Recently, Huawei became subject to a ban on doing business with US firms. This cost the OEM a lot, including normal business dealings with ARM, Qualcomm and Google. The last of these has been also reported to come with a loss of the certification necessary to run Android on its mobile devices. This may have been particularly jarring for smartphone customers who worry about losing access to 1 of the 2 most popular software ecosystems should they buy hardware from the company.
However, these potential fears seem to be unfounded for now. A scan of the current Google Play Certified list reveals that devices from Huawei, as well as its sub-brand Honor, are still present on it. This includes the 20 and 20 Pro, Honor’s new flagships for 2019. It indicates that these phones will continue to be able to download apps from the Play Store, benefit from Google Play Protect, and generally behave like standard Android phones.
Honor has recently released a statement asserting as much. On the other hand, there are indications that Huawei’s Android license in general may be revoked on August 19, 2019. Conversely, the Huawei Nova 5i, part of a new smartphone series that is available to the Chinese market only so far, is also now on this list. This may be a sign that devices from this OEM will retain Google Play Certification, at least in the short term.
On the other hand, it is odd that the 5i has not yet been joined by the rest of its line. A possible explanation for this is that the Nova 5 runs the brand-new Kirin 810 SoC. On the other hand, the Nova 5 Pro is powered by the Kirin 980 processor, which should be familiar enough to Google staff by now.
