Is it still worth buying a Huawei gadget? The United States’ trade ban on Huawei’s technology has been in effect for years. While that should be a far from our bed show, it really isn’t at all. Huawei is no longer allowed to cooperate with Google, which makes it impossible to use Google services on new Huawei phones. From the king of the smartphone, Huawei is now more like others gadgets going to focus. Is a Huawei gadget still worth it despite the trade ban?
Is it still worth buying a Huawei gadget?
Huawei was founded in 1987 with $3,000 by Ren Zhengfei. The engineer managed to grow the company from a telephone switch supplier to one of the best-known smartphone makers in the world. huawei had sales of $17.8 billion in 2021. It employs more than 190,000 people worldwide. That’s not bad at all: Huawei is still big in Asia, for example, partly because people there are less Google-minded. In addition, there are other areas where Huawei has started to focus more.
Canceled trust
However, that success has been partly swept away by several countries losing their trust in Huawei. Mr. Zhengfei is said to have very warm contacts with the Chinese government. On the one hand, this is necessary, because otherwise you will not get a foothold in the country, but if this is too intimate, there is the fear that the Chinese government will gain access to Huawei’s data.
These fears of espionage, in addition to situations where Zhengfei’s daughter was arrested on suspicion of violating a trade embargo on Iran, has made America trade ban set up. As a result, American companies have been banned from selling products or services to Huawei for years. However, that would certainly not be based solely on espionage allegations. The United States doesn’t like China getting bigger in tech.
Although Huawei also does a lot in network technology such as building 5G, in this article we focus on the gadgets of the company. Is it still wise to buy a smart watch from Huawei, or earbuds? Are we looking at smartphones, then we have to come to the conclusion that they are no longer so useful. Although the Chinese supplier makes very strong devices with great cameras, the lack of Google services in a country like the Netherlands is great. For example, many apps work using Google Maps, which is a problem when a phone cannot access this app.
No Google services
Gmail, Google Play, YouTube: they can all no longer be used directly as an app on Huawei devices. There are workarounds and Huawei has worked hard on its own app store, it all just works a little less smoothly than with Google services. A huge shame, but does the same problem also apply to Huawei gadgets?
Luckily not. Although Huawei would of course prefer all your gadgets to be from Huawei, for which there is something to be said for simply having the best integration, you can also easily use products separately from each other. There are, however, certain features that you miss: for example, you cannot use Google Pay (or Google Wallet) on the company’s smartwatch to make contactless payments.
It is also not the case that all apps that you know from the Google Play store can by definition be found in the AppGallery of Huawei. A developer has to make their app available to the AppGallery and certainly not all developers do. As a result, there are far fewer apps available than you are used to. Now, for example, there are solutions for navigating, such as the Google Maps-like Petal Maps, but this does not work – partly because it is under development for much less time and on a large scale. Tracking your run in Strava, for example, isn’t included (although you can sync your data with Health Sync).
Huawei gadgets
Now a smartwatch resembles a smartphone in many areas, but when you buy a Huawei smartwatch, look at what you want to do with the device. If you want to do a lot of fitness or just measure your heart rate and read some messages, you can certainly use this smartwatch for this. The Huawei Watch GT series or the Band series works perfectly via Android and mainly revolves around the design and tracking of your workouts, less about apps. Although there are some available on some smartwatches.
When purchasing, think about what you want to put on it. This also applies when purchasing, for example, a Huawei monitor or router. For example, if you want to get hold of a laptop from Huawei, you will hardly notice the trade ban. Windows is available on this laptop series and you can also install Chrome on it, for example.
In addition, the earplugs from Huawei are also a safe choice when it comes to how the gadget fits into your tech use. Huawei earbuds can simply use your smartphone to make contact via Bluetooth and you can simply listen to Tidal, Spotify or Apple Music on them. The same goes for phone calls, because in passing audio that you would normally play through your speakers on your phone, the Huawei earbuds are fine. There is also a separate app for the earbuds available, so you can still set them to your personal preferences.
buying a Huawei gadget
If you are very afraid of Chinese espionage, then it is probably not wise to buy a Huawei product. Although it has not really been argued that the Chinese government would do anything with your data (and it will actually be passed on), there are many governments that have really stopped doing business with the company. However, the same applies to, for example, the privacy concerns that arise when you place a smart assistant speaker in your home, such as Google Nest Mini, which is constantly listening in.
Looking purely at using popular apps, we have to conclude that a Huawei phone will not offer the smoothest experience. You do not run into this problem with tech products such as laptops, earphones or smartwatches, so that we could really opt for a Huawei gadget specifically in terms of usability.
