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Asian shops shun Huawei phone trade-ins on Google suspension worries
- ngcc_hk 7y agoYou can’t use those USA app in china. Use chinese app ?
- theredbox 7y agoThis talks about other asian countries that dont use chinese alternatives.
- supertiger 7y agoTrump administration really showed the world how software can be weaponized against another country when there's trade dispute. EU better start growing their own internet/software ecosystem too.
- oxymoran 7y agoThis is unrelated to the trade war. There are security concerns with Huawei products because the company has deep connections to the Chinese government.
- muyuu 7y agoAs do all companies based in China. Huawei has long been suspected of doing a lot of network espionage work for the Chinese government - as are Chinese social networks, chat apps, mail apps, etc - but we also know for sure that Silicon Valley's Big Tech are heavily infiltrated by the NSA.
- baybal2 7y agoSome Huawei phones in Asian markets were sold without gapps for many years.
- inawarminister 7y agoSingapore and Philippines aren't exactly Mainland China...
- baybal2 7y agoI saw google free Huawei phones in quite a number of places other than China
- taneq 7y agoWould running LineageOS on one of these circumvent the concerns about Huawei? Or are people worried they're compromised at the driver or firmware level?
- yifanl 7y agoIf you don't trust Huawei as a manufacturer, then logically you wouldn't trust them on the lower-level stuff anymore than the software layer.
- inawarminister 7y agoI've heard that many (most?) recent Huawei phones bootloaders are not unlockable by design, so it's kind of hard to flash LOS on them.
- jeroenhd 7y agoEven if Huawei would let you unlock the bootloader properly, using LineageOS on an unauthorized device (such as upcoming Huawei devices) would be a pain. Google recently started requiring you to register a device with your account for every unauthorized device running Play Services (that is, a device that didn't get certified; certified devices running custom ROMs don't have this limitation) and apps might not show up. Netflix is not available for rooted devices, for example, and probably won't be on uncertified devices either. I don't think it's the people who are worried about Huawei though; this whole thing reeks of US government power play, trying to protect US businesses over the backs of consumers.
- mmastrac 7y ago> Netflix is not available for rooted devices, for example, and probably won't be on uncertified devices either. Note that you can use Magisk to get around the Play store not showing apps like this, but it's definitely not a solution for everyone.
- dagw 7y agoThe concerns of the people in the article isn't that Huawei is spying on them, its the uncertainty over how long they can keep using Google apps and Play services on the phone. While it's certainly possible to live a 'Google free' existence on and Android device, it's not something most Android users (certainly outside of China) are interested in.
- ak39 7y agoCan the user not simply erase OEM and load the stock Android OS and use the phone just as effectively (fully)?
- black_puppydog 7y agoIf the bootloader were unlocked and the devices well supported by lineage etc, sure. Sadly that's not the case. I'd love for Huawei to do that though. Focus on making great hardware, and make sure that aosp/postmarketOS etc work by default.
- SllX 7y agoTry actually selling that to an entire market. It hasn’t caught on. It might be that it hasn’t caught on yet, or it might be that it will never catch on. Or customers in these markets can simply disregard Huawei entirely, and buy something from a company that isn’t blacklisted by the US Government. $5 that most people would rather do that than install their own operating system.
- supergirl 7y agoi imagine no. google services and maybe all apps can get some hw id that tells them it's huawei. maybe a custom android built that lies about this. but then google might build more checks and so on
- ak39 7y agoThanks for this. Wow, this is incredible. What waste of perfectly-paid-for hardware. :-(
- vbezhenar 7y agoThere's no stock Android OS.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y agoMeanwhile, the EU is trying to somewhat cut off Google's monopoly on Android, by telling them they can't force manufacturers to use their software. Now, people in Asia are complaining that they can't access Google's stuff. It seems like a bit off that Huawei, which, IIRC, was part of that group of companies that was complaining about Google's monopoly, doesn't have a good replacement for Google's services.
- ggg2 7y agoone thing just exacerbates the other. why do you think they should have had an alternative ready if they did fall (like us all) for google's empty promises of an open system? case in point f-droid: open source playStore alternative. go see how many confirmations and special settings you have to figure out to be able to use. another: mozilla location services and UnifiedNlp. two full replacement for google location via wifi. google completely broke the hability to use it deliberately and for no good technical reason (it is trivial if you have root. literally just change one setting that was only added to block the existing feature of setting a new location backend provider)
- antome 7y agoThe problem is that the play store is a monopoly. If neither Amazon nor Samsung can create an app store with even a small fraction of the total useful apps found on the play store, who can? And if you can't find one particular app on the Amazon/Samsung store, why bother at all?
- Leary 7y agoThey should ship them to China, where they are still selling like hot cakes.
- varjag 7y agoSince they were shipped out of China in the first place, it means either the market is already saturated or margins there are worse.
- Leary 7y agoThey were shipped out of China prior to Trump's ban on Huawei. The decline in perceived value occurred after. There was no such decline in China.
- xbmcuser 7y agoTill recently Huawei phones bootloaders could be easily be unlocked. If they still are people now can get a cheap phone and install lineage or other os