What you need to know
- Huawei is launching a P30 Pro New Edition.
- Huawei already re-released a variant of the P30 Pro with a slightly tweaked design in late 2019.
- These re-releases allow customers to pick up brand new Huawei phones while keeping Google Play access.
Aside from its App Gallery efforts, Huawei seems to have found a unique way of side-stepping the ban on Google apps for its handsets — it'll simply re-release the old phone over and over and over again. The company's now working on a new Huawei P30 Pro New Edition, as per its German website (opens in new tab) (via Huawei Central). It'll be released from May 15 to June 30, and will presumably offer a minor refresh of the P30 Pro just as its P30 lite New Edition (opens in new tab) and the late 2019 version of the P30 Pro did. Huawei has yet to announce this refreshed edition of the P30 Pro though, so we'll learn more about this phone as the May 15 date inches closer.
When it comes to hardware, Huawei's phones are pretty good, but the lack of Google Play access has been a handicap for them. The company has tried to rely on App Gallery and popular third-party app developers to make up for the shortfall. But it's a band-aid over an amputation at best.
At the very least, by re-releasing new phone, Huawei gets to eat its cake and have it too. It puts out new phones and it keeps access to Google Play. The company can't do this forever though, eventually, outdated specs will become too outdated for new customers, and any change of processor will require recertification by Google. Its feasibility as a stalling tactic until it breaks the impasse with Google and the U.S. government is another matter entirely.
