The Cold War, which began last spring between Huawei and the United States, aimed at isolating the Chinese company from the global tech community, was not crowned with much success for the American side. Despite the fact that Donald Trump banned local businesses from cooperating with Huawei, depriving branded smartphones of the brand access to Google services, the company managed to stay on its feet. Not only did it launch its own app store to replace Google Play, it also defended the right to update all devices that entered the market before the imposition of sanctions. True, its validity period has already expired.
Huawei may lose access to updates Android
The license that allowed Google to supply Huawei with update sources for its smartphones ended tonight. About this with reference to the internal documentation regulating the work of the search giant, writes The Washington Post. Despite the fact that, in accordance with the general legal principle, the law does not have retroactive effect, which means that the actions of the US sanctions, logically, should not apply to old smartphones Huawei, they also fell under the license. Therefore, both they and the new devices of the brand will lose updates.
Ban on updates Huawei
The license for updates has expired, and a new one is not yet expected
In this case, we are talking about security updates, because Android 11 after release will be made publicly available, and this will allow developers Huawei to adapt the new OS version. But the company will no longer be able to receive regular security updates. Despite the fact that she did not practice monthly updates of her smartphones before, patches were still released every 3-4 months. Therefore, users of branded devices Huawei risk being left without more or less stable fixes for bugs and vulnerabilities present in the firmware.
To be eligible to update your smartphones further, Huawei you need to get the US Department of Commerce to renew the license. Only this department has such a right, however, in case of tougher sanctions Huawei, it may remain without a license. And, I must say, such an outcome, given the escalation of the conflict between China and the United States, is quite likely. After all, Trump banned American companies from cooperating with WeChat and TikTok. This means that there is a possibility that a similar ban will affect Huawei.
Why updates are needed
Smartphone owners will be at risk without updates
The loss of security updates can have a negative impact on the state of the defense mechanisms of smartphones Huawei. Whatever it was, but regular patches allowed us to keep the platform in a more or less secure state. And in their absence, the owners of branded devices of the brand may be exposed to a serious risk of hacking or infection with malware, which in itself is quite unpleasant and in the long term can lead to a massive churn of users.
Whether Huawei itself can start releasing security updates for its smartphones bypassing Google is hard to say. On the one hand, the company's developers thoroughly know the firmware that ensures the performance of branded devices Huawei and Honor. But, on the other hand, for some reason they still have not abandoned the services of Google, which continued to supply them with security patches. Therefore, it is possible that this issue is much deeper than it might seem at first glance, and, therefore, the risk of users refusing from Huawei remains.