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Huawei announces plans for global EMUI 10.1 rollout
The new EMUI version was unveiled along with the P40 series
Huawei's latest iteration of its custom skin on top of Android, EMUI 10.1, was first introduced along with the P40 series in March. Back then, we didn't know when the software would make the jump to other phones internationally, even though some handsets received the update in the form of a beta. That's now changing — Huawei has announced that it will start rolling out EMUI 10.1 across its lineup starting this month.
Android 10 will come to Honor flagships starting March 15
The update is finally going stable after five months of beta testing
Honor is Huawei's successful lifestyle sub-brand that has gained quite some momentum outside of China. Being a Huawei subsidiary, it has to battle the same trade ban woes and won't be able to ship proprietary Google software on its newest handsets, while older devices are still exempted from this rule and continue to receive the familiar version of Android. Regardless of whether or not they have Google apps, a slew of Honor 20 phones and the 9X will start getting the Android 10-based Magic UI 3.0 beginning next week.
During IFA 2019 in Berlin, Huawei published a roadmap detailing when which of its devices were slated to receive Android 10. The Honor 20, 20 Pro, and View 20 are supposed to get the final version in December, so it makes sense that Huawei is now rolling out early beta access to Magic UI 3.0, the company's custom Honor skin on top of Android 10.
At I/O, Google announced that Android Q Beta 3 would not only be available on its recent Pixel phones, but also 15 phones from other OEMs. Included among those 15 phones is the Mate 20 Pro, indicating that Huawei isn't slacking when it comes to the 10th version of Android. The company has just announced which of its phones will be updated to Q first.
Since Samsung unveiled the Infinity-O display, anticipation has been building for notchless phones with what's become known as the hole-punch camera cutout. The View20, from Huawei sub-brand Honor, was unveiled in Paris today for the European market after debuting in Hong Kong at the end of 2018. From a purely aesthetic point of view, it's certainly refreshing. The 4.5mm camera hole might not be quite as inconspicuous as Honor's marketing materials would have us believe, but it's got to be better than a notch, right?
Coming off the back of a dark year for smartphone design, the View20 is a reason to be optimistic. Notched phones have never been aesthetically pleasing nor functionally ideal, but thankfully that design trend is on its way out. We’ve seen a number of novel attempts to produce bezel-free phones, including sliders and motorized pop-ups, but a few of the big players have decided there's another way.
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- Following today's launch event in China, more details about the phone are available from Honor's Chinese website. It's available in three configurations — 6GB RAM with 128GB of storage, 8GB RAM with 128GB storage, and 8GB RAM with 256GB storage (the MOSCHINO Joint Edition).
Late last month we saw the first glimpse of a real phone with a "hole-punch' front camera (i.e. a camera cutout entirely surrounded by screen) in the form of the Huawei Nova 4, and now we're learning that sub-brand Honor is about to release the View20. As well as the new screen design, it's one of the first smartphones to include a 48-megapixel rear camera.