Huawei has recently launched its first smartphone – the Y7P – that runs on Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) in South Africa. HMS is one of only three smartphone ecosystems used globally, the other’s being iOS and Android (Google Mobile Services or GMS).
Prior to this, all Huawei devices used Android – however, in May 2019, US president, Donald Trump signed an executive order allowing his government to block any trade between the US and a foreign organisation deemed as a threat — i.e. Huawei – even though the company has denied that its products could be used for espionage.
This meant that Huawei could no longer run Android on their devices and instead created its own mobile ecosystem – HMS.
Here are three key things to note about the HMS ecosystem:
- It’s run off Android
Android lovers can rest assured that the operating system they prefer on their smartphones is still the operating system that will be used for new Huawei phones that run off HMS. In fact, what many Androidphiles don’t know is that Huawei has historically made significant contributions to the development of the Android OS, from the basic code to the final process.
Huawei has never just been a hardware business; software efficacy and user experience have always been central to their consumer products. For example, in the development of Android’s Linux kernel, Google contributed 3% while Huawei contributed 1.5%.
Huawei has also always optimised Android’s features for their latest EMUI updates before Google adopted it for themselves. This includes performance optimisation of background app management by using AI, machine learning and intelligent resource scheduling; EROFS, which improves performance and compresses storage capacity; and Vulkan Graphics API, which provides high quality and high-performance 3D graphics for apps.
Because Android is open-source, these enhancements that Huawei has developed have obviously been available to the entire tech community, contributing to further innovation.
Huawei says it remains committed to developing the Android OS and hopes all its future smartphones in the near future will run off Android.
- It still has EMUI
Huawei lovers will be pleased to hear that all Huawei phones still feature EMUI as their user interface, so new Huawei smartphones with HMS will still look familiar. EMUI helps users get the most intuitive and seamless experience from their phones by enhancing performance
The HUAWEI Y7p will feature EMUI 9.1, which is one of the most recent versions of EMUI. EMUI 9.1 provides an immersive experience with innovative performance and system speed enhancements.
- Users still have safe access to some of SA’s most popular apps
Apps have become a crucial element of our everyday lives, and it is hard to imagine a life without them. With Huawei AppGallery, the company’s official app store, users will still have access to the most popular apps in South Africa. Huawei users can get their favourite apps in three different ways:
- Phone Clone – The most commonly used apps and data can be copied from your old device and transferred to your new one
- Native download – Users can download a number of apps directly from HUAWEI AppGallery
- Quick apps and web links – Quick apps are a new type of installation-free app, which consume very little memory space and data. Users can add their favourite quick apps to their mobile landing page for speedy and convenient access.
The Huawei AppGallery features a four-layer detection mechanism to ensure app security, as well as post-release app inspection and a mechanism for user feedback. Four-layer detection includes security vulnerability scanning; privacy check; malicious behaviour detection; and manual, real-name security check to ensure apps are secure during the entire process.
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