Living a Google-free life with a Huawei phone

Ever wondered what's it like to run Android without Google's services and applications? Well, get a Huawei device.

A smartphone UI isn't much use without apps, of course, and here is where Huawei hits its first hurdle. Huawei has its own store called AppGallery, which it claims is the third largest in the world based on its more than 400 million monthly active users. The vast majority of those users will be in China, of course, where the Google Play Store has never been included alongside AppGallery. If you buy a Mate 30 Pro now anywhere in the world, though, AppGallery is what you get out of the box.

To be blunt, it is not great. I wouldn't call it barren - there is support from major US companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Snap. You can't get Chrome, of course, but Opera is there if you want something with desktop sync. But a huge amount of its content is aimed at China, with other big Western names like Facebook, Slack, Netflix, and Twitter missing, which puts the Mate 30 Pro in a more precarious app situation than even the diciest days of Windows Phone. Huawei has announced a $1 billion plan to help stock AppGallery's shelves, but it has its work cut out.

A bigger problem is that even if you can get popular applications installed, they often won't work properly because the device lacks the Google Mobile Services. It's an incredibly hard situation for Huawei to be in.