Huawei recently released the Mate 30 Pro in the UAE and like the Mate 20 Pro from last year, this latest model also pushes the envelope when it comes to design, performance, screen and camera technology.
If you’re looking to pick the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, you should know that it comes with Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) instead of Google Mobile Services (GMS). But what exactly are Huawei’s or Google’s mobile services and how do they differ?
HMS vs GMS
To start off, let’s make it clear that both HMS and GMS run on top of the Android operating system and technically, allow you to use Android apps. Where you’ll start to see a difference is how you get apps on your phones and how some of these apps work based on which platform your phone is based on.
It starts with your basic ID to sign on to each of these services- with Huawei it’s your Huawei ID while with Google, it’s your Google ID which is generally your GMail account. Using this ID, you then sign on to the cloud services that both of these platforms provide and sync your data such as your photos, your contacts, calendars and notes, as well as you device settings and logs such as call logs, messages and Wi-Fi settings.
Services offered across the two clouds can be differ- for example, Google Mobile Services don’t back up your call logs or messages and you have to rely on third party tools for that but Huawei has that as part of its mobile services.
Getting your favourite apps on the Mate 30 Pro
The biggest difference that exists between the two services is how you download apps on your phone and if those apps store and rely on either of these services to fully work. Google uses the Play Store to download and manage all your apps whereas Huawe has its App Gallery for the same purpose.
Google obviously has more apps on its store because it has existed for a lot longer but that doesn’t mean there is no room for other app stores. In fact, other manufacturers such as Samsung also have their app stores (Galaxy Store) installed on all their phones. There are tons of third-party app stores as well such as Apptoid, APKMirror and the Amazon App Store so if an app is not currently present on Huawei’s app gallery, you might be able to find it on one of these alternate stores.
We checked out the selection of apps available of App Gallery and compared them top apps and games available on Android in Google PlayStore in the UAE.
- ToTok - Available on Huawei App Gallery
- WhatsApp Messenger - Not currently available
- TikTok - Not currently available
- Imo - Available on Huawei App Gallery
- Shareit - Available on Huawei App Gallery
Three out of the top five apps are already available on App Gallery while the other two can be downloaded from third-party app stores giving you access to all the top apps on the HMS based Mate 30 Pro. There are tons of local apps such as noon, DEWA, The Entertainer and Vox cinemas also already available on the App Gallery and we have no doubt that this list will keep growing.
Where things get a bit tricky is when apps rely on Google Services for functionality such as storing data or using your Google account. It’s understandable that some of the apps that Google makes such as GMail, YouTube or Google Photos don’t function without Google Mobile services but an alternate to that is using the web versions of these apps which work fine but don’t necessarily provide a native experience.
There are some third party apps as well that rely on Google services but can function without it. Apps such as WhatsApp that uses your Google Drive to store your chats is one example- however there are ways to work around that. Ideally, these apps should have their own infra-structure so they’re not tied to any third-parties that could dictate who their customers are.
But if you are one of the users that heavily depends on GMS at the moment, there is a workaround for that too. We’ve used plenty of phones imported from China with no Google services pre-installed on them and through specific apps, have managed to get them fully working. The Mate 30 Pro isn’t an exception to that and the following video explains how you can get GMS working.
There’s a chance that the above solution stops working as it isn’t necessarily an official solution. We would thus recommend sticking to Huawei Mobile Services for Mate 30 owners- it is officially supported and with time, will only grow bigger and better.
