Since the Trump administration added Huawei to the Entity List, it's been uncertain whether the smartphone giant can continue providing major Android platform updates. If the U.S. and China fail to reach an agreement, Google will be forced to revoke Huawei's Android license, which will make Huawei unable to serve any updates to users with Google Mobile Services (which includes Google Play Services and the Google Play Store) on board. Most users wrote off any possibility of Huawei being able to upgrade devices with EMUI 10 based on Android Q, but since Google has already provided the pre-release source code to Huawei there was a good chance that the company has already made significant progress on its next major update. Now we have proof that this is indeed the case: Here's your first look at EMUI 10 on the Huawei P30 Pro.
This first look comes courtesy of FunkyHuawei.club, a service which lets you update, rebrand, or bootloader unlock your Huawei or Honor device for a fee. He has shared a method on our forums that lets you install a pre-release EMUI 10 build on the Huawei P30 Pro for those of you who are feeling adventurous. XDA's own Max Weinbach loaded it up on his P30 Pro to confirm it's the real deal.
Starting off, there doesn't seem to have been many changes to the user interface, at least visually. The launcher, notifications, status bar, Quick Settings, and Settings seem to be unchanged from EMUI 9.1 based on Android 9 Pie. However, Android Q's new permission controls, especially the new location-access-only-while-in-use feature, are present in EMUI 10. The UI of the camera app has also been slightly tweaked.
We should note that we believe this version will be called EMUI 10 based on the name of the prerelease firmware package itself—and not what's present in any of the screenshots shown above. Using the DevCheck app, though, we can show that the phone is indeed running on the Android platform version "10" (Android Q.)
Another tipster, @wildlime, shared their first impressions on the Huawei P30 Pro with FunkyHuawei. In summary:
- His phone region changed to C675E1 in the process (it was 432)
- Doesn't pass CTS
- He has the international dual SIM Huawei P30 Pro with 8GB RAM and this is recognized by the system
- Dutch language is activated and works as expected
- Calling, camera, OK Google work just fine
- HiSuite doesn't recognize the phone anymore
- There's a new logo (as seen in the featured image above)
- New layout for the camera modes in the camera app
- There seem to be overall performance improvements
- The About Phone page shows the phone as running EMUI 9.1 and Android 9 Pie, but faking build strings is something Huawei commonly does to prevent leaks.
- Otherwise, things are working as expected so far with no major issues.
We'll be continuing to compare this leaked EMUI 10 build with everything we know about EMUI 9 from our two-part review. There's bound to be a ton of changes under-the-hood that have yet to be discovered, so we'll be digging into the firmware to see if there are any features still in development. We'll also be on the lookout for other builds that Huawei may drop, since the company has already announced that the Huawei Mate 20, Huawei Mate 20 Pro, Huawei Mate 20 X, Huawei Mate 20 RS, Huawei P30, Honor View20, and Honor Magic 2 will be among the first Huawei and Honor devices to receive the update.
Update 1: Hands-on Video
Max from XDA TV recorded a hands-on video of the EMUI 10 beta on the Huawei P30 Pro. If you're interested in hearing his thoughts after using it all day, check out the video below.
Note: Huawei has stopped providing official bootloader unlock codes for its devices. Therefore, the bootloaders of their devices cannot be unlocked, which means that users cannot root or install custom ROMs.