Huawei’s new smartphone will be officially released in France on December 9, without Google applications and services. However, there is a way to install them.
The Huawei Mate 30 Pro will finally be officially sold in France. The first high-end smartphone from the Chinese brand not to embed Google applications due to sanctions imposed by the US administration, the device will only be available for purchase on the Huawei site, initially.
But the absence of Google services and more particularly of the Play Store, could drastically curb public interest in the Huawei Mate 30 Pro. A few weeks ago, before the release of the mobile in France, a method – nothing official of course – made it possible to easily install Google services on the device using a simple file. APK installation. The manipulation didn’t work long after it was discovered to open a backdoor in the smartphone’s firmware. Huawei, which had been accused of being the source of these files, strongly denied and shut down the site providing the required files.
A risky new installation method
Since then, hackers have looked into the issue and found another solution. More tedious to set up than the first, it is based on the restoration of a modified backup of a Huawei smartphone.
We were able to test this method on our loaner successfully. Be careful, however, we strongly advise against doing it. The origin of the files used to install Google services is not formally identified and represents a significant risk for your personal data. We extracted the files from this modified backup and submitted them to virus scanning tools. Not surprisingly, several potentially dangerous elements were detected.
A danger to the security of your data
To perform the manipulation, it is first necessary to recover the necessary files by downloading them to an obscure Google Drive. The elements contained in the zipped archive must then be transferred to a USB key that is connected to the Mate 30 Pro in order to copy certain files to the internal memory of the device.
You must then restore the smartphone using the backup stored on the USB key, install the various APKs of Google applications and services, but above all, use an administration application that requires maximum permissions on the device, with all the risk of security that this may entail for your data.
A restart of the smartphone later, the Google Play Store and Google services are effectively installed and functional, perhaps at the cost of compromising your most sensitive personal data.