Huawei launched their new flagships, the Mate 30 and the Mate 30 Pro which provide the best hardware we’ve seen from the company to date.
There was a lingering problem: The phone will not come with Google apps and services installed. This was due to the United States Government Commerce Department blacklisting Huawei on national security grounds. This forced Huawei to switch to the Android Open Source Project and subsequently spending $1 billion on their own Huawei Mobile Services project.
According to Anandtech, Richard Yu clarified in an interview that users will be able to unlock the bootloaders of the Mate 30 and the 30 Pro.
However, that was quickly refuted. According to Android Authority, a Huawei spokesperson clarified the above statements where they said that they had no plans to unlock the bootloader on the Mate 30 series.
Due to the lingering problem with the US government, you would assume that Huawei would unlock the bootloader of the Mate 30 series so that people could side-load Google apps. That door has been closed for sure and it means that selling this phone globally will be an uphill task despite the fact it has fantastic hardware.
Lacking Google Services and apps is a big deal. You need Google Play Services that runs in the background to connect apps to other Google services. It also keeps your apps updated. Missing out on the Google Play app, Maps, Gmail, Drive, Photos, Play Games and more will disconnect you from the features we associate with Android as we know today.
The Mate 30 Series will do fine in China where Android phones sold in the country usually don’t have Google Services installed. It is a shame that you would not be able to install a custom ROM on your shiny new Mate 30 even if you
