Huawei says the Mate 90 Pro Max can keep three phone numbers active at the same time, using two physical SIM cards and one eSIM. An eSIM is a SIM built into the phone, which you switch on through your carrier instead of inserting a card. Most dual-SIM phones keep two numbers live, so a third is useful if you carry a work line and a personal line plus a third for data. Huawei sells it as “four cards, three standby” on the phone’s product page.
The phone stores four numbers in total, two on cards and two as eSIMs, and you choose which three are on. That is the Pro Max. The Mate 90 Pro stores the same four but keeps only two active, and so does the standard Mate 90.
There are two conditions:
- The first is that at least two of the three active numbers must be on the same mainland China carrier, as the Pro Max spec page puts it.
- The second is that the feature needs a software update.
The phone went on sale in China on 1st October, and Huawei’s pages give no date for the update, so a buyer today should not assume the third SIM works out of the box.
If a global version does arrive, the footnote still names mainland China carriers. Huawei’s pages don’t say what the phone does when the condition isn’t met, whether it refuses the third number or only limits it, so we can’t say what global buyer would see.
The Mate XT 2, Huawei’s tri-fold phone that we covered in September, is next in line. Huawei’s customer service has said it gets the same feature through an update expected in mid-to-late October. If Huawei drops or loosens the China-carrier condition in it, the third SIM becomes a real feature outside China.
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