Obviously, the most notable aspect of the Chinese-made handset is the distinct lack of official access to Google apps and services. This is the first flagship to be released by Huawei since being blacklisted by the US government, therefore it is the first new release to explicitly come without access to common Google Play Services.
Side-loading these services is likely to be possible but it is unclear just how this will be possible for most non-techie buyers. The Huawei Mate 30 Pro does come EMUI 10, which is based upon the recently released Android 10. Although, as expected, this build does not come with any Google apps.
It will be interesting to see how well this handset will perform outside of China. I have my sincerest doubts.
For my newest phone, I finally decided to take a chance voiding the warranty and installing a google free image. I talked about this not very long ago, but here it’s more on topic! At first I tried lineage, but the lineage developers don’t give you everything you need to be google-free. This was problematic until I found a distribution of lineage that includes the microg libraries & patches, which are a replacement for google’s services. A side benefit is that microg has less bloat and is faster that google’s own play services.
https://lineage.microg.org/
It’s been a few weeks now and I couldn’t be more pleased with microg. I have no regrets, it’s practically a stock android experience only without google’s warez! Everything I need still works because of microg. Anyone who’s interested in going google-free should check it out. The caveat, and it’s a pretty big one, is that it was rather painful to get installed. I took me several attempts. I had trouble unlocking the bootloader and I encountered bugs with the TWRP recovery tools not mounting things correctly, meanwhile the other recovery tools I tried failed to flash the OS image correctly. So I had to resort to manual fixes in the ADB shell that weren’t documented, all this despite having an officially supported phone. Some people do brick their phones in the process, so I can’t recommend any of this for novices.
Assuming you could buy a google-free phone strait from the manufacturer, presumably you wouldn’t need to do any of this. I don’t know how well Huawei is going to execute this android offshoot, but assuming it works as well as microg then I think many users will be happy with it. A big question I have is whether their products will find their way to the US given the trade war in effect and US companies not allowed to do business with them. It’s premature to say for sure, but I have concerns that huawei may be looking to swap out google’s ad & tracking mechanisms for it’s own rather than offering a truly unencumbered alternative.
I understand the sentiment of going Google-free. But Huawei without Google is not more trustworthy then other phones with Google. An other issue with them is the way they lock their phones.
satai,
It remains to be seen, but I do follow what you are saying. There is a real concern that huawei will follow google’s footsteps and end up with the same deficiencies. But imagine if they didn’t, it could actually make huawei a lot more interesting and stand out from the pack. I’m a niche user for sure, but if it were completely open source (unlike google), that would catch my attention!
The risk is not Huawei following Google’s footsteps. The risk is Huawei being Huawei.
If you don’t trust Google go Lineage or other aftermarket ROM. Huawei is no alternative. If Google is semi-evil, they are really-evil.
https://9to5google.com/2019/09/23/huawei-mate-30-bootloader/
Huawei reached out to 9to5Google over the weekend to confirm that it has “no current plans” to allow bootloader unlocking on the Mate 30 series.
satai,
I reserve the right to judge them over what they do rather than who they are.
Hmm, I’m not sure why you are telling me this as though you didn’t you read my first post…I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried lineage, but personally I do not recommend the official lineage images since crucially they lack the android services needed by a lot of 3rd party software, so instead I recommend the microg image. I already said all this though, keep up 🙂
Well that’s a shame, but not a surprise. I have no problem joining you in criticizing huawei over this. Unfortunately this seems to be the direction that many tech companies are going and there aren’t enough people demanding openness to convince them otherwise.
“But Huawei without Google is not more trustworthy then other phones with Google. An other issue with them is the way they lock their phones.”
Given the huge number of incompetent boobs who brick these phones and try returning them after doing it,can you really blame Huawei and others for locking them?
No,you really can’t.
If you want to feel free from Google then you should persuade all your friends and everyone who has your phone number to go Google free as well which is kinda pointless.
What you’ve done amounts to pretty much nothing.
birdie,
If that suits you, then more power to you, not everyone cares about privacy.. I for one would rather not have my devices phoning home to google.
You raises a good point though, not everyone realizes just how sneaky they are, they buy transaction history from visa & mastercard, they’ve built a huge network of web bugs to track people even on non-google properties and convinced webmasters everywhere to install them, they’ve tracked phone location data even on the phones of owners who specifically opted out, they exploited safari vulnerabilities to gain more tracking data on users. These are good reasons to strip google from your devices if you care,, but at the end of the day if you don’t care about any of that, then by all means make it easy for them, that’s what they are expecting you to do.
Thank you for providing information about the Huawei Mate 30 Pro phone atari breakout
Until they will allow boot loader unlock again, I won’t consider their products with or without Google adware. It’s normal to lose warranty in case of boot loader unlock, but is not normal to stop allowing this.
spike watchdog,
That’s a great point, I’ve been hit by this too and it can be a major stumbling block to installing what you want! I’d be willing to support huawei if they embrace the open hardware & open software route, it would actually be an easy choice, but I admit it’s kind of wishful thinking. Tech companies these days love restrictions & controlling us. There are some of us who tout the positive benefits of openness, but in terms of market share I am worried that we’re loosing ground given how we’re drops in an ocean of uninformed users.
Linux + GPL2 did a great deal to promote openness in software, but this very same combination, with linux itself still at the core, is failing to protect end user rights given that now manufacturers are routinely denying owners control at a hardware/firmware level. It’s hard to paint an optimistic picture when these restrictions are already being downplayed as normal and expected 🙁