Huawei phones had bootleg access to Google apps – not anymore and that means more pressure outside China

One of Huawei Technologies’ biggest trade war headaches has just gotten worse, as an unofficial workaround to the Trump administration ban on using Google apps and services has been quashed.

Security researcher John Wu published an illuminating post Tuesday that explained how users of Huawei’s Mate 30 Pro were able to manually download and install Google apps, despite a US blacklisting that prohibits the Chinese company from using American components and software. The process allowed the Mate 30 Pro (along with the basic Mate 30) to run popular apps like Google Maps and Gmail that otherwise would not be permitted.

In the wake of Wu’s revelations, the Mate 30 devices lost their clearance to manually install Android apps, as reported by a number of smartphone experts. Only Google is able to make that kind of change through what is known as its SafetyNet anti-abuse check.

“Although this ‘back door’ requires user interaction to be enabled, the installer app, which is signed with a special certificate from Huawei, was granted privileges nowhere to be found on standard Android systems,” Wu wrote on Medium.

Google declined to comment for this story.

An easy-to-use app enabling the installation of Google apps and services on the Mate 30 Pro, called LZPlay, had emerged alongside the device’s release, however it has disappeared after Wu’s posting. The researcher said in his findings that “it is pretty obvious that Huawei is well aware of this ‘LZPlay’ app, and explicitly allows its existence.”