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Huawei Mate 30 phones launch without Google apps
- GFischer 7y agoIt´s going to kill overseas sales for them. Both me and my gf have Huawei phones, but the next phone will be a Xiaomi. Fortunately the U.S. didn't kill all Chinese manufacturers, Samsung and the rest are overpriced compared to them.
- thefounder 7y agoI guess that's a feature..plus the iPhone camera seems a joke in comparison with mate pro.
- bdcravens 7y agoDitto for the Galaxy Note 10
- sandworm101 7y agoA phone without Google or Apple? I'm no fan of Huawei but credit where credit is due. I'm still waiting for a reasonable phone that will allow me to install my own OS and, more importantly, dump the OS and go with something else when it annoys me.
- missosoup 7y agoYeah, because a phone imaged by an entity controlled by the CCP is better than a phone without Google or Apple. I'm no supporter of either Apple or Goog, but applauding a mass spyware device from the CCP would be satire a couple years ago. It's not like they have a track record of subverting phones for targeted genocide or anything[1] [1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/09/massive_iphone_.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/09/massive_iphon...
- amaccuish 7y agoDo you have any evidence of that?
- missosoup 7y agohttps://techcrunch.com/2019/08/31/china-google-iphone-uyghur/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/31/china-google-iphone-uyghur... https://www.volexity.com/blog/2019/09/02/digital-crackdown-large-scale-surveillance-and-exploitation-of-uyghurs/ https://www.volexity.com/blog/2019/09/02/digital-crackdown-l... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/27/the-world-knows-what-is-happening-to-the-uighurs-why-has-it-been-so-slow-to-act https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/27/the-world-know... https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/09/06/apple-hints-china-behind-billion-device-iphone-hack-that-google-reported/#2cc8f00512c9 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/09/06/apple-h...
- Someone1234 7y agoSo, no, then? There's nothing in any of these links to support the claim that there is "CCP spyware" on the phones. In fact at least two of your articles are about them putting spyware on iPhones, which undercuts your point further.
- amaccuish 7y agoSo does any of that have to do with Huawei? Or is it just an OS that Huawei happens to use was included in an indiscriminate attack?
- milankragujevic 7y agoHuawei phone's bootloader can't be unlocked since last year, so you'll have to look elsewhere.
- commoner 7y agoYes, since mid-2018, Huawei has not provided a public method for anyone to unlock the bootloader of any Huawei phone. https://www.xda-developers.com/xda-huawei-decision-stop-bootloader-unlocking https://www.xda-developers.com/xda-huawei-decision-stop-boot... If you can't unlock the bootloader, that means you can't change the OS or root the phone. This upset developers, especially since Huawei pays XDA Developers to promote their sub-brand (Honor) with sponsored content. It's ironic to see Huawei ads plastered all over XDA when Huawei phones are not developer-friendly at all.
- bubblethink 7y agoxda the website is just like any other website that will take ad money. The developers are independent and do their own thing. xda is one of those relics of the past that just has a large number of users. So you get visibility and QA for free. Other than that, replacing a forum like xda that is not ad run should not be that difficult if it weren't for the inertia.
- mrbonner 7y agoSure, I will give my trust to the Chinese communist government over Google or Apple. One is prying for my money and the other is to suppress democracy.
- Zenst 7y agoWhy I was keen on the wileyfox Swift when it came out - cynogen as standard, lots of nice features, just alas cynogen ceased/transitioned and the swift2 went AOSP and that's nearly 3 years old phone wise. So people try, just that the core consumer market don't care/or aware of what such choices actualy mean for them still - hence, many do fail. But some nice more open phones comming and getting better on prices. Until then, a good old supported phone for alternative OS that you can root and the likes of old samsungs, moto and pixel phones just seem to be the safer bets. But doable today, just effort above what you would really want to be doing still.
- usr1106 7y agoSony has some phones in their developer program that can be unlocked officially. The small SW vendor Jolla supports that to install their SailfishOS. It's a reasonable phone for me, but I don't have especially high requirements.
- gibspaulding 7y agoFrom their most recent update, it sounds like Pine64 is getting close to this: https://www.pine64.org/2019/09/05/september-update-the-pinephone-is-real-shipping-soon/ https://www.pine64.org/2019/09/05/september-update-the-pinep... It's definitely a device for tinkerers and open source enthusiasts, but the price and the number of different projects supporting it is pretty exciting. Some more technical details on the project: https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Project_Don't_be_evil https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Project_Don't_be_evil
- chvid 7y ago27 w wireless charging!
- josho 7y agoI assume this is going to generate excessive heat. My understanding is that batteries age poorly from heat stress. So, I am curious what routine 27w wireless charging is going to do for battery life.
- 14 7y agoI was just looking and could not find anything concrete but did see it was expected to use a non-removable battery. That is not a huge problem as long as they designed it to be fairly easily changed and if that is the case then I would gladly trade battery life for fast charging. I guess time will tell on this one but good question.
- chvid 7y agoWasn't high capacity wireless charging the project Apple gave up on just a year ago? (Apple AirPower) None the less; this seems like a very impressive piece of hardware.
- sharpneli 7y agoI find it hilarious when reading news like these to remember that the official stance of US government is that their national security is endangered if that phone ships with Google Play. EDIT: It actually is national security (https://www.google.fi/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/trump-says-he-doesnt-want-to-do-business-with-huawei-due-to-national-security-threat/ https://www.google.fi/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/tru...)
- mosselman 7y agoI am not an expert, but I doubt that this is an accurate characterisation of the reasons for the ban. Isn’t this more about intellectual property issues and economic disagreements?
- HenryBemis 7y agoI think it is mostly political. When one uses Google Maps, he tells USA's 3-letter-agencies when they are. If Huawei replaces Google Maps with "Huawei Maps" then USA stops getting that info, and China gets that info. Now apply the same for emails, text messages, etc. I believe that even "innocuous" games (started playing AFKArena lately) collect the IP address of my phone and tell the lovely Chinese gov who I am, where I am, etc. (AFKArena policies have the word Tencent a lot in them).
- mda 7y agoYou imply security agencies have direct uncontrolled online access to Google maps personal data today, this is not true. There is due process to access private data and you can always have the option to enable, disable, delete it. Lets stick to the facts.
- HenryBemis 7y agoYou imply that they don't. If the Wikileaks/Snowden story, the AT&T (room 641A) story taught us anything is that we cannot place any reliance to any due process and that 3-letter agencies harvest anything they can, any way they can, without any respect to privacy (big laughter here) and due process. I am not trashing security agencies. I am merely stating that lines in the sand never seem to stopped them before and most likely won't stop them now (or in the future). Whether it could be the AT&T case, or a bribed sys/net admin, "they" want it all and they got the budgets to get it done.
- sajithdilshan 7y agoThis is quite interesting. I assume there are 3rd party alternatives for most of the essential Google apps which lets you access the google service like Gmail or YouTube
- fspeech 7y agoYou can access GMail or YouTube from your browser. I don’t install the apps on my phone.
- HenryBemis 7y agoThe worse soy on our Android phones is Google Play Services. For some magical reason when I firewall the Google Play Services I stop receiving ANY notifications (Signal, emails etc.). For some reason all these are routed through Google. I wonder how much of a coincidence/mishap is that in the architecture. Does anyone know why, if I can bypass it?
- dannyw 7y agoPlay Services does handles all push notifications. The 'some reason' is battery life, because your phone shouldn't maintain 30 long lived connections. From the privacy aspect, I believe all notifications are end to end encrypted actually. Same as Apple.
- roywiggins 7y agoSure, but there's no way to unbundle the very useful notifications service with... everything else. It's not the notifications service that's the problem, it's everything else you're required to run if you want it.
- jraph 7y agoFor this you may use microG. I have it installed for geolocation using Wi-Fi and cellular antennas but never tried to enable the notification service. I would actually be interested in being able to choose the server used for this service, and would enable it without hesitation if I could use my own server for instance.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y agoWould've been a golden opportunity to get a billion users onto F-Droid's store, but, more likely Huawei will simply launch with their own, tightly-integrated "Huawei app store". It may even be worse from a security perspective, since there is zero expectation that the apps Huawei provides through their own store should be FLOSS.
- dragonelite 7y agoIf im not mistaken chinese manufacturer all run their own store in China.
- franknine 7y agoThat's true. Integrating 10+ different billing API is expected if you want good coverage, which is totally not fun
- ryeights 7y ago…duh?
- jancsika 7y ago> Would've been a golden opportunity to get a billion users onto F-Droid's store I agree that F-Droid missed a golden opportunity to work with a company to provide potentially millions of users with more control over their devices.
- techntoke 7y agoAs much as I like F-Droid, it really needs some improvements to be considered a competitor to the Google Play Store. First and foremost, they need a system where you can rate and review the apps.
- Krasnol 7y agoI stopped trusting reviews many years ago. They are like the comment section under an article: useless.
- KirkNY 7y agoVideo of our team's analysis on this subject: https://youtu.be/3bl4pXd2Sqc https://youtu.be/3bl4pXd2Sqc
- lph 7y agoDid Huawei not see what happened with the Amazon Fire Phone or Windows Phone? If you launch a phone with an anemic ecosystem, it will fail.
- dragonelite 7y agoThey are pressured to do this, if the US wasn't so dickish about it they would just release a certified Android.
- kbrwn 7y agoHuawei is communications mega corp owned and controlled by a communist dictatorship. The free market cannot keep us safe from all. At least activist investors can make some changes to private corps in the west.
- dragonelite 7y agoWhat you say is China closed market is a good action, given that they can't keep themselves save from a democratic agent? The world is more grey then most people think, but people have short memories. Mostly because people don't really care and just want to life and provide for their loves ones.
- Mikeb85 7y agoExcept Huawei is already the second largest phone manufacturer in the world. And phones in China already ship without the Play Store.
- hrktb 7y agoit’s not anemic in China though
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoChina has its own harmonized app stores, the issue will be how the phone will work without he G-stack for non Chinese markets.
- Numberwang 7y agoAmerican and Chinese spyware replaced with Chinese spyware.
- fakeslimshady 7y agoNow all this means is the user needs to install themselves rather than use the pre-install bloatware. A clean start might actually be preferrable for a lot of people
- jankotek 7y ago> firm had set aside $1bn (£801m) to encourage developers to make their apps compatible It also launched without Google Services. This could be great push towards completely open sourced Android platform.
- rasz 7y agoReminds me of a time MS was paying hundreds to thousands of dollars for garbage calculator/flashlight Windows Phone apps.
- ThinkBeat 7y agoWell I think that makes the phone more attractive. Something that doesn't report everything I do to Google. Huawei should market the shit out of that. Blackphone (maybe used to) sell a hardened version of the Android phone without the google spyware but version 2 was really expensive and made in small quantities. This Mate30 will be mass-produced. They could make this the favorite privacy phone. (Well privacy from the US surveillance state)
- frequentnapper 7y agoYeah instead you get a device that reports everything to the Chinese surveillance state which is much worse.
- Synaesthesia 7y agoQuite impressive hardware. The fact that 5G is integrated in the SoC is a first, display looks great too. I’m sure you can still use apps like YouTube and Gmail via the phones browser, that’s what I do on my iPhone.
- Havoc 7y agoYeah bought a Huawei tablet & thought same. Good bang per buck on hardware even with questionable associations.
- Zenst 7y agoFor some this will be bad news, but for others - this they will view as good news. So mixed blessings, though for you common core users - they will see this as bad. However - eventually services and the phone will be separate and eventually end up with phones like we did with the browser selection option thrust upon you giving you the choice, even if you choose to go with what you had originally. Fun times ahead and in the end, I feel that the consumer will get a better deal in the end and as geeks who love to hack away at our phones - may get an easier life.
- ishikawa 7y agoNo, thanks.
- sreyaNotfilc 7y agoAfter seeing the iPhone11 Pro, Pixel 4, and the Mate 30 Pro I have to say that the Mate 30 implemented the 3 camera the best. Its less of an eyesore being in the center of the device instead of the top left corner. Also, the bezel around it makes it look like a device that's a phone and a camera instead of "hiding the fact" that its a phone that happens to have photo capabilities. I really like the design. Too bad for the lack of Android/Google apps, for I would have considered getting one.
- lunchables 7y ago>Its less of an eyesore being in the center of the device instead of the top left corner. I genuinely have no idea what the back of my phone looks like. All I'm concerned with is the quality of the photos it takes.
- xster 7y agoThat's what I thought too but with the advent of ultra-wide angle lenses on more and more phones, I definitely noticing more spoiled pictures if I use a volume button as shutter on phones with corner lenses than phones with center lenses.
- sreyaNotfilc 7y agoI somewhat agree. Yes, the back isn't that noticeable when actually using it. But its noticeable now. Even to the point where people I know who loves their iPhones say that its "ugly". Apple is not known to make "ugly" devices. Their devices are practical and engineered thoughtfully. Having the camera in the top left corner as opposed to the center seems like a mistake to me. Especially since they are promoting the camera to be a significant upgrade. Put it front and center! Apple's history on device (at least with Jobs) always was have a fully functional revolutionary machine that was easy to use and beautiful inside and out. They've been that way since the Macintosh. The look was much user-friendly and approachable. They even signed the inside of the box as if they are presenting a piece of art. Even the font-face they introduced was to promote artistry in the technical world. My point is, the iPhone 11 is an amazing device, but the look of their biggest new feature, the cameras, does not fit well with their history of artistic prowess. Steve Jobs would have never OKed this design placement.
- tibbydudeza 7y agoExcellent specs and cheap compared to the competition. I am sure some enterprising folks on XDA will come up with a nifty easy utility to "googlyfi" your new Huawei phone. Also won't surprise me if some phone shops will take the initiative and do it out of the box before selling it to you.
- commoner 7y agoAs long as Huawei continues to ship phones with locked bootloaders that can't be unlocked, that is simply not going to happen. https://www.xda-developers.com/xda-huawei-decision-stop-bootloader-unlocking https://www.xda-developers.com/xda-huawei-decision-stop-boot... https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-mate-30-google-play-store-challenges https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-mate-30-google-play-st... You won't be able to root Huawei phones, much less customize the stock OS to any meaningful extent. You also won't be able to change the OS (to something like LineageOS).
- mrtweetyhack 7y agoWho needs Google when you got China watching your every move?
- bubblethink 7y ago>"It forced us to use the HMS [Huawei Mobile Services] core." This is the major failure I see here. Basically, no one wants Huawei's blobby bloatware with system level privileges any more than Google's blobby bloatware with system level privileges. If the world thinks that you are a Chinese spying company, you do not combat that by shipping more crap. They had a good opportunity to either extend AOSP or to make HMS open source. Instead, they imitate Google poorly.
- tinus_hn 7y agoThere’s plenty of people of simply don’t care about that, they just want a cheap and pretty phone.
- londons_explore 7y agoSignificantly extending AOSP is hard. As soon as you make architectural changes, you've effectively made a fork, and it'll be a massive amount of work to merge future versions of AOSP and your fork. Unless you want to put as many engineering dollars into it as Google does, you'd be better off to keep near vanilla AOSP, and build stuff on top as APK's.
- xster 7y agohttps://twitter.com/cybnox/status/1174722533377085444 https://twitter.com/cybnox/status/1174722533377085444 This is probably a key conversation. In other words, we don't really know yet what part of GMS dependent apps will or will not work.
- jdofaz 7y agoWhy are the Facebook apps not blocked by the blacklist?
- doorslammer 7y agoi'm no expert but it's a check list of where google can be found: 1.Your phone Operating system 2. gallery manager. 3. E-mail. 4. Google music player. 5. google video player. 6. Youtube app. there's more but your time is precious and maybe you allready know all these but don't care. let's imagine your phone was a person.. he had like gazillion types of cancer. from birth.
- londons_explore 7y agoWill it have a locked bootloader? Previous Huawei phones have all had a fairly robustly locked bootloader. Now it seems there is quite some incentive for them to make the bootloader unlockable to make inserting GMSCore easier... One could imagine an underground network of US based people reflashing these phones to have Google services.
- bubblethink 7y agoYou don't need an unlockable bootloader for that. They ship stub packages that can be updated later by the user [1]. [1]: https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-mate-30-google-play-store-challenges/ https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-mate-30-google-play-st...