Huawei launched its flagship Mate 30 series smartphones a couple of weeks ago, making it the first batch of devices to come without support for Google apps and services since the United States put the Chinese giant on the “Entity List”, essentially banning the company.
Although the phone comes without Google’s support for apps and services, there was a workaround that enabled users to keep using Google services on the Mate 30 series smartphones. However, the workaround method via “LZ Play” is no longer available and the website hosting several apps is no longer working.
Since Huawei wasn’t able to secure exemption from the United States to use Google services, it looses out on access to Google apps. In the workaround, it required users to install “LZ Play”, a third-party application, with administrator-level permissions. But the method has raised some serious security concerns.
It used some specialised Android permissions found only in Huawei phones, including the permission to install other apps as “system” apps. Shortly after John Wu, the developer behind Magisk, published an explanantion about how the system works, the site hosting the LZ Play app was taken down.
Currently, it’s not known if the website was taken down by its developers or the site’s hosting service provider Alibaba. Reports indicate that there’s also a possibility that Huawei issued a “cease and desist” notice after the company was concerned about the bad press but this seems unlikely.
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Also, it is being reported that the Huawei Mate 30 smartphone no longer passes Google’s SafetyNet security test, which is Google’s way of making sure that the device is valid, secure, and not rooted.
Passing SafetyNet tests is one of the requirements to be able to use some of the applications and since the phone has now failed the test, clearly something has changed either in the SafetyNet process or on the Mate 30 series phones.
In short, if you own Huawei Mate 30 series smartphone and haven’t installed Google apps on your device, you’re likely out of luck to do so until US and China settle their trade war or Huawei is granted exemption to use Google services on its devices.
It’s noteworthy that the Huawei Mate 30 series smartphones are not available for purchase in many regions outside China. Also, smartphones in China ships without Google services and most of them are already banned in the country. So, not many people should be affected by this but if you are the one who imported the phone, then you are stuck.
