Among the various Android forks, Huawei's EMUI is second only to Samsung's One UI in terms of customization. There's a staggering amount of features and pre-installed apps to meet your needs. In part 2 of my EMUI 9 review, I'll go over all the features and apps that Huawei and Honor offer on their latest smartphones. If you haven't already checked out part 1 of the review which covers EMUI 9's Design and Behavioral changes over stock Android 9 Pie, then I recommend you click the link below to read that part.

EMUI 9 Review (Part 1): Design and Behavior

There's a lot to love and a lot to hate when it comes to the stock navigation gestures in Huawei's EMUI/Honor's Magic UI. First, here's a summary of how their gestures work:

  • Swipe up from the center: Go home
  • Swipe up from the bottom and hold: Open recent apps overview
  • Swipe up from the bottom left or bottom right: Go home or launch Google Assistant if the option is enabled
  • Swipe right from the left side: Go back
  • Swipe left from the right side: Go back
  • Swipe diagonally from the bottom left or bottom right corner: Launch mini screen view (one-handed mode)

Let me start off by saying what I love about these gestures. First, I love how they thought of incorporating the mini screen view, Google Assistant shortcut, and screen pinning. Both Xiaomi and OnePlus make you hold the power button to launch the Google Assistant when you enable their gesture controls. Xiaomi disables the ability to trigger one-handed mode when you enable their full-screen gestures. OnePlus simply turns off screen pinning when you enable their gestures. In contrast, all of these features are usable with Huawei and Honor's navigation gestures. Gestures feel better integrated with the rest of the system rather than a feature tacked on to compete with the iPhone. Sadly, the actual gestures are inferior to OnePlus' implementation.

My first major gripe with the EMUI 9 gestures is the fluidity. The OnePlus 6T added a new quick switch gesture that lets you return to your last app by flicking up and then right. There's no comparable gesture in EMUI 9. The best you can do is swipe up and hold, let go, and then tap on the recent app card. Although EMUI automatically brings the last app in your recent apps stack to the center, you can't swipe down on the card to bring it to the foreground. That swipe down action is reserved for locking an app in memory. Thus, while navigating back or returning to the launcher are quick, switching between tasks can be pretty slow. Even Google is experimenting with better recent apps navigation in Android Q, so hopefully, the next EMUI version brings more fluid gestures.

Next, I've had many issues with the swipe to go back gesture. I don't think adding a swipe from the sides gesture was a very good idea. The back gesture interferes with quite a few apps that have sidebars on the left-hand side, which are fairly common because of the Navigation Drawer specification in Material Design. Because the trigger area for the back gesture starts at the very edge and only extends a few pixels outward, it's possible to still open an app's sidebar by precisely aiming your finger a few pixels away from the edge. You can also long-press near the edge to trigger the app's sidebar, although performing this successfully has been inconsistent for me. Thus, I find myself constantly performing a back gesture when I meant to open the sidebar in apps like Gmail or Reddit is Fun. Even the stock launcher can pose problems when you enable the app drawer since the existence of the fast scrollbar on the right forces Huawei to disable the back gesture. After training yourself to swipe from the sides to go back, you have to remember that you can't swipe to go back when you're in the app drawer. I guarantee you'll forget it, and you'll find yourself fighting with the scrollbar pretty often. I would prefer to have a swipe up from the bottom left or bottom right go back, which is how OnePlus does it.

Lastly, there's no way to activate picture-in-picture mode with a gesture. Picture-in-picture mode, though only recently introduced in Android 8.0 Oreo, is a very popular feature. With the three-button navigation keys, you can trigger picture-in-picture mode by tapping on the home button. You would think that swiping up from the bottom, which performs the home action, would enable picture-in-picture mode. Sadly, that's not the case, so the only way to enter picture-in-picture mode while gestures are enabled is to pull down the status bar and launch either the alarm, calendar, or settings app by tapping on the time, date, or settings button respectively. Huawei got it right by incorporating screen pinning and one-handed mode into their gestures, but they failed to account for picture-in-picture mode.


Digital Balance

Google introduced Digital Wellbeing in Android Pie for the Google Pixel to help users control their smartphone usage. Google has since expanded Digital Wellbeing for non-Pixel smartphones including all Android One devices on Android Pie, the Motorola Moto G7 family, and the Razer Phone 2. The Samsung Galaxy S10 on One UI 1.1 also has Digital Wellbeing, and even though the Galaxy S10's version is technically made by Samsung and not Google, it's pretty much identical to Google's offering. Huawei and Honor's take on Digital Wellbeing is the only unique iteration that I've seen.

EMUI/MagicUI's version of Digital Wellbeing is called "Digital Balance," and it's actually better than the original. While Google's app usage dashboard is presented as a circular chart, Huawei/Honor's presents the same data as a horizontal bar chart. The bar chart makes a lot more sense than Google's circular chart because you can more easily compare how long you've used a particular app in comparison to other apps. The chart even shows the screen usage of an app without making you tap on the app name to show more information.

The more detailed screen time page that appears when you tap on any of the app names or the "more" text also gives you more information than Google's version. For example, Digital Balance tells you how long you've used an app as a percentage of the overall screen time. You can see how long you've used apps in the past 24 hours or past 7 days, although Google's version does let you see the screen time on an hourly basis. Furthermore, Google's version saves screen time for many days, so you can track how long you've used a particular app on a certain day. I think Google does a better job showing you historical screen usage data, while Huawei does a better job showing you the current screen usage data.

Google's Digital Wellbeing does give you information other than the screen usage of apps, though. Digital Wellbeing also shows you how many notifications you've received from a particular app. Tapping on the manage notifications option then brings you to the notification management page for a particular app, so you can block recurrent notifications from specific notification channels. Google's Digital Wellbeing also shows you how many times you opened a particular app, which can help you track which apps you're addicted to checking even if you don't actually spend much time in them. Huawei and Honor's Digital Balance doesn't show you any information about the frequency of notifications or app launches, sadly. Digital Balance, like Digital Wellbeing, does show you how many times you unlock your smartphone on a daily basis. It even gives you an estimate of the rate at which you unlock your smartphone, while Google's Digital Wellbeing does not.

Digital Balance's active time management features are better than Digital Wellbeing's. When you first turn on "screen time management," you get to choose whether the device you're setting up Digital Balance on is your own device or your child's device. If you're setting it up on your child's device, then Digital Balance asks you to set up a daily screen on time limit. This is the total amount of time your child can use their phone in a single day, though it can be extended with your approval. Important apps like the Dialer and default messenger (Google's Messages) are automatically exempted from the time limit, though you can manually add apps to the "always allowed" list so they won't count against the time limit. You can also set up "bedtime" actions such as graying the screen or blocking apps once your designated bedtime has been reached. Digital Balance lets you PIN protect changes to its settings with a 6 digit PIN that can be separate from your lock screen PIN, and it even lets you set up security questions to reset the settings in case you forget the PIN.

Setting up Digital Balance for yourself gives you a default daily screen time limit of 6 hours. You can customize how long you want to let yourself use your phone, of course. The feature even divides screen time management into "work days" and "rest days," which by default are Monday through Friday and Saturday through Sunday. If your work week starts on a different day or isn't the traditional 5 day work week, you can customize which days are your work days and which days you aren't working on. Digital Balance's actual app timer feature is identical to Digital Wellbeing in that you can select the total length of time you want to give yourself access to an app before it locks you out, although Huawei does automatically organize your installed app list into categories so you can easily find apps that may be a source of your phone addiction.

Digital Balance's "Bedtime" mode is similar to Digital Wellbeing's "Wind Down" since both features gray the screen, though Digital Wellbeing also integrates Night Light and Do Not Disturb while Digital Balance restricts access to apps. I think "Wind Down" is the better subfeature here.

Lastly, Digital Balance lets you set a screen time management PIN to prevent changes to its settings. This may be helpful if you struggle with your phone usage, even to the point of overriding these anti-addiction features. With the addition of a PIN, you'll have to take one extra step before you can turn off time management features. That may deter you from turning off a feature that's only supposed to help you.


Desktop Mode

Samsung DeX versus Easy Projection

Bridging the gap between the smartphone and the PC is a feat attempted by many, though few have succeeded thus far. In hindsight, the 2011 Motorola Atrix 4G and its Webtop desktop experience were ill-fated. The dock and laptop accessories were expensive, the software was old, and the phone lacked the serious power of the smartphones of today. Microsoft's Continuum was doomed from the get-go because of the OS platform it ran on. Jide's Remix Singularity required a custom Android OS on your phone, while Sentio, makers of the Superbook, use a lot of hidden APIs to deliver a "desktop-like" Android experience. The limitations behind each of these solutions, whether they be price or platform, resulted in none of them ever really taking off. Both Samsung and Huawei learned from the failures of each and have devised desktop modes that are accessible and, most importantly, useful.

Huawei and Samsung are in a head-to-head battle over who can develop the best desktop mode experience. Samsung came out of the gate with DeX on the Galaxy S8, which while its implementation was solid, was marred by the price tag of the DeX Station. Huawei responded with Easy Projection on the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro. Huawei collaborated with the developers of the startup behind Phoenix OS to deliver a DeX competitor that didn't require an accessory—all you need is a USB Type-C (USB 3.1) to video output adapter and a device that supports USB 3.1. Samsung followed-up by introducing dockless DeX on the Galaxy Note 9 and Galaxy S9, only to be outdone a few months later by Huawei introducing wireless Easy Projection on the Mate 20. Although Samsung DeX has yet to go wireless, Samsung has the upper hand in functionality thanks to its Linux on DeX feature, which lets you run a full-fledged GNU/Linux distribution compiled for ARM. Now that we know how far Easy Projection has come, let's dive into what it offers right now.

Setting up Easy Projection

For starters, there are two ways to use Easy Projection: wired or wireless. Wired Easy Projection requires an EMUI 8.0+ Huawei or Honor device that supports USB 3.1 via USB Type-C. To start Easy Projection, simply plug a USB 3.1 Type-C to HDMI/VGA/DVI/DP/MiniDP cable into your smartphone and monitor/TV. Set the monitor/TV to the right input source, and your phone should automatically initiate Easy Projection mode. If you purchase a multi-input dock and use the right Type-C cable capable of Power Delivery, you may be able to start Easy Projection while simultaneously fast charging your phone. Sadly, getting the right accessories for this can be tricky—you'll have to do some research on our forums to find accessories that are affordable, available, and actually work. The downsides of wired Easy Projection are that your phone needs to be close to the external display, you may not be able to charge your phone while projecting, and you lose access to the Type-C port that could otherwise be used for Type-C audio output, keyboard/mouse, or external storage accessories. Wired projection will work on more external displays than wireless projection, but if you are able to wirelessly project then I recommend going for that.

Wireless Easy Projection is available on Huawei or Honor smartphones running EMUI 9/Magic UI 2. If your phone supported wired projection, then it will support wireless projection with the Android Pie update. Thus, the Huawei Mate 10, Huawei P20, Huawei Mate 20, Huawei P30, Honor Magic 2, and Honor View20 all support wireless Easy Projection. To use the full desktop experience, your external display/dongle must support Miracast. DLNA-enabled displays can show photos, music, videos, or other multimedia files opened in Huawei's stock Gallery, Music, or Video apps. All other wireless-enabled displays and devices like the Google Chromecast can only mirror the phone's screen. Unlike wired Easy Projection, wireless mode must be initiated manually from either a Quick Setting tile or Settings > Device connectivity > Easy projection.

Using Easy Projection

However you start Easy Projection, the available features will be the same. The bottom of the desktop interface consists of a start button on the left, a taskbar where you can place your favorite apps to the right of the start button, quick setting buttons to the right of the taskbar, and 3 button back/home/recent app navigation keys on the very right. In order from left to right, the quick setting buttons do the following:

  • Select audio output (phone or external display)
  • Change input method (what keyboard app you want to use if a physical keyboard isn't connected)
  • Open the notification center where you can view and interact with notifications, toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Mobile data, volume, or brightness level, or take a screenshot
  • Open the calendar app in a floating window

The start button opens up a list of your pre-installed apps. By default, the start menu pops up from the bottom left corner and takes up about half the screen, but you can maximize the menu by tapping on the top right expand icon. Also at the top are a screen lock button and search bar to find an app. You can launch any app on your phone from the start menu, though apps that aren't optimized will be hidden in a separate folder called "third-party apps." By optimized, I'm referring to apps that have been built with Android's split-screen multi-window mode in mind. Optimized apps like Google Photos, Gmail, Chrome, YouTube, Google Maps, and all stock Huawei apps will be opened in freeform multi-windows, app windows that can layer on top of one another, be resized, or be dragged around the screen. In contrast, unoptimized apps will only be shown in fullscreen mode.

While you're in the start menu, you can right-click on any app icon to either add a shortcut to the desktop or the taskbar. Right-clicking on an icon in the taskbar will let you unpin the app, while right-clicking on an icon on the desktop lets you open, delete, rename, copy, cut, or uninstall the app. The open action launches the app while uninstall completely removes the app from your device. Meanwhile, delete, rename, copy, and cut are unique features to Easy Projection. Just think of it as your standard desktop OS: deletes remove the shortcut from the desktop, rename lets you change the name of the shortcut, and copy/cut lets you clone or move the shortcut to another location. Lastly, right-clicking on an empty spot on the desktop lets you create a new (text) file, new folder, paste anything you've copy/cut, refresh the desktop, change the wallpaper, or change the screen size between small, medium, or large so you can adjust the desktop UI until it fits the entire viewable area of the external display.

The best part of all the above? You aren't denied access to your phone while using any of the above features. You can continue to project your screen with Easy Projection but still use your phone as usual. While Easy Projection is running, a persistent notification will be shown which lets you switch between desktop mode and phone mode (screen mirroring) or open the touchpad. The touchpad is what lets you move the pointer in Easy Projection if you don't have a mouse; it takes up nearly the whole screen and you can perform a left-click with a single tap, right-click with a two-finger tap, select text with a double tap and drag, or scroll by sliding up or down with two fingers. The touchpad also provides shortcuts to the screenshot action and a drawing tool which lets you draw lines in red, yellow, or blue on your phone to show on the external display—useful for notes or presentations. Lastly, if you don't have a keyboard plugged in, your phone's software keyboard app will show up on top of the touchpad whenever keyboard input is required. I don't recommend using Easy Projection without an actual keyboard and mouse as it's a miserable experience, but if you're truly desperate you could make it work.

Easy Projection could definitely do more, but I have to give credit to Huawei for making the feature live up to its name. You don't need a proprietary, expensive dock or anything like that; I bought a simple $17 USB Type-C to HDMI adapter from Amazon (in case you're wondering, it's the AmazonBasics one) and it works just fine on my Honor Magic 2, Honor View20, and Huawei Mate 20 X. None of my displays support Miracast, but TK Bay from our YouTube channel showed off how easy it is to use wireless Easy Projection. The fact that Easy Projection lets you use your phone while projecting and also works with existing apps because it relies on standard Android multi-window APIs is a big win in my view. The biggest disadvantage, naturally, is the fact that many Android apps haven't been optimized for multi-window, even though the APIs have existed since Android 7.0 Nougat. Perhaps the introduction of desktop mode in Android Q will push developers to support it better, but we're a long way away from Android Q adoption on most Huawei or Honor devices. Before that happens, we hope to see Huawei follow Samsung's lead and bring a full Linux distribution to Easy Projection. Hell, Huawei may even one-up Samsung and bring Windows 10 on ARM to the Huawei Mate 30. That's certainly wishful thinking on my part, but we've seen developers port Windows on ARM to existing devices and we know that Huawei and Microsoft have active mobile partnerships, so maybe they'll surprise us in October.


App Twin

If you have multiple social media and messaging accounts—perhaps one personal account and one work account—then you may find it annoying how many services don't let you sign in to multiple accounts. WhatsApp, for instance, only lets you sign in to a single account even if your phone has dual SIM support. That's where Huawei and Honor's App Twin feature come in. It lets you clone Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, QQ, or Wechat so you can log in to two accounts in each service.

App twin lets you clone a limited number of messaging/social media apps.

Cloned apps are denoted with a "2" overlaying the icon.

App Twin launched with EMUI 5.0 on the Huawei Mate 9, though not every smartphone that updated to EMUI 5 got the feature. Since the feature was introduced, it hasn't changed despite multiple EMUI upgrades. App cloning in EMUI isn't a unique feature since there are many third-party cloning apps like Shelter and Island which take advantage of Android's enterprise work profile.

While it's nice to see the feature built-in to EMUI and retained through multiple software version upgrades, I'm disappointed that App Twin's arbitrary restrictions are still there. App Twin says that the feature doesn't work with third-party launchers, which wasn't true on earlier EMUI releases. There's also no reason for App Twin to be limited to only 5 apps since it was able to clone any installed app, though that trick no longer works in EMUI 9. I'm not sure why EMUI limits App Twin's functionality so much, but the reason why certainly isn't technical.


Gaming Mode

If you're looking to game on a Huawei or Honor smartphone with the HiSilicon Kirin 980, then you won't be disappointed. Although the Kirin 980's raw GPU performance falls short of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, we found that Kirin 980 devices like the Honor View20 can easily handle the top Android games on Google Play. Kirin 980 devices can even play many retro games from the GameCube, Dreamcast, and Wii eras. To improve your gaming experience, EMUI 9/MagicUI 2 offers a dedicated gaming mode feature.

The feature, called "AppAssistant" for some reason, can be found under Settings > Apps. Here's what it can do:

  • Add games to a list to quickly launch them.
  • Enable "game acceleration" to turn on performance mode when gaming.
  • Enable "uninterrupted gaming" to block heads up notifications (except for incoming calls, alarms, and low battery warnings).
  • Manage Bluetooth gaming peripherals and their key mappings, if applicable.
  • Automatically disable knuckle gestures when gaming to prevent accidental inputs.
  • Automatically launch AppAssistant when a registered Bluetooth peripheral is connected.

AppAssistant is useful to prevent your gaming experience from being ruined by a notification, accidental gesture input, or preventable slowdown because you forgot to turn on performance mode, but it lacks many of the bells and whistles found in gaming modes from other smartphone makers. Razer Game Booster on the Razer Phone 2, for example, lets you set a per-game frame rate limit (with an optional FPS counter), per-game CPU clock speed limit, per-game display resolution, per-game performance mode (5 modes separate from the clock speed), and per-game anti-aliasing. You might say it's unfair to compare AppAssistant to a gaming mode from a more traditional gaming phone, but Samsung's Game Tuner has more features than AppAssistant. Given that Huawei and Honor both heavily market GPU Turbo, I had hoped that AppAssistant would be more robust.


GPU Turbo 2.0

The addition of GPU Turbo is one way in which Huawei makes up for the difference in GPU performance between the ARM Mali GPUs in their Kirin SoCs and the Adreno GPUs in Qualcomm's SoCs. The first iteration of GPU Turbo promised a "60% boost in gaming performance" and "30% less battery power when gaming." EMUI 9.0 brought GPU Turbo 2.0, which Huawei says provides a 36% reduction of in average touch input latency. If you're playing one of the games that support GPU Turbo, which includes PUBG MobileMobile Legends: Bang BangVaingloryArena of ValorRules of Survival, and NBA 2K18, then you'll have a great experience.

Gaming performance with GPU Turbo 2.0. Source: Huawei. Via: ITHome.

We can't tell you how well GPU Turbo 2.0 works because it's impossible for us to turn it off to do a comparison. We can, however, tell you how it works. Although Huawei never went into great detail about how they made GPU Turbo, the team over at Anandtech uncovered a lot of information about it. To summarize, GPU Turbo is almost entirely software based, though the presence of an NPU does help. Huawei creates TensorFlow neural network models for every game that GPU Turbo supports. These models are trained over thousands of hours to analyze the game's power and performance requirements, and the SoC's Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) parameters are adjusted to maximize performance and minimize power consumption. During actual gameplay, the model outputs the most optimal DVFS settings. That's the gist of how it works, though for more detail I recommend you read the Anandtech article in full.


Fingerprint Gestures

Like the Google Pixel, the fingerprint scanner (if the device you're using has a physical scanner) can be used for gestures. The gesture you'll probably use the most is the swipe down to show the notification panel. In stock Android, you can swipe down on the fingerprint scanner once to show notifications and once more to show the Quick Settings panel. In EMUI, however, you can only swipe down once to either show notifications or the Quick Settings panel when there's no notifications. While Huawei sadly blocks the API introduced in Android Oreo that lets you remap the fingerprint scanner, they do offer a few additional built-in fingerprint scanner gestures:

  • Take photo/video: In the EMUI camera app, touch and hold the fingerprint scanner to simulate the shutter button.
  • Answer call: During an incoming call, touch and hold the fingerprint scanner to answer.
  • Stop alarm: When an alarm is ringing, touch and hold the fingerprint scanner to stop the alarm.
  • Browse photos: When viewing images in full screen, swipe left or right on the fingerprint scanner to switch between images.

Sadly, all of these gestures only work with their respective default EMUI app. That means you can't use the browse photos fingerprint gesture in Google Photos, for instance.


Face Recognition

If your Huawei or Honor smartphone has a front-facing camera, then it supports facial recognition. Apart from the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, every Huawei or Honor device's facial recognition feature is purely software-based. That means it's insecure and can be tricked by showing a photo of you or someone who looks like you. It's also useless in low light conditions. If you can look past those flaws, then you'll find face recognition to be a convenient way to unlock your device. EMUI/MagicUI lets you decide if you want to automatically unlock your phone after your face is recognized. It also lets you pick whether to show or hide your notifications on the lock screen until your face is recognized. Lastly, you can also integrate face recognition into the App Lock feature so you can unlock access to your apps using your face.

If you care about security, then I recommend you turn off face recognition. That is, unless, you own the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro's face recognition feature is excellent. The Mate 20 Pro is unique among Huawei and Honor devices because it has 3D depth-sensing hardware, which lets the Mate 20 Pro's face recognition feature unlock your phone securely and quickly even in poor lighting conditions.


Motion Controls

I'm not a fan of gimmicky gesture controls, but fortunately, Huawei puts them all in one place so you can easily turn the useless ones off. Under Settings > Smart Assistance > Motion Control, you'll find 6 gestures. Here's a list of the Motion Control gestures and a brief description of what they do:

  • Flip to mute incoming calls, timers, and alarms
  • Pick up your phone to reduce the ringtone volume for calls, reduce the volume of timers and alarms, or to wake it up
  • Raise your phone to your ear to answer an incoming phone call, start a phone call, or switch to the earpiece if the in-call audio is currently routed through the speaker or Bluetooth headset
  • Take a full-screen screenshot by knocking on the screen twice with one of your knuckles, take a partial screenshot by drawing a circle with your knuckle, take a screen recording by knocking on the screen with two knuckles, or take a scrolling screenshot by drawing an S with a knuckle
  • Launch an app of your choice by drawing the letters C, E, M, or W with your knuckle while the screen is on.
  • Enable split-screen multi-window mode by drawing a line across the screen with a knuckle.

The 3 knuckle gestures are made possible using a technology called FingerSense by Qeexo. I personally never use them, so I disable all 3 gestures. I also disabled them because having them enabled will interfere with using your knuckles to scroll if your fingers are dirty. If you train yourself to use the knuckle gestures properly, though, you might find them handy if you take a lot of screenshots or launch the same apps over and over again.

The flip to mute gesture is also something you'll have to train yourself on, otherwise, you'll forget it exists. The Google Pixel 3's Flip to Shhh mutes your device even when you're not receiving a phone call, so I recommend replicating that rather than using the built-in Motion Control gesture.

The last 2 gestures—pick up and raise to ear—can be enabled and then forgotten about. There's no reason to not have them enabled because you can take advantage of them in your day-to-day routine without actively thinking about using them. A lot of device makers add features that require active input from the user, which can be problematic because it's easy to forget everything your phone can do. That's why I'm partial to the Google Pixel and OnePlus software because I don't need an encyclopedic knowledge of all the features that they offer. On the other hand, Samsung's One UI has so many features that even someone who has used Samsung software for years will forget what's possible. EMUI 9's knuckle gestures are easy to forget, but the motion gestures are hard to avoid. That's what makes them great.


Voice Control

Voice commands are available in English (US, UK, Australia), French, German, Italian, Spanish (Spain, Mexico), Portuguese (Portugal, Brazil), and Russian. Voice Control can be divided into two parts: voice wakeup and phone call features.

Voice Wakeup

Building a decent voice assistant is hard work. Both Google and Amazon have done the best jobs at making functional assistants in Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa respectively. In EMUI, there's no full-fledged, Huawei-made voice assistant pre-installed, though that could change down the road with the introduction of HiAssistant. On most devices, Huawei pushes you to use Google Assistant, though at one point the company partnered with Amazon to set Alexa as the default assistant app for its smartphones sold in the United States (a short-lived venture, sadly.) In addition to Google Assistant, EMUI also offers a feature called "voice wakeup" which can be found under Voice control settings in Smart assistance. Unfortunately, the feature falls short of other assistants.

Voice wakeup is lacking compared to full-featured smart assistants like Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple's Siri, or Samsung Bixby. There are only two things you can do with voice wakeup: find your phone by saying "where are you," or place a phone call by saying "call X" where X is one of your contacts. That's a fraction of what real voice assistants can do, which is why I'm disappointed that there's not even an option to launch Google Assistant when your voice is recognized. (I once made a workaround for this, but I haven't tested it in a while so I'm not sure it still works. Your mileage may vary if you decide to follow this guide.) And no, there's no longer an "unlock with voice match" option in the Google App for any Huawei or Honor phone anyway, so Voice wakeup is the only way to wake your phone with a hotword.

Speaking of hotwords, you can trigger voice wakeup by training it to recognize when you say "Okay Emy."The recognition of "Okay Emy" is okay—I was able to wake my Huawei Mate 20 X from a few yards away even with the radio playing in the background at moderate volume. Even after training it to recognize my voice better, I still have to enunciate my words the same way each time to get it to recognize me—meaning there's less leeway than with Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. Since there's no follow-up if it fails to recognize a command and it only works when the screen is off, you'll have to wait a few awkward seconds before you can talk to your phone again. I’ve had voice wakeup randomly trigger itself on multiple occasions, and it even once misheard me and called a contact while my phone was in my pocket. Embarrassing! Lastly, don't bother with voice wakeup if most of your contacts don't have typical English-sounding names.

One feature of voice wakeup that sounds nice on paper is the ability to add a custom hotword phrase, but the implication of such a feature existing in the first place should concern you about its efficacy. The reason why other voice assistants limit you to one, two, or maybe three wakeup phrases is because of the need to limit power use on the device. For example, to make "Hey Google" or "OK Google" wake up a Pixel phone, Google created two sound models that are loaded onto the Hexagon DSPs of the Pixels' Snapdragon SoCs. This allows the device to put the main application processor to sleep while the screen is off, so only the DSP is parsing audio from the microphone to determine if a hotword phrase was uttered. Google and Amazon deliberately chose their respective voice assistant's keywords because they won't interfere with your day-to-day speech and their phonetic structure (ie. the number of syllables.) To be fair, EMUI does warn you that choosing a custom hotword will result in worse voice recognition accuracy, which is why they recommend you stick with "Hello Emy" or choose "Panda Bear" or "Kiwi Bunny" if you want a different wakeup phrase.

Voice Control for Calls

For safety, EMUI/Magic UI offers a few ways to manage phone calls with voice. First, "quick calling" lets you long-press the volume down button to trigger its voice recognition service so you can tell it to call one of your contacts. Next, there's "answer calls with voice control," which lets you answer or reject an incoming call by saying "answer call" or "reject call" respectively. Lastly, there's "voice broadcast incoming calls" which says the name of the contact that's calling when you have a wired or Bluetooth headset connected. Besides the last feature I just mentioned, the other two have problems with discoverability. They're just easy to forget they even exist unless you train yourself to start using them. You might find these features useful if you're frequently on the road, but I find the contact and voice recognition to be inaccurate so I turned all these features off.


Mini Screen View

One of the best features in EMUI is Mini Screen View. It's a one-handed mode that not only shifts the entire screen down but also shifts the screen a bit to the left or right to maintain the aspect ratio. Mini Screen View only works in portrait mode, but it has no other limitations. You can browse web pages, watch videos, text friends, pull down the status bar, etc. all without having to stretch your fingers. It's an incredibly well done one-handed mode. LineageOS at one point straight up copied it when Huawei attempted to submit the feature to AOSP.

Enabling Mini Screen View is easy. If you have the 3 button navigation bar, you can shift the screen to the bottom left by swiping from the right to the left on the navigation bar. If you swipe from the left to the right on the navigation bar, the screen will shift to the bottom right. If you have the navigation gestures enabled, you can swipe from the bottom left or bottom right corner to shift the screen to the bottom left or bottom right respectively. Repeating any of these actions, tapping outside of the mini screen view area, or locking the phone will restore the screen back to its normal state.


Simple Mode

Tech-savvy users will have no problems using EMUI, even if there's an overwhelming number of features that most people will never use. For the less tech-savvy among us, EMUI and Magic UI both offer a "Simple Mode" that's accessible in Settings > System. Once enabled, the launcher is heavily simplified. Surprisingly, this is one area where Huawei's EMUI and Honor's Magic UI actually differ, so I'll talk about each software's take on Simple Mode in separate sections.

On Huawei smartphones running EMUI, enabling Simple Mode shows a tile-based launcher reminiscent of Windows Phone. Apart from the live weather and calendar tiles at the top of each page, the rest of the tiles are simply shortcuts to various stock apps. By default, there are shortcuts for the EMUI dialer, Google's Messages, EMUI contacts, EMUI camera, EMUI music, EMUI gallery, Google Chrome, and Settings. There's also a shortcut to return to the standard launcher (exit Simple Mode) and one tile that lets you add a shortcut to any app of your choice, though you can add or remove as many custom tiles as you want by long-pressing on any tile to add a new page. Custom tiles let you add a shortcut to any contact or app of your choice. The remaining pre-installed apps can be accessed in the "others" tile while the user's apps can be accessed in the "downloads" tile. Disappointingly, the simple mode launcher ignores your preferences for the default apps, so you can't launch Google Photos or Google Play Music when tapping on the gallery or music shortcut respectively.

On Honor smartphones running Magic UI, Simple Mode doesn't radically alter the stock launcher layout. Instead, it enlarges the font and icons and changes the stock launcher layout to be a 3x4 grid while placing all user apps into a folder called "others." You still have access to the widgets and other launcher features.

Simple Mode in both EMUI and Magic UI doesn't change the notification pull down area, but tapping on settings will bring you to a simplified page that shows 9 buttons: Wi-Fi, Mobile data, Bluetooth, Wallpaper, Text size, Sounds, Display, Exit Simple mode, and More settings. Tapping on Wallpaper, Text size, Sounds, or Display will bring you to their respective settings pages, while tapping on Wi-Fi, Mobile data, or Bluetooth will simply toggle that radio. Tapping on "more settings" will bring you to the full settings page.

For the average XDA reader, Simple Mode isn't of much use. However, we all have relatives who could do with a simpler UI, which is where Simple Mode comes in. If you need to loan your phone to a relative, you can turn on Simple Mode so they don't have to fiddle with whatever custom home screen you've set up. Alternatively, if you buy a Huawei or Honor device to give to a relative, you can advise them to keep Simple Mode enabled. There are simpler smartphones on the market aimed at senior citizens, but they make a lot of hardware compromises to keep costs down. Giving an elderly relative a larger smartphone with a great camera and Simple Mode enabled can keep them happy, at least based on my experience.

(If you toy around with Simple Mode on your own smartphone, don't panic if it looks like exiting Simple Mode wiped your home screen settings. Your home screen settings and layout are tied to the launcher style. Sometimes, disabling Simple Mode doesn't change the launcher style back to what it was before, resulting in your home screen becoming a mess. Simply change the home screen layout in Settings and your old home screen should still be there.)


Miscellaneous Features

There are a lot of additional features in EMUI 9/Magic UI 2 that aren't worth their own sections, but still warrant coverage because they can be useful. I'll briefly summarize each feature in a list:

  • Backup & Restore
    • There are 3 ways to backup and transfer your data between phones. The first is Google's built-in backup solution, which backs up Wi-Fi passwords, call history, and app data/files if the app allows it. Google's backup syncs to Google Drive and is tied to your Google account. Next is Phone Clone, which can be installed on other Android or iOS devices. Phone Clone transfers contacts, calendar events, photos, videos, and more from an old phone to a new phone. It's a local data transfer that requires you to use your old phone to scan a QR code or manually connect to the hotspot on the new phone. Lastly, there's Huawei backup, which lets you backup contacts, messages, call log, Huawei notes, Huawei audio recordings, calendar events, photos, music, videos, documents, and apps and their data. Huawei backup lets you perform a manual or automatic weekly backup to your PC via HiSuite, USB storage, a NAS device, or SD/NM card if the device supports it. Backups from Huawei backup can be encrypted, and you can choose exactly what you want to save before starting the backup. Huawei's backup is most useful for transferring your data from an older Huawei or Honor device to a newer one.
  • Change default volume button control action
    • In Android 9 Pie, Google changed the default behavior of pressing the volume button into changing the media volume. The default behavior on EMUI 9/Magic UI 2 is the same, though a setting in "Sounds" lets you revert back to the pre-Pie behavior and change the ringer volume when pressing a volume button.
  • Dolby Atmos
    • The Huawei P20, Huawei P30, and Huawei Mate 20 smartphone series all feature audio tuning by Dolby. The famous Dolby Atmos audio technology promises "a more enveloping soundfield, greater subtlety and nuance, crisper dialogue, maximized loudness without distortion, and consistent playback volume for a very wide variety of content. Dolby Atmos is enabled by default and can't be turned off when audio is outputting through the speaker. There are 3 modes to choose from: Smart (default), Movie, and Music. Smart changes the audio tuning depending on the content while Movie and Music are optimized sound profiles for video and audio respectively. Selecting Music also allows you to choose from 3 different "Intelligent Equalizer[s]:" Open, Rich, or Focused.
  • Eye Comfort
    • This is Huawei's name for Night Light. It behaves exactly the same as Night Light on stock Android. It applies a filter on the screen to ease eye strain. You can manually enable it in Display settings or from a Quick Settings tile. You can schedule it to start at a certain time at night and end it in the morning. Lastly, you can customize the intensity of the blue light filter using a slider.
  • Glove mode
    • Most gloves aren't touchscreen friendly because capacitive touchscreens sense the conductivity of your finger, as opposed to resistive touchscreens which detect the pressure of your finger on the screen. With Glove mode, the sensitivity of the screen is increased, so swipes can be detected even through the thickness of a glove. To enable Glove mode, you have to enable the toggle in Smart assistance settings and then swipe on the screen when wearing a glove. This two-step process makes sure that you don't accidentally turn on glove mode through normal use.
  • Mistouch prevention
    • Accidentally making a phone call when your phone is in your pocket can be quite an embarrassment. If you don't want to be the victim of butt-dialing, "mistouch prevention" will prevent you from interacting with your locked phone if the proximity sensor detects a nearby object. If for whatever reason mistouch prevention turns on and prevents you from legitimately using your phone, you can press the power and volume up buttons simultaneously to turn the feature off. It's such a simple and nice feature that doesn't at all get in your way.
  • Screenshots
    • Screenshot editing is a pretty minor feature to have, but it's really convenient to not have to open a third-party app every time I want to edit an image. When you take a screenshot in EMUI 9/Magic UI 2, the screenshot doesn't immediately disappear to the notification panel like on stock Android. Instead, a preview of the screenshot is shown on the bottom left. If you swipe this preview left or right, you'll dismiss the screenshot (it won't be deleted, don't worry.) If you swipe up, you'll open the share menu to share the screenshot. If you swipe down, you'll start the scrolling screenshot feature to take a longer screenshot. If you tap on the screenshot, you'll preview the image in the gallery app where you can either share, delete, edit, or start a scrolling screenshot. The editing tools are pretty basic; you can crop with no limitations on the aspect ratio, draw graffiti like lines, arrows, boxes, or circles, add a mosaic effect like a blur, or erase any changes you made. Lastly, screenshots are automatically compressed by saving them as JPEG files, and EMUI also inserts the package name of the currently focused app into the screenshot's filename.
  • Screen Recorder
    • One of the Quick Settings tiles that EMUI comes with is called Screen recorder. As its name implies, this lets you start recording your phone's screen. When starting a recording, a 3-second countdown overlay is shown on screen, though you can't interact with the screen to prepare in any way. Once the recording starts, a floating timer appears on screen. This timer can be moved anywhere on screen, but it does show up in recordings. To end a recording, you can either tap the floating stop button affixed to the timer or pull down the notification panel to interact with the screen recorder's notification. There are plenty of screen recording apps on the Google Play Store with far more features than EMUI's built-in option. EMUI's screen recorder doesn't let you change any quality settings before recording; it records all videos at HD (1280x616) resolution. Its biggest advantage, however, is the fact that it can record internal phone audio—something that third-party screen recording apps cannot do. If you wish to record internal phone audio, you have to deselect "enable microphone" before starting a screen recording. Doing so will record the phone's audio, but as a consequence the audio output is muted until you end the recording, so you can't actually hear what's being recorded. I wish Huawei would better explain to the user that disabling microphone recording will instead enable audio recording from the phone.
  • Scheduled power on/off
    • If you feel like your phone slows down over time and you find yourself rebooting your phone on occasion to fix this problem, then EMUI 9/Magic UI 2's scheduled power on/off feature is for you. This feature simply lets you schedule when to turn the phone off and turn it back on. You can turn it off for hours at a time on the weekend if you want to go cold turkey, or you can turn it off for a few minutes only to turn it back on just to clean up processes. The choice is yours. You can find the feature in "Smart assistance."
  • Screen saver
    • Android 4.2 Jelly Bean introduced a feature called "daydream," an interactive screen saver that activates when the phone is charging and the screen times out. You can set a photo album to display, a neat graphical pattern, a floating clock, calendar events, and much more, depending on the functionality third-party apps provide. Since Google introduced Daydream VR, "daydream" was renamed to simply "screen saver." The feature doesn't get a lot of love from Google or developers, but why should it? It's so simple that it doesn't need any feature additions. Yet somehow, Huawei messed it up. Screen savers are actually less functional on EMUI/Magic UI. The only screen saver you can set in EMUI is a photo album. What's worse is that the functionality to enable third-party screen savers is actually still there, so Huawei crippled the feature for seemingly no reason at all. Screen saver can be found in Settings > Display > More display settings.
  • Smart cover
    • Certain cases, like the Smart View Flip Cover that Huawei sells, offer additional functionality apart from protecting your device. These cases can turn the screen on or off automatically when the cover is closed, thanks to the magnetometer on your phone. When the cover is closed, the phone shows limited information on the right side of the display such as the date, time, step count, weather, calls, messages, and charge status.
  • Smart screen resolution
    • This feature, accessed in Display settings, automatically adjusts the screen resolution between HD+ and FHD+ on most Huawei and Honor smartphones. This is ostensibly done to save power, though it's really difficult to actually tell how well it works since there's no clear indication when the resolution shift happens. Furthermore, it's not clear if the resolution change is real; there's a big difference between changing the actual display panel resolution, which requires the display to actually support the resolution and the kernel to change between the resolutions, and changing what the device reports to apps. The former will have a real effect on the display power draw, while the latter has a smaller effect on power since all the pixels are still being drawn, albeit the GPU is stressed less because the system reports a lower resolution and is given lower fidelity graphics from apps. The output of "wm display" and "dumpsys display" both indicate that the display resolution doesn't actually change, but this could be a flawed way to tell if it's really working. In any case, I recommend you turn off smart screen resolution and leave your phone at its default screen resolution because it likely doesn't make much of a difference anyway.
  • Split-screen changes
    • When two apps are open in split-screen view, tapping on the center divider will bring up a button to switch the positions of the apps.
  • Status bar icons
    • Hidden away in "more display settings" under Display settings, there are two options to customize what shows up in the status bar. The first toggle shows or hides the carrier name in the status bar, something which Huawei can offer because they don't offer any phones on any greedy U.S. carriers. The second can show the current network download speed in Megabytes per second.
  • Navigation Dock
    • EMUI/Magic UI doesn't only offer three-button and gesture-based navigation. There's also a third way to navigate called the "navigation dock." It takes the form of a floating circle that is overlaid on top of all apps on your screen. You can drag it anywhere on the screen for comfort. You can tap it to go back, long press and release to go home, or long press and swipe left/right to open the recent apps overview. It's not an efficient way to navigate, but that's because it's not meant to be a replacement for the other way navigation methods. You can enable the navigation dock as well as gesture or three-button navigation. If you don't want the floating dock to show up all the time, you can toggle it from a Quick Settings tile, too.

Continue to Page 2 - Sharing and Privacy

Huawei Share

As you can guess by its name, Huawei Share is a feature designed to share the files on your phone with other devices. To be specific, Huawei Share lets you easily share the contents of your phone's storage with any Windows or Mac PC. EMUI provides easy-to-follow instructions to connect your Windows or Mac PC to your phone. You can choose the name that shows up for computers on the local network and the username and password used to authenticate the connection to your phone. Once connected, your computer sees your phone as a network drive that you can seamlessly transfer files to and from.

The reason it works so well on any Windows or Mac PC is also its biggest flaw: It uses the SMBv1 protocol. Microsoft disabled SMBv1 in Windows 10 because it's insecure, so to even use Huawei Share you have to intentionally enable an insecure feature. For that reason, I can't recommend enabling Huawei Share. If you need to set up your phone for remote file access, I recommend you use a third-party app like FX File Explorer because it supports a newer SMB protocol.

For what it's worth, Huawei Share isn't only intended for sharing files over a local network. Huawei also promotes sharing files to nearby printers for quickly printing documents. Either Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi Direct are used to connect to a local printer, so there's less of an issue with security. While Huawei Share does surface the print option in the share menu in a user-friendly manner, it doesn't actually do anything that isn't already natively supported in Android. Android 8.0 Oreo brought native support for printing to any Mopria-certified printer, while Android Pie introduced Wi-Fi Direct printing support. Unless Huawei offers some additional printing feature that I'm not aware of, the credit goes to the Mopria Alliance for bringing better printing to all Android users.


Password Vault

With so many data breaches every month, there's a good chance that at least one of your account's details have been compromised. Services like HaveIBeenPwned and Firefox Monitor can alert you if any of your accounts show up in a recent data breach, but you're better off taking preemptive action to secure your accounts. Enabling two-factor authentication or using a hardware token are the best ways to protect your accounts since it adds an extra layer of security on top of your password, but until password-less access becomes more prevalent, most people should start using a password manager of some kind. EMUI 9 and Magic UI 2 make it easy to start managing your passwords with the built-in Password Vault feature.

Password Vault, as its name implies, securely stores your usernames and passwords on your phone. Password Vault uses the built-in Autofill APIs introduced in Android 8.0 Oreo to save new passwords and automatically fill them in on request. You can view the vault's contents by going to Settings > Security & privacy > Password Vault and then entering the 6-digit PIN that you set up when you first enabled Password Vault. Here, you can also choose which apps to enable autofill for.

I applaud Huawei for adding a simple, built-in password manager, but their service is notably lacking a lot of features commonly found in other password managers. For example, I use the open source KeePass service on Android, Windows, and Chrome to save usernames, passwords, addresses, and more. I sync my KeePass database using Google Drive so it's available on all my devices. I secure my database using a very long password string, but for convenience, I enable fingerprint access on my phone. On the other hand, EMUI 9's Password Vault can only fill in usernames and credentials, can't be synced with other devices, and is limited to a 6 digit pin for protection. It's very basic and gets the job done for most people, but if you have any desire to effectively manage your passwords I recommend you move on to another service.


App Lock

It's hard to offer praise to Huawei for including a pretty basic feature, but considering the fact that stock Android doesn't have a built-in app lock (meaning you have to install a third-party app that either uses an Accessibility Service or hooks into the UsageStats API to constantly monitor the foreground app) and that the equivalent feature from OnePlus lacks face unlock integration, I do have to give credit to Huawei for their implementation. Located under Security & privacy in Settings, you'll find "App lock." You can probably tell by its name, but all App lock does is lock selected apps behind an extra layer of security. Locked apps can be unlocked by entering a 4 digit PIN of your choice, scanning your face with face unlock, or authenticating with your fingerprint. Once unlocked, the app remains accessible until you turn the screen off, after which you have to re-authenticate. App lock's settings are also locked behind the same second-layer authentication requirements, making it perfect for managing which apps a child can use on your device. If you somehow forget the PIN you set up for App lock, EMUI lets you reset the password after answering the security question you provided while setting it up.

My only complaint with App lock is that the settings to enable face unlock or fingerprint authentication are not accessible from App lock settings. Instead, they're found within their respective face recognition and fingerprint ID settings under Security & privacy. This harms discoverability of the features, in my view.


PrivateSpace

PrivateSpace is a feature that sounds completely unnecessary considering Android has supported multiple users for years, but the feature may be useful if you need to set up a second, hidden account that you don't want anybody to find out for whatever reason. For example, if you have a second user set up in Settings > Users & accounts > Users, then anyone who grabs your phone can see that there's a second account from the lock screen. If you want to hide the fact that there's a hidden account, then PrivateSpace is for you. The hidden account is just like any other user on the device—it has access to its own sandboxed files, apps, settings, Google accounts, etc.

You can set up a PrivateSpace by going to Settings > Security & privacy > PrivateSpace. You have to set a unique password, PIN, or pattern for the PrivateSpace, because you log in to PrivateSpace from the same lock screen you log in to your main account. You can even set up a separate fingerprint to access PrivateSpace! There's not much for me to complain about here; I have no need for the feature, but I recognize that it may have some utility for other people.


File Safe

If you share your phone with a partner or family member or would like to store some sensitive documents, you can use the "File Safe" feature located in Security & privacy settings or in the Files app under the "Safe" button. This feature lets you add images, videos, audio files, or any other file of your choice into password-protected storage. Since this is considered secure storage, EMUI doesn't let you open File Safe with face unlock, but it does let you associate your fingerprint for convenience. EMUI asks you to answer two security questions when setting up File Safe so you have a way to access your files if you forget your password. If you choose to associate your Huawei Account with File Safe, you can also restore access remotely if all else fails.

You can set up as many File Safes as you want on both internal or external (SD card on certain models or NM card on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, Huawei Mate 20 X, Huawei P30, or Huawei P30 Pro). EMUI lets you choose which safe you want to open by presenting a "switch safe" button when entering your password. However, you can't name File Safes so you'll have a hard time organizing multiple. If you want to delete a safe, you can do so from the safe's settings. Before deleting a safe, you have the option to move the files to either the File_Restore folder (default) or a folder of your choosing.

EMUI blocks taking screenshots of safe contents, so I can only show screenshots of creating the safe and the safe settings.

Is it actually secure, though? The answer to this should obviously be yes, but I've seen equivalent features from OEMs that both failed to actually encrypt any files and made it easy to bypass the password required to access the safe. Fortunately, I can confirm that EMUI's File Safe does provide some basic security for your files. I can't guarantee the safe can't be cracked because I don't know exactly what kind of encryption it uses, but you can clearly see that the files are inaccessible to the casual observer. Each safe is stored in a folder called /.File_SafeBox in the root of the internal or external storage. The . preceding the folder name ensures that most file managers, including EMUI's Files app, won't show the folder. Furthermore, the folder contains a .nomedia file to hide files in the directory from showing up in scans, which most gallery and file browser apps respect. While third-party file managers like MiXplorer or FX File Explorer can browse this directory if you enable the option to see hidden folders, the files themselves are encrypted so you can't open them. You won't even know what the file originally was because the file name has been scrambled too. Lastly, if the user does stumble upon this folder, there are readme files which warn the user not to touch anything in the directory because it can result in the loss of data.

I personally recommend you look into something like Veracrypt to create an encrypted container of your files that you can then store on cloud storage as a backup. Although Veracrypt doesn't have an Android app, there are Android apps that support Veracrypt containers.

Continue to Page 3 - EMUI Apps

Camera App

It's impossible to deny that Huawei and Honor have radically upped their camera games. Idrees Patel's review of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro found it to be a class-leader in daylight and low-light photography. Daniel Marchena's camera review of the less expensive Honor View20 found it to be "one of the best and most dependable shooters around." My own experience with the Huawei Mate 20 X and Honor View20 mirror Idrees' and Daniel's experiences. My opinion on the camera user experience differs from Idrees', however. Idrees noted that the Master AI has significantly improved in accurately recognizing scenes since his last experience with it on the Huawei P20 Pro. He says that Master AI has gotten to the point where he prefers keeping it on. I disagree; I still think it's too annoying. Sadly, turning it off significantly degrades the quality of pictures for most people, so you're forced to deal with the annoyances of Master AI.

If you've never heard of Master AI before, it's basically a helper service that recommends what it thinks is the right camera mode for the current scene. For example, if you point your phone at someone's face, Master AI will automatically switch the camera app to portrait mode. Unfortunately, Master AI tries to push what it thinks is the best camera mode even if you're thinking of something else. It can be incredibly annoying to fight, so I often find myself turning it off temporarily so it won't override what I'm trying to do. In the future, I hope Huawei and Honor give us better control over what modes Master AI tries to recommend. I also hope they turn off beauty mode by default because it makes faces look incredibly unnatural.

One basic feature that the EMUI Camera app gets wrong is the zoom control. The biggest problem with zooming in the EMUI Camera app is that you can't double tap on the viewfinder to zoom. Instead, you have to tap on the zoom button in the middle right side of the viewfinder. Tapping on the button cycles through the supported zoom modes. For example, the Huawei Mate 20 X cycles through 0.6X (wide-angle), 1X (normal), 3X (max optical zoom), and 5X (max hybrid zoom), while the Honor View20 cycles through 1X and 2X. You can also tap and hold then scroll up and down to choose an exact zoom level, though this isn't recommended since you'll be involving digital zoom.

Another issue I have with the camera app is the way you change camera modes. You change camera modes by either tapping on the name of the mode above the shutter button or scrolling the dial below the names left or right. You can't swipe left or right on the viewfinder itself to change camera modes. This means you have to position your finger in the right spot to change camera modes, while on the iPhone or Google Pixel you don't have to worry about accuracy as much when swiping to change camera modes. Before the Google Pixel 3, Google didn't allow you to swipe on the viewfinder to change camera modes. I'm hoping that Huawei and Honor will update the camera app to make it easier to switch modes.

The 3 issues that I just mentioned can all be easily fixed, and I don't think they ruin the camera experience. While I'm disappointed in the basic camera UX, I think Huawei does a great job at keeping things simple. There are a lot of features and camera modes to play around with, but if you have little experience with photography and need a refresher about what each feature does, you can tap an info button in most camera modes to find out what it does. The settings pages are also really simple so you don't have to deal with dozens of different toggles. That's because there's no single "settings" page that encompasses all of the different modes. Instead, tapping on the settings button in each camera mode will populate the settings that are specific for that mode.

Which camera modes are available on your device depend on the EMUI version and camera hardware. Here's a list of the camera modes that are on both my Huawei Mate 20 X and my Honor View20:

  • 3D Panorama
  • AR Lens
  • Documents
  • Filter
  • Good Food
  • HDR
  • Light Painting
  • Panorama
  • Slow-mo
  • Time-lapse
  • Watermark

Monochrome and Super Macro are only on my Huawei Mate X while Stickers and Artist Mode are only on my Honor View20. Flagship Huawei and Honor smartphones will probably have access to more camera modes than mid-range and budget devices, so you'll have to check a review for your specific device to see what camera modes it has.

There is one feature in particular that I want to give a shout out too. It's called 4D Predictive Focus and it's available on Kirin 970 and Kirin 980 devices like the Huawei P20 Pro, Huawei Mate 20 Pro, Huawei Mate 20 X, and Honor View20. It basically shows a bunch of squares on the object that the auto-focus is currently tracking. When there are a lot of objects in the viewfinder, it can be hard to tell what your phone has decided to focus on, which is where 4D Predictive Focus really comes in handy.

Lastly, if you don't have time to open the camera app to quickly take a picture, the EMUI camera app offers an "ultra snapshot" option. Enabling it lets you double tap the volume down button when the screen is off to quickly take a picture or open the camera. This provides similar functionality to the double tap power button gesture in stock Android, but EMUI's ultra snapshot is more limited since it doesn't work when the screen is on or when music is playing.


Phone Manager

EMUI has a lot of great, useful features, but there are also some features you should avoid like the plague. Phone Manager is one of those apps you should open, change some settings, then never look back. Sure, it provides some useful shortcuts to your mobile data usage, blocked call settings, and battery settings, but everything else is either useless or more trouble than they're worth. Let me run down the list of features and why I think you should avoid most of them:

  • Optimize: Right smack in the middle is a big "optimize" button. What does it do? It closes some apps to free up memory, cleans up "junk" files, runs an online "virus scan" and updates the associated database, and makes changes to some settings to ostensibly improve battery life. There are multiple problems here. First, clearing up RAM just for the sake of it does not help. Free RAM is used for cached processes, which helps in reloading apps you've previously opened. The kernel allocates memory to processes as necessary, so if a process really needs more RAM then the kernel will decide which processes to kill to free up memory. Trust the complex algorithms that were developed over the years for this purpose. Second, the efficacy of virus scanners on Android is hotly contested. While EMUI's virus scanner is built by Avast, a company that isn't surrounded by controversy other popular anti-virus solutions, there's not much it can do to help. Your device is mostly secure from malicious apps thanks to Android's permission model, while SELinux and verified boot protect the device from tampering. Use common sense when installing apps (ie. don't install shady-looking apps that suspiciously request sensitive permissions) and you'll be fine.
  • Cleanup: Also accessed from Settings > Storage, "cleanup" helps you free up storage space by recommending you delete large apps, files from Messenger or WhatsApp, "junk" videos, rarely-played music, APK files, and more. I guess "Cleanup" can be useful if you use it as a starting point to find out what's taking up so much space on your phone, but apart from the fine-grained Messenger and WhatsApp cleaner, I recommend you use Files by Google to free up space. My biggest issue with Cleanup is its auto-cleaning of "junk" files, which to be fair you do have to opt-in to. Unlike Files by Google, there's no transparency in what junk files it's choosing to delete. I would like to think it doesn't touch anything important so it probably errs on the side of caution, but who knows what it considers "junk." Next, and perhaps this one is a bit petty, but the feature is powered by 360 Security. Take a look at the company's Play Store page and decide for yourself whether you think their product seems trustworthy.
  • Dropzone: This is perhaps the most confusing feature in Phone Manager because its name doesn't tell you what it does while also being identical in functionality to another feature. From what I can tell, giving an app access to show their "dropzone" is basically the same thing as granting it the "display over other apps" permission found in Settings > Apps > Special access. Thus, a "dropzone" is likely a floating bubble or any other floating window. On the rare occasion that EMUI tells you an app has been blocked from showing its "dropzone," you'll now know where to find this setting.

My recommendation is to open up Phone Manager, go to its settings, turn off "smart tune-up" and "auto-clean junk files," then never open Phone Manager again unless you have to deal with a "dropzone." Don't fall for the virus scanning snake oil and stick to better storage cleanup apps.


HiTouch/HiVision

Although Huawei has yet to develop its own Google Assistant competitor for international markets, the company did introduce a Google Lens competitor in EMUI 9. Called HiVision, it can scan QR codes, translate text, scan products for shopping, or identify objects or landmarks. The QR code scanner is pretty straightforward, but here's a detailed breakdown of what the other three features can do:

  • Translation: Powered by Microsoft Translate, HiVision can translate text seen in the camera in real-time. Supported languages are English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, German, and Portuguese. I've found HiVision/Microsoft Translate to actually do a decent job in the few times I've used it to translate Chinese to English. There's even a neat pause button which lets you pause the viewfinder so the translated text doesn't disappear from you moving the phone!
  • Shopping: Like Google Lens, HiVision will attempt to identify the product you're looking at so you can shop online at retailers like BestBuy, Walmart, etc. HiVision's visual shopping AI recognition technology is provided by a company called ViSenze. It's a hit-and-miss for me. It can recognize products like my Blue microphone but fail at recognizing as many products as Google Lens can identify.
  • Identification: HiVision can identify food, landmarks, paintings, and other things. For food recognition, the Azumio Food Recognition API is used to provide nutritional information, though the accuracy of the calorie and weight detection is a bit off. Smartphones with time-of-flight sensors like the Honor View20 may provide more accurate results, though. Landmark detection is powered by TripAdvisor while painting recognition is powered by Artace Inc. Huawei boasts that HiVision can recognize "nearly 400 Western European landmarks" and "more than 10 million recognized famous paintings." That sounds nice, but it's the bare minimum of what I would expect from a Google Lens competitor.

While it's decent at the use cases that Huawei offers, HiVision is inferior to Google Lens. Google Lens is more accurate, can identify more, and also does everything from a single screen rather than 4. Google Lens is also more useful for archiving. If you want to select some text via OCR, you just point Google Lens at the text. Google Lens can also copy dates and addresses. HiVision can't do any of that.

You can certainly still use Google Lens on Huawei and Honor devices via Google Assistant or Google Photos, but HiVision is more convenient to access. HiVision can be accessed either from the camera app (the top left icon) or by enabling HiTouch in Settings > Smart assistance. HiTouch provides a shortcut to shopping search in HiVision. By pressing and holding with two fingers on any static image on the screen, HiVision will search for the product online.


Launcher/Huawei Home

Being able to change the default home screen launcher is such a simple feature, but it’s one of the biggest things that sets Android apart from iOS. From the wallpaper to the layout, launchers can be customized to fit your liking. EMUI’s launcher, called Huawei Home, is no different. It’s not as feature filled as the likes of Nova Launcher, Lawnchair, Action Launcher, or some of the other popular third-party launchers on Google Play, but it integrates nicely with EMUI and offers enough features to satisfy casual users.

Default Layout

The default layout of the launcher is simple. At the bottom of the screen is a fixed dock that holds up to 5 app icons. Tapping and holding then dragging on any of the icons in the dock lets you re-arrange the dock or change which apps are shown in the dock. Above the dock but below the app and widget area is an indicator that shows you which home screen page you’re viewing.

All apps are shown on the home screen across one or more pages depending on how many apps you have installed. If you drag an app’s icon on top of another app’s icon, the launcher will automatically add both apps to a new folder called “Folder 1,” which obviously changes as you add more folders. You can customize the folder’s name by tapping on its current name after expanding the folder. You can also add new apps to the folder by either dragging another icon to the folder or by tapping the “add” button in a folder. Lastly, you can re-arrange the apps in any folder by dragging them. Folders can be placed anywhere on a page, even in the dock.

The standard home screen style should feel at home for anyone coming from an iPhone, but if you install a lot of apps and don’t categorize every app into a folder, your home screen will quickly get cluttered, especially if you start adding widgets.

App Drawer Layout

Fortunately, you can change the home screen layout style to show an app drawer. The setting to change the home screen style can be found in Settings > Home screen & wallpaper > Home screen style. (For some reason, EMUI doesn’t surface this setting in the actual Huawei Home settings.) Once enabled, newly installed apps won’t be added to the launcher, which can be a problem if you’re still learning the name of a new app. The OnePlus Launcher adds a dot on top of the icon for newly installed apps to help you find your new apps. This is admittedly a minor issue, but one that can be easily fixed by Huawei.

You access the app drawer by tapping on the icon in the middle of the dock (its position is fixed). Tapping on a button to show the app drawer is already an outdated concept since Google introduced the swipe-up app drawer with the Pixel Launcher Android 7.1 Nougat. The swipe-up app drawer gesture has been added to many other launchers because it feels so natural, and Google’s Pixel Launcher on Android Pie takes things a step further by letting you transition between the app drawer and recent apps overview in one continuous swipe-up gesture. In comparison, Huawei Home offers no integration between the launcher and recent apps overview even though in Android Pie, the launcher itself handles the recent apps overview.

The app drawer itself is rather barebones. At the top is a row of 4 apps that the launcher places for quick access. These are called “app suggestions” and the apps are chosen based on the pattern of your recent device usage. Below that is a vertically scrolling, alphabetized list of all your installed user apps and default EMUI apps. Every app, except for certain system apps, is shown here - you can’t hide apps or add them to folders. You can search for a particular app by using the search bar up top or quickly scroll down to apps that start with a certain letter by dragging the quick scroll bar on the right. However, if you have a lot of apps installed, it can be annoying to scroll through this list to find an app you’re less familiar with.

Shortcuts

Android 7.1 introduced app shortcuts to let developers define commonly used entry points into their app. EMUI 9’s launcher, of course, supports this feature if you long-press on any app icon from the home screen or within a folder. If you have the app drawer layout enabled, long-pressing on an app while on the home screen or in a folder will show a remove option above the app shortcut list. On the other hand, long-pressing on an app while the app drawer is open gives you the option to uninstall the app. The inconsistency in the options is a bit annoying considering other launchers let you uninstall apps or view the app info page from any screen.

Widgets, Transitions, and Settings

Tap and hold on an empty part of a home screen page and you’ll see the home page shrink in size as a row of 4 buttons appears at the bottom of the screen. This is your home screen overview, where you can do the following:

  • Choose the default home screen page: The page with the blue home icon up top is the default page that launches when you tap the home button.
  • Add a new home screen page: Scroll left or right until you reach an empty page with a + symbol in the middle. Tapping on the + symbol adds a new page.
  • Re-arrange home screen pages: Tap and hold then drag left or right on any page to re-arrange the order.
  • Change the home screen wallpaper.
  • Add a widget. Choose from any number of widgets supported by the third-party apps on your device, or from the following EMUI apps:
    • 1x1 Screen Lock shortcut
    • 5x1 resizable or 5x2 non-resizable weather widget. Although the smaller 5x1 widget can be expanded to show more weather information than the larger 5x2 widget (specifically, the minimum and maximum temperature), the larger 5x2 widget can also show upcoming calendar events. Both Weather widgets can be configured to show time and weather information from two different locations if you open the Weather app, tap on “Weather widget” in the overflow menu, and choose a home city that doesn’t match your current location (basically, when you’re traveling.)
    • 5x1 digital, 5x2 dual analog, and 2x2 analog clocks. All 3 options also show the date below the time. The dual clock option lets you choose two different cities to check the time for. You can also change the dual clock option in Date & Time settings.
    • 2x1 resizable music widget. At its default size, it shows the song title, album art in the background, and the standard 3 media playback actions (previous, toggle pause, and next.) If you resize it to its maximum 5x2 size, you can also see the artist name and song duration.
    • 5x3 resizable monthly calendar widget or 5x2 resizable weekly schedule widget. The calendar widget shows a blue dot on any day that you’ve defined an event for, but the widget does not specify if there are multiple events. If you resize the widget to 5x6, up to two events from today’s agenda can be shown. Otherwise, you can tap on any day in the widget to open the calendar app to that specific day to see what events you have scheduled. The schedule widget can be resized all the way to 5x6, but it’s also scrollable so you can see events for up to a week from today.
    • 3x1 resizable gallery widget, which can show cycle through an album of images or permanently show a single image. Each image in the album is shown for about 15 seconds. You can resize this widget up to 5x6 in size.
    • 1x1 contact, speed dial, and quick message widgets.
    • 5x2 resizable notepad widget. It shows you your recent notes with their title, the date it was last edited, and a thumbnail of the note. You can tap on any note preview to view the full note or tap the + icon in the top right to add a new note.
    • 5x4 resizable email widget to show emails from an account of your choosing.
    • 5x1 non-resizable power control widget to toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Location access, Auto-sync, and Brightness.
    • 1x1 widget shortcut to start the “optimizer” function in Phone Manager. The widget shows the current RAM usage as a percent of total RAM.
  • Change the transition animation between home screen pages. Choose from the default, perspective, squeeze, box, flip over, rotate, page, or windmill animations.
  • Open home screen settings to do the following:
    • Change the home screen grid size from as low as 3x3 to as high as 5x6.
    • Lock the current home screen layout from any changes.
    • Enable automatic alignment to fill empty spaces in the home screen when you remove an app.
    • Enable a shake gesture to realign home screen icons.
    • Change settings for app icon badges to show either a dot for new notifications or a number for unread notifications. Showing the number of unread notifications is only supported for certain apps like Google Duo, Facebook, LinkedIn, Messenger, Telegram, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc, while notification dots can be shown for any app.
    • Disable app suggestions from showing in the app drawer and unified search.
    • Enable home screen looping so you can continue swiping left or right to return to the default home page. Enabling this option turns off HiBoard.
    • Toggle HiBoard, Huawei Home’s launcher feed for news and shortcuts.

If you swipe down on any home screen page or tap the search bar in HiBoard, you’ll open up the unified search bar for Huawei Home. Here you can search through your apps, contacts, files, or calendar. If you don’t get a match, you can tap the “search online” option to open Google search with that search query pre-filled.

HiBoard

HiBoard takes up the home screen page to the very left if enabled. It can show an overview of your fitness data from Huawei Health, specifically your current step count, calories burned, and kilometers walked. It can also give you shortcuts to see your favorites gallery, see your latest photos, add a new note, open your to-do list, or start an audio recording. All of these features are integrated with the stock gallery, notepad, and voice recorder apps respectively. Next, a feature called “SmartCare” can surface important notifications and reminders for you, give you local weather alerts, show your phone usage statistics, remind you of certain daily tasks from your agency, and keep track of your monthly data usage. Lastly, at the very bottom is a list of news articles.

As you can see, HiBoard is most effective when you’re using Huawei’s services. If you’re heavily tied to the Google ecosystem, then HiBoard will probably not be very useful. Although there’s no way to switch HiBoard for Google Discover in settings, there’s a way to switch the feed if you’re willing to use an ADB command. Simply disable/uninstall HiBoard via ADB and Huawei Home will instead use Google Discover as its minus one screen. I was shocked to see that Huawei Home provides this fallback functionality, as even OnePlus forces you to root your phone just to get Google Discover working on international models of the OnePlus 6T. Kudos to Huawei for not crippling the launcher if you disable HiBoard.

If you want to replace HiBoard with Google Discover, run this ADB command and then reboot:

        adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.huawei.intelligent
    

Other Stock EMUI Apps

With the exception of Google’s Messages, Chrome, and Play Store apps, every basic app you would expect to find on a smartphone is provided by Huawei. Huawei has its own file manager app, weather app, calendar app, clock app, music app, etc. All of these apps can be replaced by third-party alternatives from the Google Play Store, though they can’t be uninstalled without resorting to ADB commands.

Google’s own suite of basic Android apps is already pre-installed as per Huawei’s licensing agreement, though you have to manually go to Settings > Apps > Default apps to set them as the default. Since these apps are provided for convenience and can be easily replaced with Google’s apps, I’m only going to briefly describe each of EMUI’s default apps.

  • Dialer and Contacts
    • The Dialer and Contacts are merged into one app, accessible via tabs at the bottom. Although it’s possible to use Google Contacts in place of the Contacts, you can’t fully replace the EMUI Dialer app with the Google Phone app unless you use a modified version. The stock Dialer app is necessary to handle emergency number dialing, so don’t even think about disabling it with ADB.
    • Dialer
      • The Dialer is very barebones - there’s no spam detection, Call Screen, or any other smart functionality like Google’s Phone app. The Honor Magic 2 running Magic UI 2.0 has a special real-time, in-call voice translation feature in its dialer app, so we know that Huawei is capable of integrating intelligent features into its dialer app. Sadly, the global version of the dialer app only has settings for call log merging, SIM ringtone and vibration toggles, speed dial, respond by text, and other standard dialer app features. One feature that’s pretty nice is call and message blocking; you can set rules based on a blocklist/trust list, keywords, or block calls from everyone, strangers, or unknown/hidden numbers. Lastly, there is call recording functionality—a feature which Google blocked for third-party apps in Android 9 Pie—but you'll have to sideload the HwCallRecorder APK to make it work. Once you sideload the APK, you'll see a new "record" button in the in-call UI; all recordings are saved to the Recorder app.
    • Contacts
      • EMUI’s Contacts may not look as visually appealing as Google Contacts, but the functionality is all there. You can import contacts from Google Contacts, Telegram, Duo, WhatsApp, or Messenger. You can associate your LinkedIn, too. Group management and batch SMS/email sending to your contacts in groups are possible. Business cards can be added to contacts by scanning them with the built-in scanner; there’s no need to use a third-party app full of ads like CamScanner. You can create your own personal business card that others can scan, too. Lastly, for individual contacts, you can have all calls from them send to voicemail if you’re feeling really petty.
  • Gallery
    • The EMUI 9 gallery app doesn't hold a candle to Google Photos, but it gets the basics right. Like Google Photos, you can pinch and zoom in the main "photos" tab to expand and see your images in a monthly view. You can also search your photos by time, the people in the photos, or the objects in the photos. You can view your photos in a slideshow or overlaid on a map if you have any photos with location information. When viewing an image, you can press the information button to see the histogram and other metadata, tap the share button to send the photo to another app, tap the favorite button to add it to a "favorites" album, tap the delete button to move the photo to the recycle bin before its deletion in 30 days, tap the edit button to perform a multitude of image manipulation actions, and much more like adding notes or printing the photo. If you have a ton of photos, you can pinch out to quickly scroll left and right through your photos in a carousel. Lastly, the highlights and discover tab show you automatically curated collections of photos based on location, persons, scenery, or objects much like Google Photos.
  •  AppGallery
    • AppGallery is EMUI’s app store. You can download and install apps from AppGallery, much like the Google Play Store. There are categories, top app charts, app management tools, and more. There’s not much use for AppGallery if you live outside of China, though Huawei does sometimes publish apps exclusive to their devices on AppGallery. They also publish updates to built-in EMUI apps, so do check AppGallery on occasion for new updates. Lastly, you can use AppGallery to redeem certain gifts and prizes like the Honor View20’s free Fortnite skin.
  • Files App
    • Stock Android’s built-in file manager is extremely barebones, and the Google Play app suite only recently started including Files Go by Google. On the other hand, EMUI has had a Files app for years. You can manage your local storage, external storage, Huawei cloud storage, or connect to local network storage from here. You can filter image files, video files, audio files, document files, and more. You can access your safe from the Files app. You can browse folders with hidden files (files that start with ‘.’ in their names or folders that contain a .nomedia file). The “recent” view gives you a neat overview of all recently added images, APKs, documents, videos, etc.
  • Downloads
    • The downloads app is also a file manager, although it has a lot less file management features than the Files app. You can browse the contents of your downloads folder, your images, your audio files, your videos, and any supported cloud storage providers. If you enable the option in the overflow menu, you can also browse the entire contents of your internal storage. Basic file operations like move, copy, and paste are supported, and you can also open new instances of the app for better multitasking.
  •  Weather
    • Powered by AccuWeather, the Weather app gives you a detailed, hour-by-hour weather forecast for the current day and a simplified forecast for the next 5 days. It also shows you the comfort level (what the temperature actually feels like), the wind direction and speed, and the moon cycle. You can view all of this information for multiple cities by swiping left and right anywhere after adding a city in settings.
  • Calendar
    • EMUI's calendar app lets you check your calendar on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly view. It syncs with your Google Calendar accounts so you can import any existing calendars. The calendar defaults to the Gregorian one, though you can change it to the Chinese, Japanese, Persian, Hebrew, Islamic, Buddhist, Indian, or Korean calendars. The app can even insert calendar events for national holidays, which you can download for each region. You can customize the calendar view to hide declined events, show the week number, change the weekly starting day, customize which days constitute the weekend, or lock the time zone for events. Reminders are also integrated into the app much like Google Calendar.
  • Clock
    • The clock app doesn't have the nifty Spotify, Pandora, or YouTube Music integrations that Google Clock offers, but it does provide a basic alarm, world clock, stopwatch, and timer. There's nothing exceptional about the app except perhaps its world clock view which is convenient when you have friends, family, or coworkers in other parts of the world.
  • Compass
    • The compass app helps you get your bearing. The current direction aligns with the center-top of the phone. The four cardinal directions are shown in the center, with north being highlighted in red. The compass dial tells you your exact direction with respect to north. At the top, you can see your latitude and longitude while at the bottom the atmospheric pressure and altitude are displayed using sensor readings from your phone. The accuracy of the altitude can be improved by enabling online altitude calibration in settings, which uses your current location to obtain the sea level pressure at your location. Lastly, if you swipe right in the app, you can access the compass app's leveler tool; the leveler uses your phone's gyroscope to determine horizontal flatness while it uses a combination of the gyroscope and camera to determine vertical flatness.
  • Health
    • Huawei Health lets you track your steps using the phone's built-in pedometer, and you can take advantage of this to track your runs. The app even helps you train for marathons by offering 4 running plans of increasing difficulty to ease you in and build up your stamina. For cyclists, you can use your phone's GPS to track your cycling distance. Depending on what Huawei or Honor accessory you have, you can track your heart rate (and set warnings and limits depending on your build), sleep pattern, swimming activity, etc. To lose weight, you can set daily step goals and a target weight which you have to manually monitor by inputting your weight loss history in the app.
  • Music
    • An extremely simple app to play locally stored music files, which few people do these days. You can set favorite songs, make playlists, or listen to recently played songs. You can filter songs by length or folders, set a sleep timer, or show lyrics on the home screen widget. There's little reason to use this app in place of any third-party alternative, cloud storage-based or not.
  • Recorder
    • Another simple app that's there to merely provide basic functionality so you don't have to search the Play Store. The Recorder app lets you record audio from the microphone with only a few options available to the user: add tags during the recording which you can later name, pause the recording, or toggle voice enhancement (which presumably helps pick up voices amidst background noise.) Call recordings will be visible in the Recorder app, too.
  • Notepad
    • A simple Google Keep alternative if you don't mind the lack of cross-platform synchronization, Notepad lets you create notes with typed or handwritten text or images inserted from the gallery or camera. You can tag and search notes to keep things organized. The app also provides a simple to-do list.
  • WPS Office
    • This is a third-party app suite which is pre-installed in EMUI. It provides basic document processing functionality; you can view and edit files compatible with Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, and more. EMUI sets WPS Office as the default handler for Word documents, Excel sheets, PDF files, PowerPoint presentations, and Text files. You can uninstall WPS Office in favor of Google Drive or Microsoft Office.
  • Microsoft Translator (Huawei Mate 10, Huawei Mate 20, Huawei P20, and Huawei P30 series)
    • An alternative to Google Translate that actually does a decent job at translating between languages. Like Google Translate, you can translate spoken or typed text (one-way or two-way), translate text from the camera viewfinder, translate text from images in your gallery, or start a group to let multiple users join in on a multi-language conversation. Translations through the camera occur in real-time, with the translated text overlaying the original text in the viewfinder. Microsoft Translator supports 62 languages and Klingon, which is far less than what Google Translate offers but should be enough to cover your travels to most destinations worldwide. Language packs can be downloaded for offline translation, though only text and image-based translations are supported while offline. On the Huawei Mate 20 and Huawei P30, Microsoft Translate offers "fully neural on-device language translations" which means that translations are quick and accurate even without a network connection. Lastly, the app offers a phrasebook to help you learn essential phrases in another language. Overall, Microsoft Translator is more useful than Google Translate even if it doesn't translate as many languages. The app definitely defied my expectations.
  • SwiftKey
    • The immensely popular third-party keyboard app is made the default on EMUI global releases. I'm personally a Gboard fan, but SwiftKey has a lot of features so you won't be disappointed by its presence here.
  • HiCloud
    • If you aren't already tied to Google's app suite and plan to use the stock EMUI apps, then you may be interested in Huawei's Cloud backup solution. You can set up automatic backups of the images in your gallery, the contacts on your phone, the events on your calendar, the notes you've taken, your Wi-Fi logins, your audio recordings, and your blocked numbers. You can also sync any file of your choosing by moving them to your "Huawei Drive" in the Files app.
    • All users get 5GB of free online storage and 1 month of free 50GB of storage, but you'll have to purchase additional storage. Huawei lets you buy 50GB, 200GB, or 2048GB cloud storage allotments with a monthly subscription or a one-time payment for 12 month access. Although Huawei Cloud is cheaper at the 200GB tier, Google One offers more free storage for all users, is cheaper at the 2TB tier, and offers more cloud data tiers for data-hungry customers.
  • Updater
    • EMUI's built-in system update app lets you choose when new updates get installed. You can check for an update manually or set it up so updates automatically get applied between 2:00 - 4:00 AM at night when your phone is not in use. You usually don't get the option to choose when updates happen on other phones, though most other devices also don't try to force updates on you like EMUI does. For security, it's probably better that EMUI nags the user about updates, though.

Conclusion

After reading this review, I hope you can now consider yourself a master of EMUI. Most smartphone reviews barely give a passing thought to the software they run on, despite the fact that you'll be interacting with it on a daily basis. No matter which Huawei or Honor smartphone you have, it'll be running EMUI 9. Taking the time to learn its ins and outs could help you reduce your app clutter by uninstalling third-party apps you don't need, and it can also open the door to new ways for you to use your phone. Although, just because you're now intimately familiar with EMUI 9 doesn't mean you've learned all there is to know. Huawei and Honor are beginning to roll out incremental updates to their Android Pie-based software—EMUI 9.1 and Magic UI 2.1 respectively. In the final part of my review (set to go live soon), I'll go over the changes that EMUI 9.1 brings to the table.

Note: Huawei and Honor have stopped providing official bootloader unlock codes for their devices. Therefore, the bootloaders of their devices cannot be unlocked, which means that users cannot root or install custom ROMs.