Huawei clarifies statement and says its international models will still be able to run Android apps

If you live in the U.S., you know that you can't just run into a carrier-operated store in the U.S. and buy a Huawei phone. But you can find the international variant of some of the company's handsets on Amazon and eBay including 2022's photography-based flagship, the P50 Pro. Recently though, Huawei made an announcement that was concerning to those who regularly buy the company's innovative and well-made phones for the global markets.

The announcement said that the next version of Huawei's Harmony operating system, called HarmonyOS Next, would completely lose the ability to support any Android apps. However, the Chinese manufacturer clarified its comment by noting that none of its phones sold outside of China will use HarmonyOS Next. Instead, these phones will use the EMUI OS which is based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) version of Android but without Google Services and apps.

Huawei is not allowed to offer the Google version of Android for a couple of reasons. The Chinese government bans the use of some Google apps in the country, and the placement of Huawei on the U.S. entity list for being a national security threat means that it cannot work with Google at all. But Huawei phones outside of China will run on EMUI allowing users to sideload Android apps on their Huawei phones.

According to a translated version of CNMO "Huawei will “continue to increase its support for developers around the world." Wccftech says that Huawei has a large number of developers making sure that all of their apps work without a hitch on phones without Google services. Unfortunately, Huawei has no plans to develop an international version of the phones in the Huawei Mate 60 Pro series for sale outside of China.

The next flagship line coming from Huawei is expected to be the photography-based P70 series which will also be powered by Huawei's own 7nm Kirin 9000s 5G application processor. It isn't known whether Huawei will offer this line for sale outside of China. The P70 series should be announced sometime in the first quarter of next year. If Huawei does offer an international version of the phones in the P70 line, those units should have EMUI pre-installed allowing owners to sideload Android apps which will run natively on these handsets.