It hasn’t been too long since USA president Donald Trump brought down the ban hammer on Huawei and effectively prevented any U.S company from working with Huawei and any of their associates.
Of course, this includes Google as well – which is probably going to be a huge problem for Huawei. After all, Google is the one that owns Android.
The good news is that up till now, Huawei had a temporary license to implement Google’s services and apps. The bad news is that it has now expired, and this could be a problem. Here is why!
Why Huawei’s TGL Expiration is Bad News
After the ban, the U.S granted Huawei a temporary general license (TGL) and that allowed Google, among others, to keep on working with the Chinese company. And this could be anything from giving them access to the latest Google apps all the way down to the little things such as security updates.
So, while we don’t exactly know what’s going to happen from here on out, the least that we can expect is that some older devices may stop receiving security updates. New releases, on the other hand, are probably not going to come with Google apps installed at all.
A simple workaround to this would probably be to flash the Google apps with the use of a custom recovery. But there are three big issues with this solution:
- Rooting your phone and installing a custom recovery voids your warranty
- Casual users generally don’t want to mess with their devices in such ways (And maybe you shouldn’t since there is a risk of bricking your device if you don’t know what you’re doing)
- Huawei still doesn’t allow us to unlock their bootloader – which means that we can’t install a custom recovery even if we wanted to. Unless Huawei changes its mind
Furthermore, not being able to pass SafetyNet attestation means that Huawei devices may also not get access to banking and payment-related apps.
At the very least, both the Linux kernel and Android are open-source tools/software, a complete Android dropout is unlikely to happen.
Wrapping Up
So, to wrap things up, while we still don’t exactly know what’s about to happen, we can safely assume that Huawei’s TGL expiration will lead to:
- Older devices may stop receiving security updates
- Newer phones may not come with Google apps at all (And flashing them is currently impossible as Huawei doesn’t allow us to unlock the bootloader)
- Even existing Huawei phones may not receive Google apps after a software update since Google needs to certify each software update that manufacturers push
- Huawei’s devices may not be able to use certain banking and payment apps since they won’t be able to SafetyNet attestation
That’s all for now. Feel like we forgot to mention something important? Got anything wrong? Then let us and everyone else know about it in the comments section down below!
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