Honor 20 Pro May Not Launch Outside China, Lacks Google Certification

While Huawei and, to some extent, Google would assure the public that it's business as usual for the Chinese maker's Android phones, reality is proving otherwise. Yes, Google has publicly committed to supporting existing Huawei and Honor phones and, yes, the OEM has been granted a 90-day reprieve. That, however, doesn't take into account new phones that haven't been certified yet including, apparently, the Honor 20 Pro, which may mean that the phone is dead on arrival in markets outside of China.

Honor was perhaps blindsided by US President Trump's executive order and failed to acquire Google's certification before things headed south quickly. The Honor 20 Pro could still launch in China where Android phone's don't have Google Play services installed anyway. But for the rest of the world, launching with Google Play Store and Google Play apps would be a death sentence for the phone.

With the 90-day window granted to Huawei, it could still get certified, though that depends on how fast Honor and Google could move to make that happen. But even if it makes it in time, the Honor 20 Pro could still find itself homeless in the global market as retailers and carriers have already started dropping Huawei phones and may not be too keen on putting up new ones from the two brands.

This definitely deals a hard blow to Honor, whose latest flagship has been earning extremely positive early feedback. The Honor 20 Pro combines the best smartphones specs this half of the year with, at least according to DxOMark, the second (or third) best camera in the market. All that will be for naught if the phone never gets to see the light of day outside China.

It's not yet a total loss for Honor as the Honor 20, curiously, did manage to receive certification before the banhammer fell. While not that far from the Pro model, the smartphone may fall a bit short in the photography department, lacking that telephoto camera. That is, of course, if retailers are willing to sell even just that.