Let’s not beat around the bush here, this is a big turning point for Huawei. The US President has blocked them from working with Google on upcoming phones, so this will be the first phone that can’t have Maps, Drive, Music, Duo, Photos, Calendar, Gmail and YouTube. That’s a massive compromise for potential customers to make, so they’ve got a couple of choices here..
1 – Launch without the “GApps” (possibly in China first where those apps aren’t always expected) and hope that the Trump Trade Termination ends soon so they can launch with everything in other markets later.
2 – Put some sort of post-installation tool into the phone to pull down the appropriate APK’s – from places like OpenGApps.
3 – Develop their own apps which could perhaps offer some (or all) of the functionality.
Live from Munich!
That second option is probably preferred, but there’s really no certainty. Some you you guys may remember how CyanogenMod firmware arrived without the Google apps or the framework libraries because of licensing restrictions. Applying an OpenGApps fixed this, but then Google started blocking GApps on “uncertified devices” – would they do that here? Who knows, but you’re all about to find out.
We’re live from the launch here in Munich. Watch the live feed here, or check out our pictures and thoughts in the Twitter stream below that…