There have been rounds of speculation surrounding Huawei ever since we were made aware that the company’s latest flagship would not be allowed to ship with Google services – courtesy of the trade war that has been on-going between both the US and China. Many have since wondered how exactly would this affect the company’s sales and as a whole – the company’s image.
Ever since the unveiling event, there has been no shortage of reviewers giving their thoughts on the flagship. As it has turned out – it didn’t prove too long a time before someone got around to find a way to install Google services on their devices –and if that surprises you, consider the fact that within this, even Google Pay works! The APK file for this is available.
Does this represent a viable solution then?
As far as the case for Chinese based Android devices go, side loading Google Mobile Service (GMS) does not come as news. In fact, it has become very common for such Chinese OEMs to release “GMS Installers” – paving the way for people to install GMS manually in case they travel abroad.
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The basic working principle of such “GMS Installers” is that they go on to automatically install a suite of APKs. It has become such a simple ordeal that users can easily download these APKs individually, while side loading them themselves. However, there is a catch –this only works in the case where the device already happens to be using a Google licensed system image.
On Android, things are a bit different. Some GMS packages are required to be installed as system apps because of the fact that they require privileged permission in order for proper functionality. Considering the fact that Google services are not accessible within mainland China, most of the Android devices do not actually end up shipping with full GMS, however, in many cases, OEMs will indeed include GMS “stubs” in the system.
So then the question arises – is Huawei stealing Google’s stub binaries, or is Google doing some sneaking of its own? Well, the issue has been thought over, and an expert has apparently come to the decision that in this case, no stubs can be found in the system.
All in all, Huawei has its very own set of APIs for mobile device management (MDM). This is commonly used in enterprises to manage the devices that belong to employees.
