On paper, the company's plans look pretty interesting, and Huawei's management keeps promising to do better than Google and Apple. However, many fans of the brand have a question, is the game worth the candle? Will a phone without Google apps work fine, how to get around the existing restrictions, and are the company's regular smartphones with classic Android still on sale? Armed with the brand new Huawei P40 Lite, we decided to test the waters and find answers to these questions.

What is AppGallery and what can be found there


AppGallery is another branded content store that launched in 2018, just to be. Samsung, for example, has the same one. It's called Galaxy Apps and they go there either by accident or to download something specific like sidebars for the Galaxy S10 or widgets for smartwatches that are not on Google Play. And so, when sanctions struck, the store suddenly came in handy. Now Huawei sees this not as a problem, but as an opportunity to make its own "Play Market" with blackjack and queens.

AppGallery does not have any Google branded apps. Starting from the Play Market itself and mail, and ending with maps and a calendar. By default, all new Huawei devices are equipped with an import substitution package that includes alternatives to remote applications. If you need a smartphone purely as a dialer, messenger, alarm clock or camera, then there will be no particular difficulties in replacing the Play Market with AppGallery. However, if this is your fiftieth Android smartphone, then you most likely have developed a close connection with Google applications: the voice assistant is trained as a watchdog, maps remember favorite routes, and Gmail has contacts from your favorite job 10 years ago.

Popular smartphones from Huawei

How to replace applications from the Play Market?


After digging into the bowels of AppGallery, we found quite a few alternatives to both Google services and popular applications that are not yet here.

  • Browser: The in-shell browser is a good alternative to Chrome. Of the alternatives, there is Opera. Firefox is coming.
  • Mail: everything is simple here, in most email clients you can add your Gmail address and you're done.
  • Messengers: Telegram, Viber, Whatsapp are already in place, Facebook and Instagram are in question.
  • Maps: this is more difficult because even Apple failed to make normal maps. On foot or by bike, you can use OsmAnd or the web version of Google Maps, but for motorists, there were no direct navigation options, so most download Waze from third-party sites. Perhaps the situation will change soon because at the beginning of 2020, Huawei entered into an agreement with the TomTom mapping service, which will supply geolocation data to the electronics manufacturer.
  • Money: popular mobile banking is slowly appearing in AppGallery, in parallel, a mobile wallet with NFC is being developed, which will combine accounts from different banks.
  • Documents: Basic Microsoft Office is already installed on the system. There is also a general WPS Office, which is friendly with both Microsoft documents and Google. Or the web version of Google Docs.
  • Notes: Google Keep, Evernote, OneNote are not here. For those who have been seriously using a notebook for more than a year, this is a headache. If we are talking about notes on what to buy and where to go on the weekend, then you can use WeNote or Color Note.
  • Entertainment: Youtube is, but only in the browser. Games are constantly being added - both little things and bigger ones, but really big projects like Fortnite or PUBG have not been brought to AppGallery. At least for now. With streaming, it’s also ambiguous: there are local services like Megogo, but not giants like Netflix. Yes, you can watch it in the browser, but it's not so convenient.
  • Read: for epub and fb2 books there is the good old FBReader, and for PDF there is a pack of free Acrobat Reader analogues.
  • Shopping: Many large online stores are already in place, others are on the way. The branded application from E-Katalog is also in the AppGallery, so you are not limited in purchases

As you can see, the list is far from complete, so it's too early to talk about a full-fledged alternative to Google Play. On the other hand, I was pleased that popular local applications of mobile banks, online stores, cinemas and even pharmacies appear in AppGallery almost every day.

Are there workarounds?


Of course there are, moreover, officially approved by Huawei itself. To give users the ability to download apps from developers who refuse to list them on the AppGallery, Huawei has come up with a thing called Petal Search. On paper, this is an alternative to the Google search engine, but in fact, a service that allows you to quickly scan trusted sites with apk files (APKPure, APKMirror, etc.) and find the installer of the desired application.

Another solution could be the Phone Clone utility, which, according to old memory, transfers most of the installed programs from the old smartphone to the new one. Therefore, you can immediately copy applications, check which ones work, and then update them through AppGallery or a third-party store.

How convenient is it to use such a smartphone?


It all depends on how you use your smartphone. If Google services have long and firmly entered your life, then a clipped Huawei handset can bring a lot of headaches. Firstly, it will take longer to fiddle with transferring data from an old smartphone to a new one if they are from a different manufacturer. Secondly, you will have to change the cloud service. At Google, everything revolves around Google Drive, Huawei wants to make its own cloud the center of its universe, and in parallel is establishing cooperation with Microsoft. For everyone who has been working fruitfully with documents for a long time, such a move promises a continuous headache and dubious benefits. Inconvenience number three is related to the Google account itself, to which most people have a bunch of other smaller accounts tied to it. Having bought a new smartphone from the company, you will not only have to reinstall existing applications, but also manually enter logins and passwords

This begs the question, why suffer? To be honest, we haven't found the answer yet. Everyone was waiting for Huawei to make concessions for the European market and drop the prices of their devices. Say, do not buy Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S 64 GB / 4 GB , better take our Huawei P40 Lite 128 GB / 6 GB Price from 7 999 up to 8 419 ₴. Without Google services, but $100 less. The reality turned out to be different: the company focused on the domestic market, and bombarded Europe with inexpensive variations of already released phones that managed to get certified.

Which Huawei phones have Google services and which don't?


Officially, sanctions fell on the company's head in May 2019. That is, all smartphones released up to this point have already been certified and are not subject to bans. The difficulty is that by May, Huawei's roadmap was completed until the end of the year, and many unannounced smartphones were also certified.

For example, P Smart Z, Huawei P30 Pro and Honor 20 Pro. In the fall, a trial Mate 30 Pro was thrown in Europe, but it did not gain much success. Since then, the company has decided to sit on two chairs: simultaneously releasing new smartphones with AppGallery and re-release old devices with minor improvements and a new name. For example Huawei P30 Pro New Edition and P30 lite New Edition.

Follow the link to see all current offers from Huawei. And this filter will only show models without Google services.

Huawei smartphones without Google services

So buy Huawei or wait?


So far, it seems that Huawei is in a complete mess, and the company is being carried forward like a raft on a river. At first, they said that Harmony OS would enter the top 5 mobile operating systems in 2020. Then they promised to kill Android. Then do not touch it, because "these operating systems are not competitors to each other." And it’s not difficult to understand the company’s management, the market is shaking, 2020 is shooting adversity like a machine gun, and Trump’s ratings are falling more and more, which is why there is talk of easing or even lifting sanctions. As a result, of all the technology on Harmony OS, we have so far seen only TVs (no wonder, it was originally invented for TV), and no one wants to look even six months ahead. Therefore, the indignation of many fans of the brand, who believed the company's management and bought a new Huawei smartphone in the hope that it would be better, is completely understandable.

There is no single answer to the question of whether to take it or not. If you need a phone solely as a means of communication, a calculator or a music player, then you may not even realize that something is missing here. And those who plan to use the capabilities of a smartphone to the maximum (messengers, toys, documents, navigation, etc.) should look towards “pre-sanctioned” devices. There is life without Google, but it comes with constant compromises.