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Huawei's Next Phone Will Not Have Google Apps 42

Posted by BeauHD from the banned-apps dept.
Huawei's next flagship smartphone will not come with Google's popular apps, such as Maps, YouTube, and Drive. The BBC reports: Google confirmed that due to a U.S. government ban on sales to Huawei, it could not license its apps to the Chinese smartphone giant. It also means the next Huawei phone will not have access to the Google Play app store, which could leave customers without access to other popular apps. The U.S. government restricted American companies from selling products and services to Huawei in May, citing national security concerns, which Huawei rejects.

Huawei is just weeks away from launching its next flagship phone, the Mate 30 Pro. It will be Huawei's first major phone launch since the U.S. restrictions were applied in May. But analysts say launching without Google's apps in Europe will be a major blow. Consumers expect to have access to all the major apps they are used to - including Maps and YouTube. Without them, Huawei's phones will seem a lot less appealing. And losing the Play Store means Huawei will need to provide another way for customers to access other popular apps such as Facebook, Twitter and BBC News. Huawei said in a statement: "Huawei will continue to use the Android OS and ecosystem if the U.S. government allows us to do so. Otherwise, we will continue to develop our own operating system and ecosystem."

Tom's Guide notes that consumers can still download apps from APK repositories like APKmirror.com. "While this is certainly a nuisance, it's far from crippling."
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Huawei's Next Phone Will Not Have Google Apps More

Huawei's Next Phone Will Not Have Google Apps

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  • "Huawei's next flagship smartphone will not come with Google's popular apps, such as Maps, YouTube... " Tests indicate that phone runs much faster, and personal productivity is increased 20% or more... [/s[ But seriously, it'll just be a matter of time before someone comes out with an easy way to sideload the AppStore just like they have with the Amazon Kindle devices.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Will not come with does not equal you can not install, they probably will have an app for that, you installed it, not them, like, duhh (the chinese are just fucking with you now).

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You can just install Yalp [f-droid.org] and access the Google Play Store that way. It's what I do because I refuse to pollute my phone with Google filth.

      • While you're at it, install microG too.

        Lots of applications on the Play Store require the proprietary "Google Play Service" (GmsCore) in order to work.
        microG is an alternative open source implementation of the same "com.google.android.gms" API and this helps some of these applications work anyway. (though not all).

    • There are other app stores you know. Just use one of them instead. They may not be as "safe" as Google's but then considering how many of their apps have been discovered to contain malware I'm not sure how "safe' the app store is either.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by theCoder ( 23772 )

        Regarding safety, I feel much more comfortable installing an application from the F-droid store than the Google store. Many of the Google store apps come with ads or trackers of some kind, and the Google store does nothing to even warn you about them. The Google store also doesn't tell you anything about the license for the software. I do have many Google store apps installed, I just don't find it very "safe" in general.

  • Not sure I would lose sleep on losing Google apps, there are lots of successful examples. All but maps can be replaced easily. The real interest is Harmony OS. I think that is a courageous choice... Getting a little deja vu with this article.

  • Reading the comments here, I can't help but think how out of step the /. readership is with regards to how normal consumers behave.

    Without the play store, Huawei is out of the big leagues, end of. Most Android app developers don't even put their apps on Amazon's store, I don't know how Huawei thinks they can win mindshare here.

    • They are the second only to Samsung and growing in sales and their average consumer is Chinese who has never used Google Apps.

      Your right in that selling to its European market without Google Apps will be interesting, I personally feel that they should replace the First party apps but not the OS.

      • That's the whole goal here, to keep the average consumer Chinese and cripple Huawei's ability to penetrate Western markets and thus limit Chinese/intelligence penetration.

        It'll become a ghetto phone for the Chinese market.

  • It's a tough choice. Both already have all my data.

    • Better than being an Apple user they have their drug deals and sex listened to by third parties.

      • Which is why I turn off all the voice report home shit on every device and gave away my Echo after playing with it for a few days. I don't want anyone listening in on me having sex with my drug dealer. On a more serious note this is why the US needs a strong version of our own GDPR with real penalties that would seriously hurt these tech mega corps if abused.
  • Good thing F-Droid exists https://f-droid.org/ [f-droid.org] And within F-Droid lurks Yalp Store https://github.com/yeriomin/Ya... [github.com] My aging Galaxy SIII runs LineageOS for microG, you can be google/proprietary free if you wish, or run any proprietary apps (including google) all you want, the choice is yours. https://lineage.microg.org/ [microg.org] No need to buy a new phone to support Google Play Services continual bloat. Choice F-Droid apps to check out: SlimSocial for Twitter/Facebook, OsmAnd~ for maps/navigation, NewPipe for y

  • These so called tariffs or sanctions are a huge favor to China. It forces us to stop ripping them off by sending them devaluing money rather than building them tangible products that are useful. Rather than sending them say heavy equipment for building infrastructure and housing we are sending them piles of dead trees and IOU notes. Which would you rather have?

    • Part of the reason for recent economic problems in Germany is that Germany has been selling a lot of machine tools and other capital equipment to China. With the US importing less consumer goods that are made using said German capital equipment, their export numbers have dropped.

  • No Google on my phone,
    makes me want to buy another Huawei phone

  • Hey Huawei, just make a configurable WebView-App a first-class citizen. That way we can run FB, Insta, YT, Gmail, etc. from their web versions as first class apps.
    Maybe, if necessary, even provide new integration APIs e.g. for native-like sharing (e.g. posting a pic). It this then up to the companies to add support for those APIs. Just make the APIs (and in fact the whole WebView-App thing) open-source as that way nobody can be trade-war-prevented from implementing them.

  • It's probably a good time for Chinese app developers to start adapting their apps & services for western markets. From what I've seen, Chinese apps & services seem to be better designed & easier to use than the US big tech companies'.

    A long shot now, but could US big tech companies lose their dominance if too many users/countries get banned/restricted from using them & international alternatives spring up in their place?

  • I'm sure first day these are out the internet will be flooded with instructions how to sideload Google Play services, Play store, and apps. It's trivial to do it on Amazon tablets nowadays. It's an annoying first day setup step, but after that you don't think about it again.

  • Those of us who install custom Android ROMs regularly visit https://opengapps.org/ [opengapps.org]
    If Huawei will offer TWRP or even make their own simple recovery, they make this easy for the non-technical people.

  • Given my current feelings about the google, if anyone offers a functionally equivalent email system, it would be hard for me to resist it. And there's plenty of room to make a better email system, too. Gmail has become an LCD system.

  • The disappointing thing in all this is that it's too bad this is all driven ultimately by Chinese totalitarianism.

    It would be nice to have a third ecosystem that wasn't Apple or Android, and it literally would take a market the size of China and the resources of a state-backed entity the size of Huawei to achieve it.

  • To access Google Maps and Youtube, you just need a web browser like Firefox or Chrome. Huawei can create some icons to resemble the functions and let the users land on the respective web sites. This enhances privacy as well which is a good thing for the customer and can be used for advertisement. No leak of the phone number anymore (the data transfer from whatsapp to facebook app for example). Providing apps is more difficult but Huawei can support F-Droid or another store and help make it easy to publish o

  • So kind of Trump to provide pressure driving adoption of a new app store to loyal Huawei users.

  • How about sideloading from a reputable web app site and be done with it? I bet this phone won't be plagued with endless and nebulous "Google play has stopped running" popups like my Samsung is.

  • Random people suggest that it's sufficient to use an (often dubious) alternative source of apps (e.g. APKmirror) to make the phone work as intended. That's wrong. Having the Play Store isn't sufficient to install these apps, you also have to have all the Google libraries and services installed, otherwise your apps won't even run.

    Yes, there exists unofficial sort-of-distributions of Google Apps (OpenGApps) or incomplete opensource reimplementations (MicroG) but they're difficult to install even for experienc

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