Huawei P30: Where Can We Go From Here?

Huawei was founded in Shenzhen, China on September 15, 1987, and has become a global leader in the manufacture of electronic equipment.

In 2012, the company outpaced Ericsson to become the largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment in the world.

Huawei eventually became second only to Samsung Electronics in smartphone sales.

Controversy and Judgement

Allegations began to fly in a climate of increased suspicion towards mainland China and controversy that resulted, in part, from Huawei’s growing presence in global markets.

In January 2019, the DOJ delivered a 10-count indictment that would come to have wide-spread consequences for Huawei, and for the entire telecommunications industry.

The indictment implicated Huawei in the theft of trade secrets, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice.

Following the DOJ’s verdict, some countries banned Huawei products and rescinded their contracts with the company.

Other countries did not specifically ban Huawei products but instituted heightened security protocols that made it difficult for the company to continue normal operations.

As sanctions against Huawei continued to increase, corporations that are headquartered in the United States took immediate action, such as:

• Microsoft stopped selling Huawei laptops and removed Huawei from one of its websites that offers cloud computing solutions.
• Facebook is no longer allowing its apps to be pre-installed on Huawei phones and Google has removed its operating system and apps from Huawei devices.
• Google Android will no longer ship with Huawei smartphones and users will not be able to access the Google Play store for updates.

The Huawei P30, which has until now been built on the Android platform, is one model that will be affected by the new restrictions.

This article describes the key features of the Huawei P30 and provides an overview of alternative sources for apps.

The overview provides links to additional resources for developing and troubleshooting the operating system and associated apps.

Introducing the Huawei P30

The Huawei P30 is the successor of the P20 (the Mate 20 Pro made it to our top 10 smartphones to buy in 2019, now that you may not want to buy a Huawei this list will help you find a replacement phone) and offers several new features, including a larger 6.1 inches display and a wide-angle camera with a 3X optical zoom.

The super-fast processor makes light work of multitasking and media streaming.

Additional key features of this smartphone are listed below.

• Kirin 980 processor
• 6GB RAM
• 128GB internal storage
• Water and dust resistant
• In-display fingerprint scanner
• Camera with lossless zoom
• Up to 48 hours of battery life

The P30 is a well-built and attractive phone with numerous advanced features.

On the downside, the P30 runs the Emotion UI (EMUI) 9.0 version of Android, which is not an intuitive interface.

The EMUI has a significant amount of bloatware consisting of duplicate apps and superfluous icons.

How to Update the Huawei P30 in the Future

Phone manufacturers are able to provide some updates such as drivers and chipsets.

For apps and updates to the operating system, available options include alternate app stores and custom ROMS.

Installing apps from outside sources

To install apps from third-party providers, users first need to enable the installation of apps from unknown sources by indicating this in their phone’s settings menu.

This will allow downloading and installing apps from outside vendors that are not associated with Google Play.

In some phones, this option may be found under the security tab and may be referred to as install unknown apps.

Users should choose to allow app installs, which will enable the operating system to access app files (APKs) directly from the file manager.

APKs can contain dangerous malware or obnoxious adware and users should only download and install APKs from reputable sources. (Do you need to install an antivirus to protect your Android phone? you might find our article on protecting your smartphone from malware and viruses useful)

To configure a phone to download third-party APKs using a browser, users should follow these steps.

• In the phone’s settings menu, click on Apps and Notifications.
• Choose install unknown apps, install apps from unknown sources or install other apps.
• Next, choose the browser that you want to use to download the APKs.
• Enable downloads to a specific browser by choosing to allow downloads from this source.
• You will now be presented with a warning that installing apps from unknown sources can be dangerous to your phone.
• Since you plan to be vigilant about this, click OK to proceed.
• Go to an APK download site and type in the name of the app you want to download. Follow the name of the app with APK, such as calendar apk, when searching for apps.
• Click the download button and accept any applicable terms to get the APK.
• If the download did not install an icon on the phone’s screen, you can access the new app in the downloads folder or swipe the screen when you see the download complete notification.

If your default download location is not the download folder, be sure to open the folder to which you are sending downloads to locate the new app.

You may need to click install in order to complete the process.

To install apps directly from your phone’s file manager, follow steps 3 to 8 above, but choose a file manager program rather than a browser.

Installing custom ROMS on your Android

Users can download app files from reputable APK download sites like APKMirror, AppBrain, and AndroidAPKsFree.

AppBrain also offers developer resources and app ratings. Reputable android app stores include GetJar, SlideMEand F-Droid.

It is also possible to upgrade the operating system and some of the hardware by creating custom ROMs, which refers to a firmware that can be edited by someone who has programming knowledge.

This option requires that the user have root privileges on the phone and skill with coding.

• Find the correct ROM for your phone using the appropriate XDA forum.
• Download the correct ZIP file and do not unzip it.
• Boot the phone into recovery mode by pressing the volume and power buttons for 5 to 10 seconds.
• Once you see the recovery menu, select install zip from SD card.
• When installation finishes, clear the cache and exit.

Conclusion: Staying Ahead of the Next Crisis

With mounting restrictions threatening to edge the telecommunications company out of global markets.

Huawei hopes that its proprietary Hongmeng operating system can replace the Android platform.

In the meantime, users of the Huawei P30 may be able to use the resources presented in this article to continue to provide their phones through third-party sources and custom-built firmware.