While it still faces the consequences of the US trade ban with an uncertainty of its future looming around, Huawei has come out and claimed that it is now rolling out Android 9 Pie-based EMUI 9.0 update to seven more devices. With that, the Chinese company has revealed that over 80 million users of Huawei have received the latest Android update, despite the company losing its Android license last month.
Amongst the new devices to receive Android 9 Pie update are the Huawei Mate 10, Mate 9, Mate RS, Mate 20 Lite, P20, P10, and the Huawei Nova 3. Beside Pie, these smartphones also get a taste of Huawei’s own EMUI 9.0 interface coupled with new navigation gestures, Huawei Share, Password vault, SD card backups and more.
Huawei is celebrating an estimated 80 million units running the latest Android with the number increasing to a total of 100 million by the end of H1 2019.
Time to update and enjoy the ultimate #EMUI9 experience!#HuaweiMate10 #HuaweiMate9 #HuaweiMateRS #HuaweiMate20Lite #HuaweiP20 #HuaweiP10 #HuaweiNova3 pic.twitter.com/ZXPFaKb21m
— EMUI (@HuaweiEMUI) 3 June 2019
Huawei is updating all these devices to the latest batch of Android, despite being blacklisted by the US government, because the Chinese manufacturer has now got three months to push as many updates as possible on its existing Android phones. At the end of the 90 days, Google will cut off all software matters with Huawei, thus rendering even the existing users with a less secure Android phone which will never receive another update again.
Huawei thus has up until August 19 to update its devices to the latest Android. This also means it’s foolish to hope an update to Android Q on your current Huawei or Honor device. This will, however, be taken off if China and the US, by any chance, reach an agreement on the ongoing trade war.
Huawei has already patented an Ark OS interface as its alternative to Google’s Android. It’s believed that Ark OS might not be based on Android but could have compatibility layer for Android apps. Huawei is also in talks with Portugal-based Aptoide App Store to replace Google Play Store. The partnership could bode well for Huawei since Aptoide has a library of 900,000 apps on its store with over 200 million users.