The ongoing US trade ban had ushered Huawei into a new era of innovation as the company looks to start new life without the backing of Google Mobile Services on it’s upcoming smartphones and tablets.
On that count, the company has worked doubly hard over the past two years to come up with it’s own suite of alternative services dubbed as Huawei Mobile Services to make up for the lack of Google apps on it’s devices.
While most users aren’t too concerned about having access to Gmail or Google Drive apps that are usually pre-installed in Android smartphones, many are still concerned whether the omission of Google Play store impedes their ability to download apps easily on Huawei devices.
In fact, that was also one of my main concern when I first heard about the removable of Google services back in 2019. However, my worries quickly fade off after I spent around two weeks with the Huawei Mate 40 Pro for my review.
Although you won’t get to see Google Play store pre-installed in new Huawei devices, but you do get a reliable in-house alternative known as AppGallery to help with app installations on your device.
Despite being a relatively new platform, you can easily find most of the popular apps on AppGallery including localized ones like TraceTogether and DBS PayLah! to name a few.
Just like how you normally install apps through Google Play store, all you have to do is simply search for the app that you’re intending to download and hit on the install button to start using the app on your device.
Since AppGallery is an official app distribution platform developed by Huawei, it’s absolutely safe to download apps from the platform which has been reinforced with several layers of security check to safeguard user’s privacy.
Also, you can expect app updates to be rolled out pretty much within the same timeframe as those that were downloaded from the Google Play store. Therefore, you can be assured that your apps are always up to date.
However, on rare occasions when you can’t seems to find an app that you’re looking for in AppGallery, there are still multiple ways to easily install apps that you want on your Huawei device. Without further ado, let’s check them out!
1) Transfer apps from your existing smartphone
If you happen to be an existing Android/ iPhone user, then you’ll probably be glad to hear that you can actually migrate the apps you have on your current smartphone over to the new Huawei device seamlessly via a Phone Clone app.
The entire process is extremely straightforward and involves just a couple of clicks to begin the migration process. The video we embed above offers a step-by-step guide on how to accomplish this without breaking a sweat.
2) Use the built-in Petal Search feature
Apart from AppGallery, Huawei devices are also pre-installed with another handy feature known as Petal Search. While this feature works primarily as a search engine, Huawei actually extends it’s functionality to search also for apps from reliable third-party app stores like Aptoide and APKfun.
Typically, AppGallery will show up on top of the search result so long the app is available on the platform, followed by third-party app stores where the app is also available for download.
In the event that the particular app you’re looking for isn’t available on AppGallery, you can easily download the app via any of the app stores that appear om the list by clicking the ”Install” button. It’s really as simple as that.
3) Download a third-party app store
Most of the time, AppGallery and Petal Search would suffice in catering to your app needs. However, having another app store on the phone might sounds like a good idea for those who’re familiar with third-party app stores like Aptoide.
For those who may not know, downloading apps from popular third-party app stores like Aptoide is pretty common for users who want to download apps that are not available in their country/ region.
From my personal experience so far, Aptoide is generally a safe and reliable platform to download mobile apps. However, you do need to ensure that the apps you’re downloading have a green shield with a check mark which signifies that the app is free from malwares.
Therefore, it’s highly recommended to download only apps which have this icon on it’s download page to put yourself on a safer side.
4) Download the APK directly from the developer’s website
Last but not the least, you can also choose to download app directly from the developer’s website itself. For instance, you can download WhatsApp’s APK directly from it’s official website and subsequently install it on your device.
Even though this is another safe method to download apps on your Huawei device, but it’s slightly more cumbersome than installing it directly from AppGallery or Petal Search since you probably need some time to navigate to it’s download page.
As of now, these are the easiest methods to download mobile apps on any Huawei devices be it smartphone or tablets. However, we’ll continue to keep this article updated if there are any new methods.
