The Google & Huawei fiasco has users dumping phones on Carousell and mobile shops halting trade-ins

Suddenly nobody wants Huawei phones

Huawei is having a very bad week.

If you haven’t heard by now, Google is suspending all business activity with Huawei to comply with recent US government actions.

How does it affect you?

The move doesn’t mean Huawei phones will lose access to the Android operating system since it is after all an open source project and manufacturers are free to modify and install it on their devices without permission.

Current Huawei or Honor phones will still be able to download apps and use Google services since they have already been certified.

However, security updates will be slower as Huawei will only learn of the updates as they are released officially.

Problems with new handsets

Newer Huawei phones will not be certified, which means they will lose access to Google Mobile Services including apps such as:

  • Google Play Store
  • Google Photos
  • YouTube
  • Google Maps
  • Google Drive cloud storage
  • Google Duo

Other functions that rely on Google Play Services such as specific app notifications and Casting will also be affected.

Huawei phones on Carousell

The news of Google and Huawei fallout has also caused panic among Huawei mobile community.

At the time of this writing, there are numerous pre-loved Huawei P30 Pro phones being sold on Carousell with prices as low as $700 for a 256GB model.

Screengrab of Carousell search for Huawei phones

Huawei trade-ins at mobile shops

Several popular mobile retailers in Singapore has also stopped accepting Huawei phones for trade-ins as reported by AsiaOne.

They include:

  • Buy Back New Mobile
  • Mister Mobile
  • Mobile Square
  • Red White Mobile

Buy Back New Mobile

Mister Mobile

Mobile Square

Red White Mobile

Telcos still accepting

You will have better luck trading your phone at telcos since they are still accepted at this moment. However, the price values are presumably lower than what is offered in mobile shops.

Find the trade-in list from M1 here and Starhub here. For Singtel, you can only check the price online during the cart checkout.

What should I do now?

If you have a Huawei phone, Google has assured that services including Google Play will continue to function.

If you are planning to buy one, it’s best to hold out and observe the situation.

Google will likely want to resume business with Huawei – they are after all the world’s second bestselling Android phone-maker after Samsung, plus there’s still a chance the US government might issue a license for Google continue business with Huawei or drop the restriction altogether.

Or you can watch Marques Brownlee’s video below explaining the situation perfectly.


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