. ByteSim was the worst, only got like 5mbs down 1 up, and i asked them for a refund since i bought their "5g service" specifically. They did a 90% refund saying it cost them money to sell the esim lol. Anyway the sale was under 5 bucks total so 10% was like 50 cents. no biggie. In the end I went to an NOS store in the mall and bought a physical sim card that has unlimited 5g data for 20 days and it was 20 euros which is actually cheaper than the esims despite the marketing. And it works, with an NOS card i have 150mbps down / 50 mpbs up and 14ms latency. if you are traveling Saily or Maya is the way to go as long as you aren't counting on 5g service, from my experience.
