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huh? huawei and google, when did these two get together again?

here's what happened. last month, we went to bangkok, thailand, on a company team-building trip. in a shopping mall in bangkok, we saw a figure that we shouldn't have seen. yes, it was huawei.

i don’t know how many people are like tony, who have always thought that after several rounds of sanctions, with neither 5g nor google’s full range of products, huawei must be having a miserable time overseas.

but in fact, at least in thailand, it is still alive and well. in bangkok alone, there are no less than ten stores, which is almost comparable to some third- and fourth-tier cities in china.

what’s even more outrageous is that when we tried out the thai version of pura 70 in one of the authorized stores, we discovered that it actually had the entire google play store!

let me explain briefly to those friends who haven't figured it out. overseas users' daily lives are basically inseparable from google maps, google photos, youtube and other tools, a bit like our domestic users are inseparable from wechat and alipay.

but the premise for them to use these google apps is that the phone must have built-in google mobile services, or gms. it is a complete set of mobile services including google play services and google store. if you run these apps on a phone without built-in gms services, you will get an error when you open them.

but as we all know, since huawei was included in the entity list in 2019, google has stopped authorizing huawei's built-in gms services, so it stands to reason that models after mate 30 will not be able to use these google applications.

however, this thai version of pura 70 not only uses the google family bucket, but is also openly sold in stores. why is this? could it be that google and huawei secretly made some py deal in a corner unknown to us, under pressure from the united states?

in order to find out what was going on, we spent a lot of money to buy a thai version of pura 70 to study it.it turned out that it was not the united states and google that turned a blind eye, but huawei had some ulterior motives.

to be specific, this thai pura 70 does not use the real gms at all, but an open source alternative called microg.

it doesn’t matter if you don’t know what microg is, it means you are still young. those who have used microg are almost thirty-something years old.

okay, let’s not keep you in suspense. next, let’s go back to germany in 2012 and listen to a story about google’s “evil deeds”. after listening to it, everyone will know what’s going on.

when google first acquired android, it wanted to build it into an open mobile ecosystem. at that time, services and applications such as google play store, google maps, and gmail were also open source and free.

at that time, application developers were not so savvy, thinking that since google said it was open source, they could just use it. as a result, many third-party apps directly called the open source libraries and interfaces provided by google.

but in 2012, a german guy named mar-v-in discovered that something was wrong. google's open source was not guaranteed to be mature.

he posted a post on the xda forum, announcing that he had been using third-party maps and app stores because he was tired of being tracked by google software.

even the system used is based on aosp customized android, which is what we often call modified android, absolutely open source, free and free. thinking that android is an open source system, it should be fine to play with it this way. but unexpectedly, one day he found that this trick didn't work.

after checking again, i found out.it turns out that google, the sixth, has gradually migrated many services originally provided at the bottom of android to google services.（ GMS ）thisoptional installationcomponentsgo inside.

in other words, if an android phone does not come pre-installed with google service components, many basic positioning, map and other services in apps will become unusable, which is equivalent to being disabled.

but gms is not open source. to use it, you must pay google and obtain google's authorization.

this guy didn't want to bow to google, so he and a group of free application developers decompiled all these service frameworks and made them open source for free to developers and users who didn't want to use google like him.

it is equivalent to relying on his own efforts to make a homemade version of google service apk. although it still needs to access google's server, the code of the local module is all written by this guy himself.

malvern named this project nogappps, which is very direct, meaning that he did not want to use google app. in 2016, it was officially renamed micro g, which is the one used on our thai version of pura 70.

micro g simulates key components of gms, such as google play and services, so that applications that originally require gms to run properly can run on devices such as huawei pura 70 that do not have gms.

more importantly, microg adopts the apache license 2.0 open source agreement. anyone can freely use, modify and distribute microg's code. unlike gms, which is proprietary to google and requires paying google and obtaining google authorization to use it.

today, micro g is very mature. if you don't have a gms phone, you can just download two installation packages from micro g's official website. . . ?

of course not, because google is not stupid. gms is such an important thing, how could they let you copy it and use it on other phones?

google's hidden protection mechanism is to verify the digital signature when the gms installation package is packaged.

the digital signature used for packaging is only in the hands of google itself, and microg cannot be counterfeited. therefore, after installing microg directly, the signature is different from the real gms. other apps do not trust it at all, so they refuse to communicate.

from microg's official statement, it can be seen that the project team is aware of this problem and has also provided a solution: mobile phone firmware developers need to implant a "signature camouflage patch" into the system during the firmware development phase.

it is equivalent to asking the operating system to cheat for microg, and tell other apps: this is google's official gms, i have verified it for you, you can communicate directly ~

in the self-check interface of microg of the thai version of pura 70, it will be displayed that the system signature camouflage is supported. this means that huawei has pre-embedded a "deception patch" in the overseas version of emui firmware to help microg pass the gms signature verification.

in the harmonyos of domestic mobile phones, if you download and install it directly from the mico g official website, the self-check page will prompt that the system does not support signature camouflage.

for example, the chinese version of huawei mate x5 in our hands, even if both of micro g are installed, google maps and google store still cannot be used normally.

does that mean that only overseas versions of huawei phones can use the micro g solution, and domestic versions can only watch? if you think so, you are underestimating both micro g and huawei.

on the micro g official website, in addition to the official installation package, we also found two installation packages with the word "hw".

after downloading and installing them all, i found that the signature spoofing support on the self-check page was checked.

after installing software such as google maps and youtube, they can be used normally.in other words, the domestic version of huawei phones currently still has a "cheating patch" pre-installed, but it will only work in conjunction with huawei's special version of micro g.

what’s even more outrageous is that our colleagues in charge of testing found that microg can also be directly searched in the chinese version of huawei app store. after installing it, the package with the hw suffix downloaded from the micro g official website has the same effect. . .

huazi and micro g, you two are really hiding your true colors. are you playing guerrilla warfare with google?

in addition to micro g, huawei phones have many other channels to use google's full range of apps, the most common of which is "easy to go". its implementation method is different from micro g. you can only install google apps in the easy to go app, and cannot install them directly on the phone.

moreover, compared to micro g, there is a greater risk of being blocked by overseas platforms when traveling abroad, so it is only suitable for use when traveling abroad for a short period of time.

in order to take care of overseas users, huawei has tried every possible means, from launching hms at the beginning of the ban, attempting to replace gms to continue to provide positioning, message notification and other services to overseas users, to the current micro g and easy outbound, etc.

overseas users want to own huawei phones and google services but cannot use them at the same time. in addition to the well-known us ban, this situation is also closely related to google's practice of secretly making various things proprietary while advocating open source.

we also didn't expect that a thai version of the mobile phone we bought on a whim would lead to a story about a boy who eventually became a dragon and was resisted by two other boys.

just take a look at how ordinary people in another part of the world use huawei phones.