Does the HUAWEI Pura 70 ship with Google apps? This alleged render would have you believe so

If you’ve followed HUAWEI’s journey in recent years, you’d know how deeply the HUAWEI-US ban has affected the company. The ban effectively disrupted the functioning of some of the most innovative Android flagships, and it’s a great loss to consumers at the end of the day. Consumers who still want to buy HUAWEI phones have to live a Google-less experience with AppGallery as an alternate app store or follow unofficial steps to install the Google Play Store on their phones. HUAWEI knows that the experience either way is less than ideal, and it seems the company is being rather sneaky about what its latest phones can do.

Journalist Roland Quandt, who has been reliable about many device leaks, pointed out a suspicious render of the HUAWEI Pura 70.

At first glance, you wouldn’t spot anything wrong with the render. But look closely, and you will notice how the home screen contains icons for Google Maps, Google Drive, YouTube, and Google Chrome, alongside the HUAWEI AppGallery. We’re attaching the alleged HUAWEI Pura 70 device render below for reference.

Roland mentions that the render is “from ‘official’ Huawei marketing in UAE.” We tried to locate the render but could not find this particular one on HUAWEI’s official website listing for the HUAWEI Pura 70 in the UAE. Most official renders on HUAWEI’s website have the AppGallery taking on app store duties.

There’s a chance that either HUAWEI removed the render or that it did not come from the company. The render’s production quality makes it look trustworthy, and we wouldn’t blame consumers who believe this render on its face value.

The appearance of Google apps on the home screen implies that you can get these apps in the stock experience of the HUAWEI Pura 70, which is far from reality. You need to install Google apps separately, and HUAWEI cannot legally use trademarked app logos of Google apps on the home screen without entering into an agreement with Google (which it legally cannot do so because of the HUAWEI-US ban).

Interestingly, one of the tweet comments on the original post mentions that unofficially installing Google Mobile Services (GMS) on the HUAWEI Pura 70 is not as straightforward as before. Even when you get GMS installed, it is “impossible” to install Google Chrome on the Pura 70. So you cannot allegedly install Chrome at all right now, even if you do buy the HUAWEI Pura 70. You cannot achieve the results shown off in the alleged render even if you adopt unofficial means.

We’ve contacted HUAWEI for comment. We’ll update the article if and when we hear back from them.