As a French consumer, you probably would not have imagined that the trade war that the United States and China have been waging for several months, which has reached a peak in intensity since Google announced that it was breaking its links with the Chinese company Huawei Technologies, would one day impact you so directly. And yet: if you own a Huawei smartphone, whether it's the excellent P30 or P30 Pro, the brand's latest models, a Mate 20 or an older iteration, you're worried now having to change your phone in a few weeks, or, perhaps even more painful, to adapt in the more or less near future to a new nebulous daily life of which Google will no longer be a part.

You have a Huawei Mate 10 Pro, a Mate 20, a P Smart or a P30, or an Honor brand device, whose parent company is Huawei: you will go through the drops. Neither the applications of the Google ecosystem (Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube…), nor the PlayStore, this virtual store where you download your applications, will disappear from your phone. Google has indeed indicated in a tweet, posted from the Android account, that this decision does not concern "existing Huawei devices", i.e. devices already on the market. In the same way, your phone will keep its Android system, as well as its security updates, assured the little green man.

On the other hand, things will get tough when it comes to updating your phone to the latest version of Android – Android 10 Q, in this case. It will probably have to wait for this to be deployed in the open source project (see below), which could take several months each time.

Android hasn't been very clear about which devices it considers to be "existing Huawei devices". Are these all phones that left the factory before Huawei was blacklisted, including those waiting to be sold in stores, or just devices that have already found a buyer? Considering that the Honor 20, the brand's latest model presented on Tuesday in London, should have access to Google applications and services, we can imagine that there is still time to invest in a Huawei if however the idea of ​​having delayed Android updates indifferent to you.

In the longer term, however, and if the United States does not reconsider its decision, buying a Huawei smartphone will almost amount to an act of dissent, since living without Google in the Western world is a form of insubordination to the model largely dominant. Enough to convince some, who aspire to "de-googlize", to invest in Huawei. And push many others from, on the contrary, among competitors Samsung, Xiaomi or OnePlus, who are already rubbing their hands....

A future without Google, but not without Android

It is however important to note that if Huawei will have to do without Google, it will still be able to benefit on all its future smartphones from Android, which is an open source operating system, and therefore free to use by anyone who wishes, conflict commercial or not. Only, it will no longer be the commercial version of Android but Android AOSP, a kind of raw version of the OS, without the Google suite of services and applications. For comparison, it's as if Huawei, which until now bought its furniture in kit form at Ikea and assembled it following the instructions, was going to have to source the screws and drill the holes itself, without notice.

Huawei, which would have expected such a situation last year, according to the statements of its leaders, also claims to have already developed its own operating system, whose name we know: HongMeng. Of course, this home OS will have to have its own application store, from which Google applications will be absent. But we have to face the facts: even if Huawei will undoubtedly manage very well to do without the American giant from a technological point of view (after all, it is what it has been doing in China for years), it will probably have a hard time convincing commercially in Europe.

Before getting there, it cannot be ruled out that these tensions between the United States and China will eventually ease in the weeks to come. Remember that it is above all a question of geopolitics. And in this matter, everything is just a succession of storms and calms. So we wait a little longer before changing mobile.