The Huawei Mate 40 Pro would be the best Android flagship on the market – were it not for the US-China trade war The Huawei Mate 40 Pro is a heartbreakingly good phone. "Good", because it is. Despite being mired in a bloody transpacific spat, Huawei has delivered on pretty much everything you'd want from a flagship, particularly when it comes to the display and camera. If these were normal times, Huawei would have no trouble shifting …
Alas, not so simple. I tried this just a couple of weeks ago with my ageing but still 100% Nexus 6, and it really didn't go well. I expected the paid apps not to work, of course, since without Google there's no proof that I paid for them. However, even some free ones were also glitchy, and my final straw came when What3words (admittedly not a crucial app for me) simply repeatedly force-closed every time I tried to start it. Add to that the loss of contacts, Gmail, Keep, etc. (all of which have workarounds, but nothing approaching the seamless Google experience) and I decided that it just wasn't worth the effort. I'm sticking with my firewall & VPN as my best effort for privacy.
> the absence of the Google Play Store – let alone other essential apps like Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Drive – adds a degree of frustration that you wouldn't get with other phones
On the contrary, this adds to its appeal. There is an increasingly urgent need to move away from siloed ecosystems and this is as good a step as any in that direction. This company has the clout and the funds to prove that it is possible to do mobile without Google and/or Apple, and that is a good thing.
(The price, on the other hand…)
If Huawei somehow finds itself able to license Google Mobile Services once again, this would easily be the most compelling Android flagship on the market:
Surely all that is needed is for Huawei to provide relevant information to the XDAdevelopers Forum,given they have already demonstrated the ability to install Google Play Services on other Huawei handsets...
... in fact, I would go so far as to say that the fact that the author of this piece states that these apps are "essential" is proof of Google's monopoly over Android, and also of product tying.
I guess that the majority of Reg readers have at least some technical proficiency. That being the case, to us the absence of Google services on a phone is either a minor inconvenience or a Very Good Thing Indeed.
A review, in the Reg, which "fails" a phone for that reason is perhaps aimed at the wrong audience?
Normal people, of course, might have a different opinion, but not many of them read this publication.
Do google also provide web interfaces for all thier services?
So play store or tell huawei that you want this app and the dev will be offered a chance to sell on huawei's own store.
For me the less google stuff running in the background on the phone the more I trust it.
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As much as I would love to use the phone, because the playstore isn't present, a number of issues get raised.
The biggest is Microsoft's offerings wouldn't work right with Company Portal so Teams/Outlook would be out. This would mean I'd end up with 2 phones which I can't be doing with.
My banking App as well wouldn't work and I've yet to see an authenticator tool from Huawei for 2FA as well.
I *could* just hack Google play onto the device but I think I'll just stick to less hassle and go for a different manufacturer for my next phone (which is a shame since I was impressed with my P20 Pro).
And yes, I know this all makes me Google's b*tch but my Googlely account has very little personal information on it and I intentionally keep them separate from other accounts (and smuckbook, I've long since stopped using)
I hate to say this but Spotify probably has the biggest selection of music out there. Unfortunately, they don't stream in high resolution. If you're interested in quality streaming you should consider Amazon especially if you buy from them a lot. The best is tidal but they have a limited selection for me, probably still good enough for most. I just happen to enjoy everything including foreign music which is where they lack most. This is only important is you're an audiophile or just an enthusiast who simply enjoys quality music, which is what I am.
Even if it came with Google services and apps, a free foot rub, and a slap up dinner. I would still find it hard to part with £1000 for a phone as I really don't see me getting 5 times the benefit over a £200 device. Which if a £200 phones got lost, broken or stolen I could buy another one of and still have £600 remaining out of a grand.
I ran a Huawei Mate 20 Pro for two years - it was as good as all the reviews claimed, and then some. For the first time ever I was going to keep it and swap to SimO until I dropped it one too many times and the top right corner of the screen crunched. Didn't bother getting a quote for a new screen, just decided to go down the upgrade path.
Unlike previous years thee was nothing to get excited about so I decided on some criteria and thought I'd choose that way. Number 1 on the list was "Not Apple" and No.2 was "nothing Chinese" for security and human rights issues (HK, Uighurs etc)
Wow, talk about limiting choice.......Samsung it is then. I'd been a Sammy denier for years, always looking to stay away from the mainstream but choice is now limited. Didn't want the "full-fat" S10 so looked at the S20FE and it looked plenty good enough so that's the slab of glass, plastic and silicon that sits in my hand.
Boy, what a disappointment - even when compared to a 2 year old phone.
Face Recognition - much less accurate and a lot slower
Finger Print Recognition - much less accurate and a lot slower
Battery Life - Despite being 200MaH greater than my Mate 20 it barely lasts a day. The Huawei would easily last for 2
Camera - Zoom clarity and crispness - much poorer.
Wish I'd gone for the P30Pro now but it's too late.
Unlike previous years thee was nothing to get excited about so I decided on some criteria and thought I'd choose that way. Number 1 on the list was "Not Apple" and No.2 was "nothing Chinese" for security and human rights issues (HK, Uighurs etc)
Wow, talk about limiting choice.......Samsung it is then.
Ooooooo.... erm..... about that.
Turns out if you want to have, well, pretty much anything in this modern world without at some point metaphorically shitting on another human being it's really really hard.
The real problem though is that I suspect we lack the collective introspection needed to really affect significant change.
I suppose over time narrowing global standards of living will mean the poor people the wealthy crap on will at least be local, which will make some people happier.
I've been using the P20 Pro as my main phone since it first launched and it's still so good that I can't really justify upgrading it until I somehow manage to destroy it (and seeing how many times I've managed to drop it face-first onto concrete without a scratch this may take some time.)
Hopefully we'll have a more sane world order by then and Huawei will be allowed to use Google services again, if not I'll replace it with a used P30 Pro.
You just sound like the typical Trump sheep making accusations without a single shred of evidence. There are no other companies on the planet more transparent than Huawei. They literally bent over to prove that they were clean and honest. Don't worry though they still are by far the largest Telco and conduct business with over 170 countries. I wonder why that is.
There are no other companies on the planet more transparent than Huawei
Yes, they are required to hand over any customer data they have to the CCP.
Backdoors can't be proven, but Huawei network hardware was assessed as having a high number of security vulnerabilities due to poor code quality. They were also found to be using code stolen from other vendors.
https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/01/huawei_uk_security_code_review_panel/
>"they are required to hand over any customer data they have to the CCP"
Evidence?
It's on the Chinese statute books:
" Huawei is required under China’s 2005 Company Law to set up an internal CPC Organisation. The legislation is silent on the roles of the CPC Organisation in a Chinese firm... More worrying for some nations is the potential application of the 2017 Chinese National Intelligence Law (CNIL) to Huawei’s overseas operations. Article 7 is the most contentious provision. It requires any Chinese ‘organisation or citizen’ to assist or cooperate with state intelligence work. "
- https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/commercial-law-centre/blog/2019/05/national-security-risks-over-huawei
It's not the best design (mainly because the available cases often don't protect the screen edges well), but not all of them are hard to hold without triggering the screen. Samsung started the curved edges screen silliness, but they have grip sensors to detect and prevent false touches.
In practice it works well on Samsungs, and if you're feeling geeky you can enter the secret code on the dialler to access the hardware test menu and try the grip sensors.
I'm using the p30 Pro and this phone is awesome, I dearly wanted, like no other time to upgrade in January to the P40 Pro.... I can't deal with all this goidle rubbish, they've ruined fir us the best mobile phone ever to come out of a manufacturer and I'm gutted politics has taken away from me 1 of my pleasures in these times.... I've now got to look for an equivalent phone in the UK... Pffft, no impressed with any to be honest, unless I go to I phone 12 and pay a Kings ransome every month! And even that phones not a touch on my p30 Pro, nothing beats the camera
The CPC cannot separate business and politics so you get a beautiful piece of machinery that's basically tuned as a spy machine for the Chinese government.
A nice camera and screen doesn't make up for that. True enough other government and corporations certainly dabble in devices as spyware, but the CPC wants it all, just like we were all residents of China. That's not acceptable, or right.
Yeah, like US is keeping business and politics strictly separate. It's all about money, nothing to do with politics. As for spying machine, so far it was the American government who spied on German chancellor phone not the Chinese. And even if the Chinese government gets your personal info, it is way more likely to get jailed in the US than elsewhere (hint for you, try to look at the country with the highest imprisonment rate, and also consider the risk of extradition to US versus extradition to other country).
Uses dead-tech nano memory cards, giant screen hole, no headphone jack, no band 71 for the US, and costs 1.5x of what most people consider to be a flagship phone price.
I'd say it's very far from perfect and not unique enough to stand out from all the other "meh" flagships of 2020.
Problem with phone reviews are there are no assessments of signal and WIFI reception/performance which are important if you are going to use it as a phone. It is well known that the iPhones with Intel Modem have poor reception compared with other phones with Qualcomm modem. My iPhone 11 wifi reception is poor compared to Pocophone F1 and the old original Google Pixel (2006 phone) in my bedroom which is less than 7m from the router. Often I have to turn off and on the wifi again if I want to use the internet , never have problem with the Poco and old Pixel.
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