Why Huawei phones are not junk yet

It was pretty funny to see people panic-selling their Huawei phones in the last couple of weeks, after the Chinese phone maker was put on a United States government blacklist that essentially banned it from buying American chips and software.

The Trump administration’s move prompted Google to suspend its business with Huawei, stoking fears among its users that they might soon not be able to access Google applications such as YouTube, Maps and Gmail.

Huawei owners were reportedly casting off their phones at fire sales online, while shops were said to have stopped taking in used Huawei models as trade-ins.

The Chinese manufacturer tried to stem the backlash with a statement on Monday (June 3) claiming that Singaporean consumers have rallied behind the brand. It featured positive comments from seven Huawei phone users here who had visited the company’s booth at The PC Show over the past weekend.

The PR spin by Huawei aside, it is worth asking objectively if the knee-jerk reaction by some in rushing to sell the phones is valid.

Truth be told, if you are using a Huawei phone now, it will continue to work as promised by the company. The same goes for news sets in the shops. That also applies to the hardware as well as the Android software that so many are concerned with.

To understand things better, let’s consider the most important part of the ban against Huawei – the latest move in the Trump administration’s trade war with China does not affect existing products from the Chinese company.

In other words, Google will continue supplying the Android operating system to current models, including the P30 Pro, as well as the Honor 20 Lite, from Huawei’s sub-brand.

And you will still be able to use your Android apps, from Gmail to Instagram, so there shouldn’t be a worry that your phone will suddenly stop working.

What about future versions of Android? Well, Huawei has just been reinstated on the Android Q beta programme in the past few days, so it is still working with Google for future releases of Android.

This is not to say that Huawei isn’t facing a crisis, because as long as the trade war between the two biggest economies drags on, it will also have to find a way to buy processors – Arm Holdings is still not selling to Huawei – and resolve the uncertainty in future products.

However, there remains a chance that a deal might be struck between the governments that will enable Huawei to continue as before. Nobody knows what will happen next, except perhaps President Donald Trump or his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

Will Huawei really come up with its own operating system? Or will a deal, like the one that got fellow Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE back on track after a ban, allow Huawei to keep using Android and Arm-based chips in future? Hard to say.

What’s clear is that right now, there is no reason to rush out to sell your existing Huawei phones. Neither is there one to avoid buying a Huawei phone at the stores.

The worst thing that can happen, and this is unlikely given the developments with the Android Q beta, is that your phone won’t get updated to future Android operating systems.

For many users, that is not a deal breaker. As long as they get security updates from either Huawei or Google, they are good to go with the current Android software.

For sure, the pace at which organisations had turned up to (briefly) stop working with Huawei, from the Wi-Fi industry association to Japanese electronics giant Toshiba, made for worrying headlines.

The ban has dealt a huge blow for Huawei. Its ambition to overtake Samsung to become the top phone maker may have to be abandoned for now.

However, for folks who already own the P30 Pro or other Huawei phones, there should be no worry that your devices should continue working. You really should not be junking them at cut-price deals.

On the contrary, if there’s a good deal from the neighbourhood phone retailer or someone on Carousell trying to get rid of their Huawei phone, grab it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Alfred Siew is a technology journalist and the editor of Techgoondu.com, where this article first appeared.