
Huawei Mate 30 phones launch without Google apps - amaccuish
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49754376
======
AdmiralAsshat
Would'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.

~~~
Animats
Now app developers have a big incentive to avoid Google Play Services and run
on open-source Android. That lets them run on Google, Huawei, and F-Droid
platforms.

Time for a dev forum on migrating away from Google Play Services.

~~~
mooman219
You could say the same about Vulkan vs Metal, or Chrome vs the world, or
Windows vs the world. The bulk of developers are going to target the subset of
technologies that let them do what they want to do in the easiest way possible
while targeting the largest userbase. I assume this isn't going to change the
playing field in a significant way.

~~~
close04
Usually a good incentive for devs is a higher cut of the sales. But I’m not
sure how much Chinese users usually contribute to a dev’s revenue stream
compared to US or EU users for example.

I remember reading a while ago that iOS is an attractive OS to target because
the users tend to spend more in apps than the average Android users. If the
average Chinese users spend even less it may be a disincentive. Not sure if
this is still the case.

------
sandworm101
A 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
Yeah, 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_iphon...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/09/massive_iphone_.html)

~~~
xwolfi
Dude the US spied on the undersea fiber to steal contract from companies in my
(democratic) country.

Say what you want about the chinese, but they're not the only ones playing
that game.

~~~
truculent
> but they're not the only ones playing that game.

The original comment is literally comparing Huawei favouably to US
counterparts, though

------
bubblethink
>"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
There’s plenty of people of simply don’t care about that, they just want a
cheap and pretty phone.

------
Synaesthesia
Quite 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
Yeah bought a Huawei tablet & thought same. Good bang per buck on hardware
even with questionable associations.

------
sreyaNotfilc
After 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
>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.

~~~
sreyaNotfilc
I 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.

------
fakeslimshady
Now 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

------
sharpneli
I 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/tru...](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/))

~~~
mosselman
I 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
I 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
You 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
You 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.

------
jankotek
> 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
Reminds me of a time MS was paying hundreds to thousands of dollars for
garbage calculator/flashlight Windows Phone apps.

------
ThinkBeat
Well 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
Yeah instead you get a device that reports everything to the Chinese
surveillance state which is much worse.

------
tibbydudeza
Excellent 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
As 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-
boot...](https://www.xda-developers.com/xda-huawei-decision-stop-bootloader-
unlocking)

[https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-mate-30-google-play-
st...](https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-mate-30-google-play-store-
challenges)

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).

------
thefounder
I guess that's a feature..plus the iPhone camera seems a joke in comparison
with mate pro.

~~~
bdcravens
Ditto for the Galaxy Note 10

------
lph
Did 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
They are pressured to do this, if the US wasn't so dickish about it they would
just release a certified Android.

------
londons_explore
Will 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
You 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-
st...](https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-mate-30-google-play-store-
challenges/)

------
xster
[https://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.

------
GFischer
It´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.

------
sajithdilshan
This 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
You can access GMail or YouTube from your browser. I don’t install the apps on
my phone.

~~~
HenryBemis
The 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
Play 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.

~~~
HenryBemis
Encrypted, but that's on transit. Does Google read everything, or the only
thing transfered is the alert and NOT the Signal/text/WhatsApp message itself?

~~~
smush
Signal is e2ee so Google Cloud Messaging should only get the alert itself,
then the encrypted message is downloaded from the server and decoded on
device.

------
chvid
27 w wireless charging!

~~~
josho
I 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
I 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.

------
jdofaz
Why are the Facebook apps not blocked by the blacklist?

------
Zenst
For 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.

------
doorslammer
i'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.

------
KirkNY
Video of our team's analysis on this subject:
[https://youtu.be/3bl4pXd2Sqc](https://youtu.be/3bl4pXd2Sqc)

~~~
mcraiha
Might be a good idea to mention what is your team.

~~~
askl56
Applico and they don't seem to understand how the Chinese phone market works.

