Existing Huawei Phone Owners Can Breathe Easy Just For A Bit
If you imagined Samsung having a PR panic attack over the Galaxy Fold fiasco last month, you can probably imagine how Huawei is taking all the recent news that has been gnawing at its image in the past days. The US is finally ready to show it has more than just bark and has started to push Huawei into a corner. Google will reportedly stop licensing new Huawei phones but now it is officially reassuring existing owners they have nothing to worry about.
An earlier report stated that Google will be blocking Huawei's access to hardware, software, and technical information. In particular, it will not certify Huawei, and presumably, also Honor, phones which, in turn, means they won't have access to Google Play services. At least not legally and not officially.
That, however, raised questions if withholding software products from the Chinese OEM also affected existing phones in the market. While Google could hardly take away Google Play Store from those phones (though that certainly possible), the most it could do would be to stop providing updates or block those phones from accessing services, which is probably the doomsday scenario Huawei phone owners now fear.
Google now makes it clear that, no, existing Huawei devices won't be affected by any US government requirement. At least the way things stand right now. It doesn't say so but the implication is that the earlier report about future Huawei phones is, indeed, accurate.
For Huawei users' questions regarding our steps to comply w/ the recent US government actions: We assure you while we are complying with all US gov't requirements, services like Google Play & security from Google Play Protect will keep functioning on your existing Huawei device.
— Android (@Android) May 20, 2019
Huawei won't be locked out of the Android ecosystem completely but it will definitely take a big hit if its phones won't be able to access Google's popular apps and services. Years ago, a Google-free Android experience like an Amazon Fire may have been feasible. Today, however, it's near impossible or impractical at the very least.