Huawei is rereleasing its flagship phone from last year as the P30 Pro “New Edition.” The device now ships with Android 10 preinstalled, and it’s got a new silver color option that was previously only available on the P40 Pro. Otherwise, this is an identical device to last year’s phone, meaning it has a 6.47-inch OLED display, four rear cameras, and, crucially, comes with a full suite of Google’s apps and services.
Emphasizing its compatibility with Google’s apps and services, an image of the phone on Huawei’s German website advertises that the phone allows you to (via Google Translate) “use top-apps as usual,” “use Android as usual,” and get “security updates as usual.”
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The P30 Pro is a significant device for Huawei because it was the last flagship phone the company released before US trade restrictions prevented it from using Google’s apps or services. While it’s continued to release new phones like the Mate 30 and P40 Pro based on the open-source core of Android in October 2019 and April 2020, respectively, it also rereleased the P30 Pro once before for users who weren’t prepared to leave Google’s ecosystem behind. The “new” version of the P30 Pro it announced in September last year was the same handset as the March original, only with new color schemes.
Huawei’s sales numbers suggest that many people don’t want to buy a Google-free Android phone. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Huawei’s smartphone shipments outside of China dropped by 35 percent in the first quarter of the year. Although the coronavirus pandemic explains some of the fall, Huawei’s sales declined two times as much as Samsung’s and four times more than Apple. The WSJ notes that the fall threatens Huawei’s placement as the world’s second-biggest smartphone manufacturer.
For now, Huawei has only officially confirmed a German release for the P30 Pro New Edition, where it says the device will ship on June 1st. The device is currently being listed for €749 for the model with 256GB of internal storage, which is a pretty big discount over its original €1,099 price from last year. However, there’s no sign of its original 128GB and 512GB storage options. Android Authority reports that the phone will release in more countries outside of Germany, but there’s no official word on which or what their release dates might be.
