Huawei P30 Pro New Edition May Have Google Play Thanks To A "Cheat"

If you want a Huawei phone that has Google Play Store pre-installed, you'll have to be prepared to opt for an older model from early 2019 and prior. But what if you wanted a shiny new phone, you'll have to settle for something that only looks new on the outside. That seems to be the tactic that Huawei is adopting in order to ship a new phone with Google Play services and apps, effectively getting around restrictions placed by the US government.

Putting Huawei on the US' Entity List effectively meant Google could not certify new Huawei phones to allow those to ship with Google apps. There have been various solutions to that situation, like Huawei shipping its own set of apps and services or users unofficially installing Google Play on the phone. None of those come close to the convenience of an officially pre-installed suite.

Huawei, however, is actually free to continue shipping existing phones with Google Play, which is how it got around those restrictions while still launching new phones. In a nutshell, it isn't exactly launching a new phone but one that is almost exactly similar to an older supported model. It did that with the recent P30 Lite New Edition and it seems it will do so again with a newly-sighted P30 Pro New Edition.

Just like before, this "New Edition" may differ only in memory configuration, perhaps offering more than the regular P30 Pro's 8GB of RAM. The rest will remain the same in order to skip the certification process required to ship with Google Play Services.

It remains to be seen whether this strategy will work with a premium phone considering the Huawei P30 Pro already ships with Google apps anyway. The leaked material suggests that Huawei will make an announcement on May 15 so it won't be too long a wait.