Huawei launched its flagship Huawei P40 series earlier this year in March. The devices launched with the company's custom Android skin — EMUI 10 — based on Android 10. However, due to the trade ban imposed on the company by the U.S. government, the smartphones shipped with Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) and the Huawei AppGallery instead of Google Mobile Services and the Google Play Store. As an alternative to the Google Assistant, Huawei also announced its own Celia voice assistant at the launch but the devices did not ship with the new voice assistant when they initially went on sale.

Now, it seems like the Celia assistant will soon be added to the Huawei P40 series as the latest EMUI 10.1.0.121 update has started rolling out globally and it includes a new "Huawei Assistant" top-level setting with references to Celia. Currently, all of the options in this "Huawei Assistant" settings page go to existing settings for features like HiVision. But we believe a future update should bring support for the Celia voice assistant. The update, which weighs in at 1.14GB, also includes improvements for the camera and display, along with the Android security patches for April 2020.

For the unaware, the Celia voice assistant can be summoned with the command "Hey Celia", or by holding the power button for a second. Celia can help you with regular daily tasks, such as initiating phone calls and texts, setting up calendar appointments and reminders, start voice recording, translate sentences, play music, videos, toggle device settings and flashlight, and of course, search for information such as sports, weather, and more. Celia is also compatible with HiVision AI Lens and AI touch-shopping. At the Huawei P40 series launch, the company had revealed that Celia would be released in the UK, France, Spain, Chile, Mexico, and Columbia with support for three languages, including English (UK), French, and Spanish. To learn more about Huawei's Celia voice assistant and its features, you can visit the official product page by following this link.

It's also worth noting that the Celia voice assistant will be rolled out to more Huawei and Honor devices with the EMUI 10.1 update. As per the EMUI 10.1 update roadmap shared by the company earlier this year, users should start receiving the update on supported devices in the following months.