In 2019, Google and Huawei parted ways after the U.S. restricted the latter to import or export products. These restrictions also banned the Chinese OEM from accessing Google Mobile Services (GMS) on the new smartphones or tablets.

While HarmonyOS filled the GMS gap in China with amazing efficiency and AppGallery, the company continued to face challenges in the global market due to the Google apps’ absence. But things soon started turning positive for the Chinese phone maker.

The return of Kirin 5G with the Mate 60 series showed impressive signs of recovery in Huawei’s smartphone business. After dealing with several rough surfaces, the company reached the top positions in the Chinese and global market rankings.

Over time, Huawei also strengthened the roots of HarmonyOS in China. It further made the software available in global markets via tablets and wearables.

A small development:

The tech giant also surprised its phone holders by introducing a dynamic HarmonyOS update. As per the details, the HarmonyOS 4.0.0.162 build for the Mate 60 series accompanied a third-party plugging access. This plugin enables sideloading Google Mobile Services in the HarmonyOS 4.0 eligible devices.

A similar plugin method is also available for EMUI 14 devices. The road to getting back to the GMS isn’t easy, the recent development can help those who still require Google apps on Huawei phones. But Huawei is planning beyond these achievements.

Poll: Do you still want Google GMS on your Huawei phone? (Image Credits: Google and Huawei)

The Chinese tech giant eyes global expansion of HarmonyOS amid the U.S. restrictions. Huawei’s Rotating Chairman – Xu Zhijun said at an event that the company plans to stretch the roots of the HarmonyOS app ecosystem to global regions.

This won’t happen immediately but possibly in the future. Huawei is working to develop the majority of HarmonyOS native apps. These will first drive into the native region and then step into the global world.

Is HMS better than GMS?

Speaking of apps, Huawei phones already cover a wider range of apps like Google. Whether it’s map navigation, app store, or interesting services like “Born to Draw”.

Huawei is also planning to charge only 20% in-app purchasing which is 50% on Android and iOS app stores. This allows developers to put their apps easily on AppGallery.

The tech giant is working on HarmonyOS NEXT which will further restrict malicious apps from being listed on the AppGallery. With new upgrades, Huawei aims to offer the best user experience with safer and more efficient applications.

Everything combined, Huawei phone models still have the potential to grow without the need for Google GMS. But apart from the ongoing scenarios, how users take this subject is worth noting.

You can participate in the poll HERE and give your opinion on whether Huawei needs GMS or not!

The post Poll: Do you still want Google GMS on your Huawei phone? appeared first on Huawei Central.

According to the recruitment, Honor is taking this step in order to provide support for Google Play services for users outside of China for a trip abroad or any other reason.

Initially, Honor is recruiting Magic 5 and Magic V2 for this Google apps testing campaign. Thereafter, the company will begin sending the test build. The official recruitment timeline starts on August 23 until September 30.

Honor also confirmed that GMS app installation on Honor smartphones will happen in three batches in early, mid, and late September. Chinese users of the Honor devices will have to sign up through a form in order to participate in the Google GMS apps beta testing program.

Huawei and Honor:

Back in 2019, the US Commerce Department banned Huawei and stopped the shipment of Google app certification for new Huawei devices.

This caused Huawei to launch its first flagship smartphone – the Huawei Mate 30 series without GMS. Thereafter, the Honor V40 series also made it through with only the Huawei HMS ecosystem.

In 2020, Huawei sold Honor (its then subsidiary) to a Chinese business group, which allowed the company to resume its cooperation with Google. Thereafter, Honor announced new devices with pre-installed GMS services and Google apps. These phones are shipped in the global market and helped the company return to its growth.

Eventually, the new GMS installation could also allow Honor phones to enable or disable Google service to run in the background. That’s how you can kick start the GMS services while traveling abroad.

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Thereafter, all Huawei phones launched solely with HMS. Over the past three years, Huawei has rapidly developed the HMS ecosystem of mobile apps. The company has introduced several new in-app services for both systems and developers.

Google GMS’s biggest power is its integrated play and Play protection services. The Android maker uses its prowess to lead in the operating system market. After Huawei’s outcasting, Samsung is the only player and Google promoted it as the Android leader.

Even with Google’s support, Samsung is failed to satisfy users with new software innovation. The Google apps have become a mainstream use case in Samsung smartphones.

On the other hand, Huawei keeps on delivering new improvements for the HarmonyOS and EMUI operating systems. Relatively, these new improvements are paving the way toward HMS apps.

For example, Petal Maps is now 100 times better than it was 1 year ago. Huawei keeps on adding new features to this app. Next comes Petal Search, which is another great choice for people who are looking for an all-in-one app.

Coming to the app distribution platform, AppGallery. Huawei is progressing alongside new developers and resolving their concerns. This is leaning more app developers to AppGallery.

Yes, the count of apps and games is not as high as Play Store but if you compare the app from its past version. The changes made to the app downloading and availability hiked to a new height.

Huawei has created almost every alternative of the Google apps for Huawei smartphone users. The company now is working to make them more consumers friendly with additions and easy to use interface.

What’s your pick:

We’re in 2023, so it’s the right time to evaluate HMS’s succession in this quest. Do you prefer the new Huawei HMS or still Google GMS? Let us know via the poll below.

In 2023, What's your pick?

— HC Newsroom (@HCNewsroom) June 9, 2023

The post Google GMS vs Huawei HMS: What’s your pick? appeared first on Huawei Central.

It makes sense because Huawei phones no longer come with Google Mobile Services (GMS). In that case, people are still finding HMS services a bit unfamiliar as compared to what they’ve mostly used in the past. The change is broad but some global Huawei smartphone users struggle through unknown issues that need serious attention.

But most of them bring us to after-sale software support.

What happened?

According to our information, a large chunk of people still want to buy Huawei smartphones. However, the lack of Google apps still makes them think twice while buying a premium Huawei smartphone.

After choosing the Huawei phone over Samsung and Apple. Customers expect fast rollout and premium software support for the device they paid for. But in some cases, this has become a slow procedure.

The after-sale software support is currently derailed in the Huawei ecosystem for global smartphones. This is a major problem and a request of Huawei users to put it in order.

Global users:

For example, a major software update is pending for all of the previous smartphones since late last year. The company is now testing EMUI 13 for smartphones, which should have happened last December. However, there’s still time left for the users to expand this testing to a wide level of users.

Over the past two years, Huawei made significant progress in software development and introduced new features that aren’t even available in the Android and iOS software ecosystems. Yet, these changes need to reach the smartphones of global consumers.

Therefore, fast software updates for global Huawei smartphones is a must to achieve the aim of Huawei in order to retain all of the previous smartphone buyers.

The post GMS absence in Huawei phones need to fill with fast software updates appeared first on Huawei Central.

Over the past three years, Google and Samsung signed many partnerships in order to nurture Android apps and increase their appearance on Galaxy devices. On the flip side, Samsung has formed its reputation as the only Android phone maker in the world.

But the Korean company has made a new decision that shocked Google employees, even if it might not come into action (eventually). In the meantime, Huawei could have eased major worry for Google if it had Google apps.

What’s Samsung doing?

According to a past report, Samsung is considering changing its default search engine in the browser to Microsoft Bing from Google. The report mentioned Google “panicked” after the revelation of such input. You should know that this information is not officially confirmed by Samsung at the moment. However, it has already pierced the perception of Google.

Google needs Huawei, and Huawei needs GMS

In 2019, the U.S. barred Huawei from Entity List and broke its partnership with Google. Thereafter, new Huawei phones were launched without Google apps.

However, companies including Intel and Qualcomm applied for licenses to supply technologies to Huawei and received permission to do so. But Google remained silent and lost a major promoter of the Android ecosystem and Google Mobile Services (GMS).

As of 2020, Huawei ranked first in global smartphone shipment. Also, dethroned Samsung for the top place, which has not been done by any other smartphone maker in the past 10 years.

After Huawei’s demise from top phone makers, Google took the one-way route with Samsung. However, relying too much on Samsung is now causing backfire for the U.S. company.

Now, Huawei is pursuing its own app ecosystem called Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) and pre-loads new phones with its own mobile applications. This strategy is working fine within the home market. Still, global users are searching for ways to use Google apps on Huawei devices.

Huawei has massive potential and it has not surrendered even after the harsh conditions. Therefore, Google should find its way back to Huawei in order to reduce some worry over Samsung, which is now controlling its ecosystem.

Also, Check: Samsung caused Google $50 billion loss, Microsoft enjoys

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This is the second consecutive year for Huawei to grab the GSMA GLOMO award for FDD products, while its FDD Gigaband won the “Best Mobile Network Infrastructure’ Technology Award in 2022.

Huawei FDD beamforming series products consist of Massive MIMO, 8T8R, and Hertz antennas. Thanks to its exclusive intelligent beamforming algorithm, these products can flexibly support 4G and 5G beams.

FDD Massive MIMO provides up to five-fold spectral efficiency, meeting operators’ requirements for capacity growth in hotspots. 8T8R is designed for FDD medium bands. It provides capacity- and experience-based solutions that can be widely deployed, and tackles issues like 4G congestion and poor indoor 5G experience.

Compared with 4T4R, 8T8R brings three times the spectral efficiency, helping operators build experience-based networks with upgraded devices, higher spectral efficiency, and lower energy consumption.

FDD products are used by over 100 operators around the world, improving FDD mid-band capacity and coverage to deliver more balanced uplink and downlink 5G user-perceived rates.

“4G and 5G services have grown at a rapid pace, continuous network coverage, experience-based in-depth coverage, and high-quality uplink experience for cloud gaming have become an urgent need. Sub-3 GHz is an ideal solution to fulfill these demands, thanks to its enhanced coverage and 100 MHz available spectral bandwidth. Huawei provides the first-ever sub-3 GHz high-precision FDD beamforming product, which fully unleashes the power of spectrum and boosts both spectral and energy efficiency. Additionally, this product helps operators expand both 4G and 5G capacity, build high-quality green networks featuring wide, deep coverage, and high uplink, meet the requirements of rapid service development and provide ubiquitous, high-quality connections for an intelligent society.” said Fang Xiang, vice president of Huawei Wireless Product Line, expressed his gratitude to the GSMA.

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This year, Huawei skipped the Huawei P60 series launch event, which used to happen in the first quarter. However, the issues were related to a scrambled supply chain. After the events of the 2019 U.S. blacklisting, Huawei was under tight scrutiny and facing severe challenges in the supply chain.

Hence, components such as smartphone chipsets became hard to organize for new Huawei devices. In 2022, Huawei readjusted around the current business with Qualcomm and used 4G chips in the latest smartphones.

Since Huawei can no longer print HiSilicon chipsets via chipmakers such as TSMC, the company is relying more on Qualcomm and less on Kirin. The beginning was difficult but Huawei later assured sufficient Snapdragon supplies.

GMS:

Google Mobile Services and Play Store have been a big matter of concern for new smartphone buyers. This year, most consumers knew that Huawei phones no longer support Google apps. On the other hand, customers could now easily determine whether to buy a Huawei phone without any confusion.

EMUI and HarmonyOS:

2022 has proven to be a major year in EMUI and HarmonyOS software rollout history and it brings you the latest features. However, the latest version is yet to rollout for old phones.

Smartwatch and wearables:

Other than smartphones, Huawei is focusing on all of the smart consumer platforms such as tablets, smartwatches, and earbuds. The company continues to innovate for a better user experience and launch new products.

Signs of return:

Progress leads toward a positive state and the progress made over the past year is crucial from all angles. To understand, Huawei is gradually returning shipment records in the Chinese market. A place, where Huawei ruled supreme before the U.S. ban.

2022 was a tough year, the move in market share is gradual but the positive numbers for Huawei are encouraging and it laid out a good foundation for 2023.

The post 2022, a tough year for Huawei smartphones but also crucial appeared first on Huawei Central.

In 2019, Huawei was banned by the U.S. and the company had to give up on Google Mobile Services and apps for its new phones. Since then, Huawei has released a variety of new phones all of them running without Google apps.

This year is no different and Huawei launched a variety of new phones including the Mate 50 Pro, Nova 10 series, and more. These phones pack solely the HMS ecosystem. Also powered by the latest EMUI 12 and EMUI 13.

Despite of lacking Google, Huawei has focused on smartphone technologies and fed EMUI with new features. For example, EMUI is better than ever, the EMUI 12 and EMUI 13 come with a brand new user interface.

There are new additions including smart folders, service widgets, better screen content management, optimized performance, and a variety of new security features for a safer user experience.

The app ecosystem matters, that’s why Huawei is expanding collaborations with popular app developers. The company is offering incentives and developer programs to support AppGallery to compete against the Play Store.

Aside from software, Huawei is one of the top smartphone makers. Despite facing many issues in the supply chain, Huawei kept on using the latest hardware in smartphones.

The new Huawei Mate 50 Pro is a prime example, as it packs a brand XMAGE new camera system and a powerful lens to take high-quality pictures.

On the other hand, Huawei is providing better design and high build quality, which is recognizable as the top trend in the smartphone industry. These traits add a different level of expertise to Huawei’s portfolio and the tech maker has maintained them throughout 2022.

So, which non Google Huawei phone you purchased in 2022? Let us know in the tweet below.

Which non Google Huawei phone you purchased in 2022?

— HC Newsroom (@HCNewsroom) December 31, 2022

The post Which non Google apps Huawei phone you purchased in 2022? appeared first on Huawei Central.

Note – The installation procedure is at the bottom.

Before we begin to install Google apps on your Huawei phone via GBox. You need to understand important things about how this article will navigate:

1. What is Gbox
2. Requirements
3. How it works
4. Supported Apps
5. Precautions
6. Tips
7. Tested on
8. Installation instructions
9. Our take

What is GBox:

According to the official website, Gbox was founded in 2018 in Singapore. Born from VIRTUAL CUBE PTE. LTD. It’s described as a multi-platform instrumented application focused on Android.

This app comes with a pre-built, out-of-the-box suite of Google app services. In that case, you won’t need to install GMS services plugins or any other kind of APK files on your phone separately. To be mentioned, there’s no version rollback required as well.

Requirements:

1. HMS powered phone
2. Gbox app
3. Internet

How:

According to the app, Gbox has virtualized into a random Android device. It creates a virtual Google apps space in your Huawei phone parallel to the EMUI apps.

Also, the app installed remains within Gbox and once you uninstall Gbox, all of these Google apps vanish as well.

Furthermore, every time you launch an app, it’s solely powered by the Gbox in virtual mode. Interestingly, the app retains your last usage and could be resumed from the taskbar.

Supported Apps:

Gbox support all of the Google apps and you can install them on your Huawei smartphone but only a few (including the third party) will work well. These are

1. Google app
2. Gmail
3. Google maps
4. Youtube
5. Facebook
6. Instagram
7. WhatsApp
8. Twitter
9. Line
10. Uber

Still, there are a bunch of other apps that are supported with Gbox but we’ve not tested them.

Games: You can access all of the apps on Play Store but other than those mentioned above won’t work or crash Gbox itself. So, we suggest you get them via APKMirror, AppGallery, or any other third-party website.

Privacy and Precautions:

Gbox promises to protect your privacy and not to collect data. But there are a few things that we suggest you do if you want to use Gbox or any similar application on your Huawei phone.

1. Use a Gmail account to log in that you don’t use to share any personal, private, or official email use cases. Create a new one if you want to.
2. Gbox for permission to access sensitive data such as storage and files. These are required to install a new app.
3. Gbox will take a part of your phone’s battery life but we have not found it draining or consuming too much of cells.
4. The instructions to install Gbox are easy but we suggest you read them carefully.

Tips:

Here are the tips that need to apply for the best use cases:

1. Install apps one by one
2. Wait until an app installation finishes
3. Create an app shortcut, once it is installed from the Play Store
4. Do not open apps from Gbox
5. Launch an app from the home screen icon
6. Open an app, and let it sync the data
7. Repeat the 6th step at least four to five times
8. We won’t suggest you keep your expectation high on all GMS apps.

You can force stop Gbox from running in the background via the “Force stop” option from Apps settings.

Tested on:

We testing Gbox running on EMUI 10, EMUI 11, EMUI 12, EMUI 13. The solution is running on all of the devices including Mate 50 Pro.

Instructions:

Let’s see how to install Google apps using Gbox on your Huawei phone.

Download Gbox:

Visit the Gboxlab website and download the latest version on your device.

Note: Download only the stable version.

Install Google Apps:

These are divided into two parts, the first will show you to set up Gbox, and the second half will show to install Google apps.

1st – Navigate to Gbox app on your phone and install it.

2nd – Open the Gbox app

3rd – Agree app’s terms and disable battery optimizations (will be prompted automatically).

4th – Tap on the “Check” button in the top right corner.

5th – Enable – “Require permission” and “Battery optimization whitelist”. Once enabled, press back.

Install Google Apps

6th – Tap on any “Recommended Apps” and allow required permissions.

7th – Sign in to your Google account

8th – Tap Install to install that app.

9th – Once installed, “Add” app icon to the home screen.

10th – You can download other apps in the same way.

How to update, create icons and delete the app:

You can tap and hold any app and tap on Upgrade to update the app or create an app icon.

Change region:

You can also take on Settings and change app suggestions according to region.

Our take:

Using Gbox is simple but we suggest you follow our precaution notes. It surely works in limits but it surely installs some apps. Yet we surely want to hear from you tag us on Twitter and carefully follow the instructions to use it.

The post Install Google apps on your Huawei phone [EMUI 10, 11, 12, 13] appeared first on Huawei Central.

We are well aware of the services and benefits that Google provides to its Android users. So far, Huawei has also remained in this beneficial group in the initial days. Unfortunately, these benefits come to a shutdown in May 2019.

The Google absence story begins with the U.S. emperors who prohibited Huawei and some other Chinese manufacturers to enter the U.S. borders. Ultimately, this step has become a huge obstacle for the tech maker and has affected various fields including the chipset market.

Alongside the tech segments, the event also made Google pull its hands from Huawei sectors. As a result, after 2019, none of the Huawei devices exhibited any Google apps or services.

Although, some users were having vast technical knowledge and tried installing the Google apps and mobile services to their Huawei phones. Yet, Google has blocked such inappropriate pathways with the subsequent updates.

New leaps – HarmonyOS and AppGallery

The absence of Google Mobile Services means losing some prominent apps from your smartphone. For instance, Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and most importantly – the Play Store. Hence, the absence of Google gave a loud blow to Huawei.

Consequently, the company started drowning in the smartphone market. The sales dropped extremely and users’ interest in Huawei phones started fading. But the company didn’t give up and made a leap on the surface with the HarmonyOS system.

After several efforts, Huawei launched the self-developed HarmonyOS operating system in August 2019. Originally, it was only covering IoT (Internet of Things) devices. Later on, it started making its way to Huawei smartphones.

More on this, the company introduced AppGallery, which became a safer alternative to Google Play Store. Although it has fewer apps than Play Store, some other AppGallery facilities excel from other app distribution platforms.

Thereafter, Huawei also introduced the EMUI operating system for its global users. Notably, EMUI is an Android-derived mobile operating system that is available in Huawei smartphones for the global market.

Huawei still trying to cope with the world

Even though numerous things were against Huawei, it managed and still trying to survive without Google. The latest and high-end technologies show how the company has taken Google’s absence as a challenge and come up with good enough outcomes.

However, difficulties continue to emerge in Huawei’s path. Though the decline has been slowed down, it has not halted, and the loss continues.

But the appreciating fact is Huawei well-managed and appeared as a strong contender in front of the robust challenges. If there was any other company in place of Huawei, it would have been turned into ashes. But this tech giant is quite headstrong to get defeated.

So yes, Huawei has survived a world without Google. The company has proven that it is capable of building up new and advanced solutions. But, it still has to work to gain back its fandom in the smartphone and chipset market.

Moreover, it would be worth seeing whether Google Mobile Services will take a U-turn for Huawei. Or will the company have to make new initiations for taking its place back in the market?

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