Huawei to launch next flagship phone in Paris in March 2020

It was only a few weeks ago that Huawei started selling its Google-less Mate 30 Pro in Europe. But the Chinese smartphone giant is already planning a launch event in the region for its next flagship phone.

Huawei mobile chief Richard Yu told French media in Shenzhen that the Huawei P40 and P40 Pro handsets will be unveiled in Paris at the end of March 2020, according to Frandroid. The models will come with Android 10 overlaid with EMUI, Huawei’s custom interface, as with previous models.

Android 10 is open source and therefore not subject to a US ban. Since Huawei was blacklisted by the US earlier this year, however, its new phones have been denied access to the Google Play app store and other Google apps like YouTube and Google Maps. As a result, Huawei phones have become less appealing abroad.

Huawei has been working on its own Android substitute called HarmonyOS, which will work with its Ark Compiler tool that’s designed to quickly port Android apps to the new OS. The company recently said it will make the HarmonyOS source code available to developers next August.