Get ready to unleash your inner artist! Huawei is launching GoPaint, a brand-new self-developed painting app designed specifically for tablets.
The official Huawei account teased the app’s arrival with the tagline “Creation begins here!” Mark your calendars for May 7th, because GoPaint is set to launch.
Packed with Features for Creators of All Levels
GoPaint boasts a wide range of brushes and intuitive features, making it easy for both beginners and experienced artists to dive in and create. Huawei is the first major smartphone vendor to develop its own painting app. To do this, the company has leveraged user insights to design GoPaint with a focus on ease of use and maximizing the creative experience.
This launch follows the highly successful GoPaint Worldwide Creating Activity held in 2023. The GoPaint app builds on that momentum. The app is set to offer a professional yet user-friendly platform specifically designed for Huawei tablets. The app is poised to strengthen Huawei’s tablet experience for creatives.
GoPaint integrates seamlessly with this innovative hardware, creating a powerful software and hardware ecosystem. It also brings added features for creatives looking to leverage Huawei’s device ecosystem.
Unveiling Date and What to Expect
The official launch of GoPaint is expected to take place at the HUAWEI Innovative Product Launch on May 7th. The app will boast a comprehensive suite of painting tools, including a variety of brushes developed in collaboration with a leading art team.
GoPaint is also beginner-friendly, offering a full set of tutorials to help users develop their skills progressively. With more exciting features likely to be revealed, May 7th promises to be a big day for creative Huawei tablet users. Stay tuned for the official unveiling!
If you are in the market for a new smartphone for the first time, you are going to get a little bit of a shock when you see the prices of mobile devices today. You are seeing devices hitting the MYR 7,000 ceiling these days and with spec sheet more complicated than the blueprints of a Death Star.
Of course, you pay for features and quality as well. You pay for being at the cutting edge, the state-of-the-art. That has become the definition of a mobile device in your pocket these days though. They are nearly buttonless slates that are very high-tech and awfully expensive, and at the same time strangely fragile. Yes, it is a strange world we live in.
When you first invest in a smartphone too, you might not want to spend more than MYR 1,000 on your smartphone. After all, feature phones did not exceed that kind of money even when they were brand new. There are a few options for you. One of them is the HUAWEI Y6P that is now available in Malaysia for MYR 559. That already ticks the ‘under MYR 1,000’ box.
Source: HUAWEI
Another thing that older feature devices have is a super long battery life. A single charge can take days to deplete while only taking an hour to charge. Premium smartphones these days can barely last a full 24 hours day before needing a plug in. The Y6P is not like that though. It comes with one of the largest battery capacities in the conventional smartphone market today. It comes with a 5,000mAh battery. No, you cannot swap it out, but it is still a large battery. That, combined with HUAWEI’s brilliant knowhow is battery life preservation means that you should easily last a day or two without ever needing a tether to your walls. ‘Long-lasting battery’, check.
Source: HUAWEI
Of course, the move to smartphones have some major benefits. One of them is that you get properly nice photos from their high-resolution camera. Premium smartphones come with the latest and greatest of camera technology to produce the best possible photos and videos. Thing is, smartphone camera technology now progresses in diminishing returns. Certain mid-range and even entry-level smartphones have cameras that rival the premium smartphones in terms of Megapixel count, camera software and algorithm, and resulting photo and video quality.
The HUAWEI Y6P comes with dual cameras at the back. One is a 13-Megapixel camera that captures high-resolution, crisp photos that you can use to share with your family or family members. The other is an ultra-wide angle camera that can capture even more than the 13-Megapixel shooter. You can capture beautiful landscapes in expanded detail and tell the world of social media that you also can be a photographer.
It even comes with an 8-Megapixel front facing camera for you to shoot selfies or profile photos with. Obviously for your friends to identify you. If not, you can use the front-facing camera to take photos of yourself in your travels, just to show off a little bit maybe. ‘Cameras’, check.
Source: HUAWEI
Of course, one of the biggest appeals in switching to a smartphone is the number of apps that you can access on a single small slate that fits in your palms and pockets. All this comes from the HUAWEI AppGallery for the HUAWEI Y6P. The AppGallery is currently the third largest app marketplace in the world. While there are some missing apps compared to Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store, the HUAWEI AppGallery ecosystem is growing every day. The essential eWallet apps are already available on the AppGallery. Even some banking apps are already available. ‘Apps’, check.
With a high-resolution camera and access to endless number of apps, you are going to need a large storage to ensure that you have access to everything you need and put into the device in its lifetime. You get 64GB in storage with the HUAEI Y6P, which is ample space to work with for both your photos and apps. You even get a whole year of access to 15 extra GB of HUAWEI’s Cloud storage to offload some of your photos and files over when you need to. Or, insert a MicroSD card into the expansion slot to get up to 512GB of extra storage. Need multiple apps running at the same time? 4GB of RAM should be able to deal with that. Oh, and the MediaTek processor running within the device is more than capable enough to run multiple apps at the same time.
Source: HUAWEI
Now you are also wondering what else you can do with the 6.3-inch display. You can watch movies with it by either loading your downloaded movies into the native storage of the device. You can also look through HUAWEI’s Video app to see what you might want to watch. Of course, that is a subscription-based service like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. You can also watch Viu contents through that 6.3-inch display though, for free no less. All you need to do to start watching endless Asian shows is claim the free membership of Viu through Member center on the HUAWEI Y6P. ‘Entertainment’, check.
Source: HUAWEI
Source: HUAWEI
Source: HUAWEI
Source: HUAWEI
The HUAWEI Y6P is now available via HUAWEI’s online store and retail partners across the nation for MYR 559. You can get your’s in three colour choices: Emerald Green, Phantom Purple and Midnight Black. The free Premium Access to Viu promotion is currently exclusive to the HUAWEI Y6P. For more information on the HUAWEI Y6P, you can visit their website.
HONOR had a big global launch just now. They launched a lot of things. One of the big things they launched is their very own high-end tablet, the HONOR ViewPad 6. It looks very much like the HUAWEI MatePad Pro save for certain details. For one, the back of the tablet has a slightly different finish. The camera layout and design is more reminiscent of the OPPO Find X2 as well, from the looks of it.
The insides are slightly different too. The HONOR ViewPad 6 packs the HiSilicon Kirin 985 instead of the newer HiSilicon 990 you find on the HUAWEI MatePad Pro. You still get 5G connectivity with the HONOR ViewPad 6 though. You still get WiFi 6+ in connectivity. You also get 2K in resolution from the 10.4 FullView display. They also tout powerful speakers that boasts great audio. If they are anything like the HUAWEI MatePad Pro, we can believe that.
We know that the HONOR ViewPad 6 will come with HONOR’s proprietary User Interface (UI) based on Android 10. While it comes with Android 10, it does not come with Google’s Play Store. Rather, you are getting their AppGallery ecosystem. From the teasers we see in the launch, there is also the HUAWEI equivalent to the M-Pen, the Magic Pen for the tablet.
Source: HONOR
Source: HONOR
Source: HONOR
Source: HONOR
However, they did not announce the price of the HONOR ViewPad 6. They say that the price will be revealed on the 13th of June 2020. It should be available in certain markets from June 2020 onward. There is no mention of whether Malaysia gets the device that same time with other markets. We are expecting the tablet to come to Malaysia at the same time or before other countries outside of China though.
HUAWEI’s AppGallery has been a little on the anaemic side when it comes to essential apps. However, the company has been busy at work trying to get app developers to bring their apps to the platform. The latest app to make its way to the AppGallery is the HERE WeGo City Navigation.
The HERE WeGo app fills in a void left by the lack of availability of a proper navigation application on the AppGallery. So far, users have had to opt to using the web version of Google Maps to get around. With the launch of HERE WeGo, HUAWEI users can now get access to a navigation app which will be able to run natively on newer HUAWEI devices which run on HUAWEI’s Mobile Services.
The Maps service will bring free voice-guided navigation to HUAWEI users. It also allows users to download maps for offline navigation. Public transit information for more than 1,300 cities is also available on the app. The cities include large metropolitan cities such as Kuala Lumpur, New York City, Munich and more.
HUAWEI users have been feeling the pinch ever since the U.S. initiated a trade ban against the company. The ban has, in particular, affected HUAWEI’s mobile business which has been forced to turn to an in-house developed Mobile Services platform to deal with the inability to license Google’s Play Services which provide the API backbone for essential mobile functions. This includes access to the Play Store and Google Apps.
It looks like there’s a sale coming for HUAWEI! The company’s online store is turning 6 this 29 April 2020. To celebrate, HUAWEI will be having flash sales and ongoing offers. You’ll be able to get items for as low as MYR0.60.
In addition to the low price, HUAWEI is also giving away a cash voucher worth MYR166 which can be put towards certain items during the one-day sale on the 29th. To get the voucher, you just have to have a registered HUAWEI online account and head to their official celebration page. Once you have it, you’ll be able to get one of the devices listed below. If MYR166 isn’t enough, you can get an additional MYR100 if you have the HUAWEI AppGallery installed on your device.
Product
Free Gift
Regular Price
Price with Voucher
HUAWEI MediaPad M5 Lite
N/A
RM 1,299
RM 1,133
HUAWEI M6
HUAWEI M-Pencil
RM 1,899
RM 1,733
HUAWEI Mate 30 Pro 5G
HUAWEI CP39s Wireless Car Charger and PU Leather Case
RM 4,199
RM 4,033
HUAWEI nova 5T
HUAWEI Band 4 (Black)
RM 1,399
RM 1,233
HUAWEI P30
HUAWEI Body Fat Scale
RM 1,999
RM 1,833
HUAWEI will also be having steep discounts on some of their devices during the one day sale. You’ll be able to get them at discounted prices. This applies to everything from smart bands to smartphones and laptops. Of course, these deals are only available while stocks last.
We started this journey over two weeks ago. We also switched to a HUAWEI P40 Pro review unit last week as an HMS test device on a full-time basis. Starting it up and starting afresh, we thought we might want to give the HUAWEI device the best chance it has to stack up against all the other Android devices we encountered. That is why, rather than loading it with the set-up we had on the HUAWEI Nova 7i, we went with Phone Clone to get it to clone a HUAWEI Mate 20X I owned.
The result of that was the transfer of more than just the apps we had on the HUAWEI Nova 7i. We had more than we bargained with Prime Video and Telegram ported in. We had Facebook and Instagram ported too, alongside some of our favourite games like Brawl Starts and PUBG Mobile. More about Phone Clone app and the HUAWEI P40 Pro in our in-depth review later though. Note that the HUAWEI P40 Pro is a review unit and it is due for a return soon. So we only have a limited time with HUAWEI’s latest photography king and switch back to the Nova 7i.
Phone Clone is The Way to Go
The point is you can still run Android apps on the HUAWEI’s EMUI 10. It is still an Android 10 device after all. Well, just be sure that everything runs nicely. We found that Instagram will not turn over on the HUAWEI P40 Pro. It could just be a device issue, but that is quite annoying to us. The upgrade also comes with a big step up in the camera of course. But that is not our focus today.
The focus today is to test it out as a daily driver for the week. We popped in the YES 4G SIM card we had for our review devices and its ready to roll. Okay, it is ready to somewhat roll.
Of course, we had our concerns with the apps. For one, there is now no official support for the apps. Where do we update the apps? How do we update the apps? If I’m transferring WhatsApp from my older device, do I use Gmail still? We may not be able to answer all the questions you and I have.
Right out of the box, if you did not use Phone Clone to copy your WhatsApp data over to your new HUAWEI device, you are going to lose everything. If you use Phone Clone and WhatsApp did not copy its complete data over, you lose everything. There is no carry over of backup data because HUAWEI cannot back up to Gmail now. It is like switching from an Apple device to Android device. That is kind of a bummer.
We found a solution to that though, from HUAWEI’s own community site. It is not the simplest instructions to follow, because there is a lot of navigation around restoring your WhatsApp data in your HUAWEI smartphone. If you want to give it try you can head to their website. It still works (sort of) on the HUAWEI Nova 7i and HUAWEI P40 Pro as well. So that should not be too big of an issue.
We found that installing Google Drive may not work as well, because you cannot actually sign into your Google account. That, and a lot of other Google apps. At least you get your WhatsApp chat history back, right? You have to jump through some hoops, yes; but it works.
We did not manage to get Netflix ported over, or even working for that matter. At least Amazon’s Prime Video works well though. We cannot tell if it is only streaming in HD quality or not, but it works at least, and that is now part of our entertainment.
The next challenge is to update the apps. For that, we started using APKPure and Aptoide. Mind you, you cannot get these two app markets on AppGallery too, so you have to download them from their respective mirror sites.
New in AppGallery
Since we last spoke about the AppGallery though, there has been some additions to the ecosystem. There are some new apps there and here. A lot of which, we are not concerned about. One of which, could be interesting for residents of Malaysia. The MySejahtera app developed by Malaysia’s ministry of health to keep yourself in check of your own health status in the COVID-19 situation now. Of course, during the Movement Control Order restrictions now, food is important, and you have Dahmakan app in the HUAWEI device anyway. Nope, no others so far. Not even Grab.
You could, theoretically get Grab working on your HUAWEI through Phone Clone as well. Again, there is going to be update issues later. But I guess we can cross that bridge when we get there.
Still, if you are going to rely on the AppGallery solely, Dahmakan is your best friend.
Quick Apps is a function that is on the HUAWEI AppGallery and a feature like no other. It is a sort of ‘pre-installed’ kit for devices with the AppGallery. They idea is that you can just access the Quick Apps gallery, pick the apps you want to use, and launch it without installing it. Where is it installed? In the cloud perhaps. But the essential point is that you can just use the apps as long as you are connected to the internet.
That is what the McDonald’s app is on the HUAWEI AppGallery, a Quick App. Of course, you need an active internet connection anyway for the app to work in the first place, so it does make plenty of sense. It also does not take up any space on your smartphone which is quite clever as well; a way to save storage space on your smartphone, if you might.
You can even add the app on your home screen so you can access it again anytime after your first visit. Just hit the app menu and add it to your home screen, very easy. We are not sure it is the most convenient way to discover an app though, because it is lodged very far down the AppGallery. You have to scroll all the way down to find the separate Quick Apps gallery.
Still, better than nothing right? There are plenty games within that gallery, none of which we play. Because the AppGallery is not segregated from one country to another yet, you can also find some broadcast apps on the platform. It is an interesting platform, if used correctly. Why not have WhatsApp there too? That is an idea.
So last Friday we started on a series to document how we will start living with a HUAWEI smartphone free from the clutches of the evil Google ecosystem. No, they are not really evil; I am just trying to be a bit dramatic here. You get the idea though. Modern HUAWEI smartphones today only come with HUAWEI’s very own Mobile Services and AppGallery; no Google Mobile Services and Play Store. Kind of sad, really.
Last week we managed to download Facebook and WhatsApp. We did not have Instagram, or Netflix, or Telegram. In short, there were plenty of apps we did not have. Did we miss them? Yes, very much, I had Instagram and Netflix, and Prime Video installed in other devices just to scroll through them.
I Still Miss Social Media
In truth though, I am not that big of a social media person.
While I do scroll through social media from time to time, I seldom spend more
than 15 minutes scrolling through Facebook, or Instagram, or Twitter, and even
Snapchat. I have never logged onto Tik Tok.
That does not mean that I can completely ignore all this social
media though. Of course, if I am being honest, I do miss the apps. The idea of
just seeing what other people are up to in their own life; that can still be
quite fun, and quite traumatising depending on the contents.
Facebook can be quite enough though, especially with
Facebook Watch and the countless videos on the platform. That is technically
all the entertainment I got from the HUAWEI Nova 7i. To keep in touch with my
friends, I have WhatsApp. Then again, I turn on my WhatsApp on desktop barely
looked at my smartphone when it comes to messages.
Exploring the AppGallery A Little Deeper
Still, things are not so bad after scrolling through the AppGallery
once more. There are apps in the smartphone after all. Social media apps
include Snapchat, Tik Tok (of course), and WeChat (of course). Nope, nothing
else that I use as far as I can tell. There is even TrueCaller on the AppGallery.
Things are looking a bit up now that I scroll through a little
bit more through the AppGallery. You can find Viu, iflix, and some cinema booking
apps within the AppGallery to start with. No, no Netflix or even Amazon Video
Prime. For now, iflix and Viu would do. I personally don’t have a viu account,
so I stick to iflix. We are currently under the Movement Control Order (MCO),
so I cannot go for movies.
If not though, I can do some window shopping via Zalora, Lazada,
and even Shopee. There are even some games that you might be familiar with. One
of them is Cut the Rope 2 within the AppGallery. You can even find Lords Mobile
and Fortnite on the device. So to be fair, you are not really getting
shorthanded in terms of entertainment here.
For productivity, they have WPS Office on the AppGallery. While
some say that WPS Office app is better than the original Microsoft apps, I
would respectfully disagree. The modern Microsoft apps are now so much better,
and so much more optimised. At the same time, it is easier to sync your Microsoft
apps to OneDrive than anything else. This is a problem on the device though;
there are almost no Microsoft apps here.
I say almost because there is a particularly useful Microsoft
app that we love. That app is Microsoft’s Translation app. In our opinion, this
is the best translation app that mankind has ever produced. It is accurate and
works with plenty of accents. Still, we are not here for the Microsoft Translate
app.
It is Still Android, Just Without Google
The apps that are downloaded are also very similar to the
Android apps you find on Google Play Store. The EMUI 10 is based on Android 10
after all. Still, we found these apps. Which are great. If you are worried
about bringing them out as your electronic wallet, you would be relieved to
find Touch n’ Go app in there and Boost app. Grab is making its way on
AppGallery. Still, the two largest e-wallets in Malaysia has a foothold in
HUAWEI’s AppGallery. That means the HUAWEI Mobile Services (HMS), and
AppGallery cannot be that bad, right? Too early to tell in my opinion.
Still, we are going to dive a little deeper than that. For
now, that is all we can walk away with. Stay tuned for the next part.
Last night we saw a big fan fare of a smartphone launch. It was the very anticipated HUAWEI photography flagship, the HUAWEI P40 series. The ones we are going to see earlier is the HUAWEI P40 and P40 Pro. There is a third model, the P40 Pro+ which will be coming way later. Still, HUAWEI finally announced their first 2020 flagship.
The HUAWEI P40 is really everything that you might want in a
HUAWEI flagship photography king. If you owned the P20, it is really the
smartphone that you naturally want to upgrade to. There is one thing that it
does not come with though: Google.
This means that the HUAWEI P40 series will not have Google’s very handy Play Store and is stuck to the ways of HUAWEI’s own proprietary Mobile Services (HMS) and its AppGallery. We are not saying that it is a terrible thing though. It may sound bad, but you never know until you try right?
The Test Bed – The HUAWEI Nova 7i
Our test bed is a HUAWEI Nova 7i. In some markets, they know
it as the HUAWEI P40 Lite. We do not understand that half the time, so we will
just stick to Malaysia’s official name for it, we guess; the HUAWEI Nova 7i.
If you really have to know the specs of this MYR 1,099
device, it is is a mid-range smartphone that packs a relatively punchy
HiSilicon Kirin 810 system on a chip (SoC) and supported by 8GB of RAM and you
get 128GB of storage with that. The internals push EMUI 10.0.1.108 that is also
based on Android 10. So, when we say that it comes completely devoid of Google
stuff, I did not forget that this is still an Android device. We just mean that
the HUAWEI Nova 7i comes devoid of Google’s important frameworks that includes
the Google Play Store.
We are not focusing on the hardware capabilities of the
device, though. So, it does not really matter if the HUAWEI Nova 7i comes with
a 48-Megapixel camera and a Full HD display. What matters is that it represents
the collective of modern HUAWEI devices that are in the market right now,
starting with the era of the HUAWEI Mate 30 series. They all have one thing in
common, and that is HMS and AppGallery.
The focus of this write-up then, is what we can do with HMS
and what AppGallery can offer us. On paper, it does not look too good for the
write-up. The HUAWEI AppGallery is the third largest app marketplace behind
Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store. Which may not sound like much,
because there are not many major app marketplaces in the market. Since there
are two major camps of smartphone Operating Systems (OS) in the market, the two
largest ones are quite a given.
Starting-up HUAWEI’s EMUI 10.0.1
Let us still give this a chance though. We fire up the device
and everything feels just like a regular Android smartphone at first. It is an Android
10 based system after all, so it starts up very similar to any Android. Except,
you do not sign in with your Google account. You sign in with or sign up for a
HUAWEI ID account. We had one, so that was simple.
If you are familiar with an EMUI device that has Google Play
Store installed on it, like the HUAWEI P30 series, navigating the smartphone should
be nothing new really. It is still a very familiar EMUI to the EMUI’s of the past;
in that, there is no difference in experience at all. You cannot see Google’s Play
Store on the home screen though. So far, so good; familiarity with the
interface saves the face.
First set-up
No Play Store, no problem. There the HUAWEI AppGallery. First
thing I usually do with a new smartphone is download all the essential apps I
need. Those apps are Whatsapp, Telegram, Slack, Facebook, Instagram, and
Twitter. Out of all those apps listed, I only found two – Facebook and Whatsapp.
They are not loaded into the AppGallery though.
What happens is that the HUAWEI AppGallery will lead you to a
third-party site to download the apk files of Facebook and Whatsapp. These are
the only two I found so far. Not looking good now. When we checked in, HUAWEI
says that these two sideloaded apps are safe because the AppGallery is the one
that leads us to the site.
That is not to say that you cannot sideload the rest of the
apps that I listed down though. You can still download the apk files from other
sites, no problem. Just be wary of the sources though.
Still, we worked with the two apps that we just downloaded.
They both work just like the Android version app should work. They look the
same too. The only question now is whether we can keep up with the most current
update packages or not.
Day 0 Wrap-up
We wrap the test up with that for now. We got our smartphone
running with the most essential WhatsApp up. Even Facebook is there, so far
that is the entertainment we are getting for the night.
Still, we are going to try to live through the HMS and
AppGallery as long as we can and go in-depth. The HMS is available on every new
HUAWEI smartphone you buy today. Yes, they are all running on EMUI 10 now too.
Still, the HUAWEI P40 that was announced last night is not
just that. When you buy a new HUAWEI smartphone today, you get a free 50GB
HUAWEI Cloud Storage subscription for the next year. If you already own a
HUAWEI smartphone device, you already have 5GB of HUAWEI Cloud Storage for free
anyway.
We will be looking to more apps next week with the HUAWEI Nova
7i. Until then, stay safe during this whole Movement Control Order period. To
the ones outside of Malaysia, you stay safe too.
