There’s a new Huawei smartphone coming to Malaysian shores soon. Huawei Malaysia is teasing its Huawei Y9S, essentially a Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 and the just-launched Honor 9X. Its headline features are the big notchless display, big battery, big selfie camera. But it also has one important element: Google services and apps out-of-the-box.
When it comes to Android phones, it’s mighty difficult to detach Google Mobile Services (GMS) and apps from the Android experience, something we’ve been accustomed to since day one. No thanks to the US ban on Huawei, we’ve seen GMS pulled from new devices like the flagship Mate 30 series. That puts Huawei in a terribly awkward, difficult and precarious position.
As an alternative, Huawei has the proprietary Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) that’s compatible with Android and Android apps. HMS has its own app store (App Gallery) but requires apps to be ported to the platform. And in that respect, HMS has a long way to go. Importantly, without GMS, users will be left without familiar Google apps and services like Google Maps, Google Assistant, Google Drive, and more.
While Huawei continues to build HMS (and also aggressively urge developers to port apps over), the company also needs a sustenance strategy over the short term. A maker’s gotta make, and a seller’s gotta to sell.
Hats off to Huawei, the company has been rather creative in introducing products, skirting the US ban. How does it do this? Rebadge hardware that predates the trade ban; uprate, repackage and sell them as new. One such result of its ingenious efforts is latest Honor 9X, and now the Huawei Y9S.
Huawei Malaysia has teased a couple of pretty pictures of the Huawei Y9S; but specs you already know. It rocks an expansive 6.59-inch Ultra FullView Display with a 91 percent screen-to-body ratio and FHD+ resolution (2340×1080).
Its presented in two colours—Midnight Black and Breathing Crystal; with its chassis wrapped in shiny polycarbonate.
It gets a slightly uprated Kirin 710f processor and comes with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
The Y9S integrates a side mounted fingerprint sensor that takes only 0.3 seconds to unlock the phone.
The device comes with a fancy pop-up camera that houses a 16MP f/2.2 selfie camera, freeing up the display of any annoying notch. On the rear, it features a whopping 48MP f/1.8, complemented by an 8MP f/2.4 ultra-wide-angle lens and a 2MP f/2.4 depth camera.
Keeping things juiced is a 4,000mAh battery that charges via USB-C.
The Y9S runs Android 9 Pie out-of-the-box with EMUI 9.1 on top.
No pricing or availability details just yet, but the local launch is expected to happen soon. Stay tuned.
