For nearly two years, Huawei has felt the impact of US sanctions that prevent it from integrating Google services into its latest smartphones, starting with the Google Play application store.
Its own alternative, the AppGallery, is now trying to offer an equivalent quality of service, but still faces a major obstacle: the absence of the most popular applications in the Western world.
The future flagship of the Chinese brand, the Huawei P50 Pro, could be available in two versions, one running Android (open source, without Google services) and the other running HarmonyOS (the internal operating system from Huawei). Either way, he’ll be deprived of Google Play and its plethora of apps, games, and cultural content to download. Owners of this smartphone will have to use the AppGallery, constantly improving, to the point that it looks more and more like its American counterpart, with a few details.
In terms of configuration, AppGallery differs little from Google Play, with its Apps, Games, and Recommended tabs. Its search engine can find any application among the 100,000 available for download, against several million on Google Play. There is still a lot to do, but Huawei is still on the right track.
Despite the diversity of content, many applications considered essential by a majority of Internet users are still absent. This is the case with Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, Netflix and Spotify. If you can’t download these apps, you’ll find links to their web versions. And for each “missing” Google application, internal alternatives are offered. Nevertheless, there are more and more popular programs on the AppGallery, such as Snapchat, TikTok, Amazon and Tinder.
Third largest application store in the world behind Google Play and the Apple App Store, the AppGallery is now used by more than 500 million people around the world, all of whom own a Huawei or Honor smartphone.
This article was published via AFP Relaxnews.
