Even though Huawei's smartphone business is struggling in the face of continued US sanctions, the company is making constant efforts to provide a well-rounded software experience on its devices. Not only is the company working on a first-party alternative to Android, called Harmony OS, but it has also released a couple of alternatives to Google's services, like HMS and HMS Core, AppGallery, Petal Search, and Petal Maps over the last two years. Although these services haven't really caught on outside of China, Huawei is now gearing up to launch its own email service, called Petal Mail, to fill the void left by Gmail.

According to a recent report from GizChina, Huawei has already started testing its Gmail alternative in China and users can now register for it by following this link. Registering for the service will get you a @petalmail.com email ID and the privilege to provide crucial feedback during its initial testing phase. As a separate report from ITHome reveals, users who register for the service will be redirected to the page shown below.

Huawei's Petal Mail service seems to have a very minimal interface at the moment, with a couple of options in the side menu. These include Inbox, Starred, Draft, Sent, Trash, and Spam. The interface is divided into two columns, with the first column presumably to show all the emails in a user's inbox and the second to show the selected email in an expanded form.

As of now, we have no further information about Huawei's new email service. However, the aforementioned reports reveal that the company has also introduced a new virtual currency, called Petals, for its users. While we can't say for sure what this currency will be used for, ITHome claims that it's currently valued at CNY0.01 (~$0.0015). We'll update this post as soon as we learn more about Petal Mail and Huawei's new virtual currency.