In Belgium, many C431 Huawei users have reported being unable to join the EMUI10 beta on their P30 and P30 Pro.
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At IFA2019, Huawei announced that the beta for EMUI10 for the P30 and P30 Pro would be available that same week, with us seeing the notification in HiCare the 6th September, right after the announcement. We decided not to sign-up to this beta with our P30 Pro, to avoid problems on a device used for work. Regardless, we’ve now been informed by some friends that, even if we wanted, we would be unable to sign-up to the EMUI10 beta for a specific reason: C431 and our carrier.
When the device launched and we published our first articles, we pointed out how the smartphone now came with a C431 variant, instead of the usual C432 variant seen in Europe. This variant has the particularity to load the applications of the carrier the user is signed up to, meaning the device, while bought unlocked, will become branded, without the possibility of deleting the carriers’ apps, most likely requiring a factory reset to have them gone, or maybe just switching to a different carrier.
This curious particularity of the C431 variant isn’t used by all carriers, as in Belgium, we’ve only seen Orange, one of the main providers, loading their applications on the device, while Proximus, another popular carrier in the country, doesn’t. And this is where the issue arises: for those with Orange or another carrier that “brands” the device, the beta is unavailable, as the device must be unbranded/unlocked. So, while the phone was bought unlocked, the C431 variant and some carriers’ choice make it impossible to join the EMUI10 beta. With Huawei having locked the bootloader and no possibility of installing a different version of the OS, users using a carrier that brands their device are unable to delete these applications/branding and having access to the beta, the only option being trying with a different carrier.
Concerning who to blame, this is a difficult matter. On one hand, Huawei now ships C431 in most European countries instead of branding devices individually for each carrier, meaning they provide a “one solution fits all” in order to maintain a positive relationship with carriers, at the expense of customer choice. On the other hand, it is ridiculous that carriers want to load their applications on the users’ devices at any cost, especially if these have been bought unlocked from different stores. After all, users are already forced to deal with multiple useless applications from Google that they will likely never use, yet cannot be removed, as well as applications from the manufacturer, although most of Huawei’s applications fall into the “system applications” category. While the carrier’s applications can easily be removed via AppGallery (for some reason, AppGallery lets users uninstall pretty much anything), the branding will remain, as can be seen on the screenshot below:
We’ve been told by our friends that they are trying to find a solution to this problem, although, most likely, this means switching to a different carrier, as previously mentioned. For those experiencing this issue, this might be the only real solution for now, or just waiting until the final version of EMUI10 starts rolling out.
Obviously, to be able to join the EMUI10 beta, one must also fulfil the rest of the conditions too, such as being in one of the eligible countries with a device having one of the specified software variants.
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