Huawei’s P20 Pro is a hugely promising phone that will upset Americans | Hacker News Reader

Huawei’s P20 Pro is a hugely promising phone that will upset Americans

theverge.com

18 pointsExcelSaga19 comments

I'm not sure I understand this article's tone as it relates to China. They make it sound as though the evil US intelligence agencies are hurting US consumers just for funzies.

I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that all of Huawei's products are backdoored. It's a state-sponsored company in a country that is known for conducting massive cyber espionage campaigns, stealing IP by the truckload, and bugging the African Union building, for starters. Add on the social credit system and oppression of dissenters, great firewall, etc, and I sure would expect every single Huawei device to have some kind of surveillance path baked in.

I think this article is rather too sympathetic to China, but I don't think its point is as invalid as you're making out.

The various agencies have without doubt been probing their phones for years looking for any backdoors, and they would have announced it concretely if they'd found any - it would be too much in America's interest not to.

It's starting to feel as though the justifications of the agencies, with all their resources, basically boil down to "They must be, they're evil!"

> The various agencies have without doubt been probing their phones for years looking for any backdoors, and they would have announced it concretely if they'd found any

Unless it would be useful to them as well...

Anytime people bring up the success of Huawei, I'm quick to point out their dubious "R&D" methods. They've long been accused of working closely with Chinese state hackers to steal research, unreleased info, etc, from competition outside of China.

When Nortel, Canada's biggest telecom company, was at its peak there suddenly appeared a rival in China called Huawei who released identical products with zero research going into their development.[0]

I don't want to buy a Huawei phone just on ethical principles.

[0]http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-aga...

And the prices keep going up. It seems that nowadays everyone pretty much just talks about the camera, and nothing else matters. I think I will hold on to my Pixel for another couple of years.

Duopolies are fine when the product isn't garbage, and I think most would agree that iPhones/Galaxies/Pixels aren't garbage.

I'm much more concerned with the fact that Comcast keeps jacking up their prices, have well-known horrendous customer service, and are the only high speed ISP available for several miles in any direction of my apartment.

It's worth noting that if you are a UK resident you can preorder the P20/P20 Pro (either Sim free at around £600 or on contract from O2/Vodafone etc.) and qualify to claim a free pair of Bose QC35 II wireless noise cancelling headphones [1].

I am in no way affiliated with any company offering this promotion but thought it may interest some.

[1] https://huaweipromo.co.uk/gb/en/pages/p20bose/home

There is no guarantee for you to receive the headphones, it's limited to the first 4k claimers, and it seems to be not limited to just the UK as this promotion runs also in Germany: https://consumer.huawei.com/de/promotions/

I will never buy a Huawei phone again. I purchased a Nexus 6p, after one year, conveniently after the warranty was done, it constantly shuts down if it gets a wiff of cold air. Its USB C connector has to be positioned just right to charge.

I'm glad Google has changed providers for their phones. Hopefully HTC will be better.

I have the same device, with the same issues. I fixed the USB cable by using a needle (or other thin, hard object) to clean months of hard-packed lint out of the USB port. The cable now snaps in securely and charges reliably.

You can also replace the battery for about $30, but expect a huge headache, cosmetic damage to the phone, and high risk of piercing/igniting the old battery.

FWIW, I will never buy an Android phone again, but for another reason - privacy.

Chinese smartphones have become a force to be reckoned with -- offering equal functionality at half the prices of more status/international brands.

Xiaomi in India is a classic example.

Non-removable battery. No SD card slot. No headphone jack.

Europe can keep it.

In other words, it's waterproof.

Serious question, though: Do any of you actually use SD cards, I mean other than inserting a card the day you get the phone and leaving it in place forever? What's the use-case for inserting and removing storage?

Have you checked how much a 200 GB sd card costs, vs a phone with builtin 200 gb storage ?

Don't think of it as removable/constantly swapping storage. Think of it as upgradable storage.

That is strange. I have a Y6 (mainly, because it was cheap), and it has a removable battery, SD slot, headphone jack AND it has two SIM slots. For a € 130 phone, I am pretty happy with it.

Jeez, WTF is it with phone prices nowadays!?!

I know, 70 years ago these phones would cost half a billion.

>> American intelligence agencies have issued unanimous advice to the country’s citizens to avoid using Huawei phones

still waiting for the day European intelligence agencies issue unanimous advice to the world’s citizens to avoid using certain American phones and products.

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