Very bad experience

[LucW]

I bought this Huawei Mate 8 phone in February. Since then I have been trying to make a number of apps work. These are apps that monitor something and inform me accordingly. I give a few examples:
-Recycle is an app that keeps an eye on the calendar and tells me the night before when I have to put a dustbin out. This sounds rediculous, but here in Belgium we have three or four different dustbins that all have there speficic moment of collection. In fact this is a great app
-TomTom Flitsers is an app that keeps an eye on my Bluetooth connections and as soon as my phone connects to the Bluetooth of the car it starts up by itself and informs me of the speed camera's along the way.
-MyDataManager is an app that constantly monitors data usage (including roaming) of the phone and tells me when there is a danger of going over the bundle
-G-tag is a small device attached to my keys and an app on my phone. Whenever I should leave the house without keys, the app makes a sound
These are just a few of the apps that DO NOT work on the Huawei Mate 8 and probably on any Huawei phone. Huawei has apparently screwed up Android in such a way that all this is not possible anymore. When I contacted the (large) retailer where I bought my phone, they confirmed that Facebook, Skype and Foursquare don't work either.
I also contacted Huawei about this problem and they said that these are third party apps, that they are not responsible if they do not work and that I have to contact the makers of these apps. How low can you go?
The Mate 8 is a beautiful phone, a very fast phone and the battery life is out of this world. But all this is no good if it fails to do just that what it is made for: run apps.
Never, ever again Huawei for me

 

[hulish]

How do apps not work how exactly? If you mean in the background check if the apps are excluded from being turned off when the screen turns off in the battery manager and that they are allowed to give notifications in the app settings.

 

[LucW]

High hulish, thank you for your reply. As an example MyDataManager should start as soon as I switch on the phone in order to keep track of the data that I use. It just didn't start. All of a sudden it started yesterday without me changing anything in the settings of the phone, and there was no update of the app nor the OS of the phone. I still do not know why.

 

[dchicago]

Did you try "protecting" the apps, so that they keep running when the screen is off? (Go to Settings / Advanced settings / Battery manager / Protected apps.)

 

[LucW]

Thank you dchicago. I know of this feature, that should not be there in the first place. What a stupid idea having to whitelist apps. Anyway for some apps this still does not work.

 

[mikedt]

Where did you actually contact Huawei, was it their HQ, Shenzhen, China? And where did you buy the Mate 8 from, what version is it?

Their heavily customised and modified implementation of Android, EMUI "Emotion OS", probably works perfectly fine with QQ, Wechat, Weibo, Baidu, Autonavi, Bank of Beijing, etc. apps.

No Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare in China of course.

 

[LucW]

Hi mikedt. Thank you for your reply. I contacted Huawei through their website for Belgium:
http://www.consumer.huawei.com/be/

I bought the Mate 8 from a genuine retailer here in Belgium, it is the European version, if that is what you mean. And yes you are right, they modified Android far too much to make it look like iOS. If I wanted iOS, I would have bought an iPhone. I do nit use Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare or any other social media. But I have, and this is just an example, a G-tag, this is a little thing one attaches to the keys and the phone makes a noice if you are too far away from your keys, so that you do not risk to leave the house without them. But is does not work.

Anyway, I'll learn to live with it and will buy another brand next time.

 

[drexappeal]

I don't know that I could be of much help, as I don't use any of those apps. When you mention of the apps "not working", it's also something that would be difficult to help with, without knowing exactly what isn't working. Notifications? Force close?

I've had my Mate 8, Chinese version (NXT-AL10) since February as well and the only thing that I've found to be a little quirky, are the power saving components. In order to prevent power saving from being too aggressive, I keep the phone on "Performance" mode majority of the time. The only time I enable the "Smart" mode is at night, prior to going to sleep. Unfortunately, the one thing, that allows the phone to have great battery life, is also the reason that many people have notification issues with certain apps. What I've come to find is that, when the phone is in any other mode, aside from Performance, one would have to re-open all the apps that you would want to receive consistent notifications, throughout a day. This also applies, even if you've added apps to the "white list", to protect them from closing. There are only specific apps that I can't afford to miss certain notifications on (Calendar, Text Messages, Emails, Social Networking), so those are the one that every morning, I'll open up prior to getting the day started.

I'm guessing, by what you need from the apps, that the "non-functioning" part relates to not receiving notifications? I don't know that what I'm mentioning will "fix" your issue, but wanted to post my experience that maybe could be a solution. Bottom line is that, I've found that of all the things that I've found the most annoying, it's the power saving software being too aggressive.

As for the User Interface, it has never bothered me one 'bit thanks to Nova Launcher Prime. Many people don't realize, because even the blogs/tech news articles don't really explain 3rd party launchers enough, that 3rd Party Launchers can allow you to customize the phone without needing to "root" the phone. Any complaints of the homescreens on non-stock Android phones, that have messy UI's, can be fixed immediately by using a 3rd party launcher. My preference is Nova Launcher Prime, but for those who are fans of a close to stock Android experience, Google has even released their most recent UI for download from the Play Store. The only thing that unfortunately doesn't change, are the built in menus (which I personally don't care, since I typically will go through a new phone's menus item by item, when initially setting the phone up).

Hope at least some of this info will help your situation.

 

[LucW]

I don't know that I could be of much help, as I don't use any of those apps. When you mention of the apps "not working", it's also something that would be difficult to help with, without knowing exactly what isn't working. Notifications? Force close?

Hi Drexappeal,

Thank you very much for your extensive answer. Over the months I have been able to solve many of the problems and most apps work now. Indeed the problems were all related to apps not being able to issue notifications because of some, IMHO, stupid settings of the OS. I am very pleased with the quality of the hardware but I will never ever buy another Huawei just because of this manipulation of Android.
Merely the fact that there is no appdrawer and that the apps are all across the different screens, not even in alphabetical order, makes me very angry.
By the way, you mention Nova Launcher Prime. Now that I have been using this phone for 8 months and I am more or less used to the visual aspect, can I still install this launcher and be confident that I do not have to start all over getting used to the phone?

 

[drexappeal]

Hi Drexappeal,

Thank you very much for your extensive answer. Over the months I have been able to solve many of the problems and most apps work now. Indeed the problems were all related to apps not being able to issue notifications because of some, IMHO, stupid settings of the OS. I am very pleased with the quality of the hardware but I will never ever buy another Huawei just because of this manipulation of Android.
Merely the fact that there is no appdrawer and that the apps are all across the different screens, not even in alphabetical order, makes me very angry.
By the way, you mention Nova Launcher Prime. Now that I have been using this phone for 8 months and I am more or less used to the visual aspect, can I still install this launcher and be confident that I do not have to start all over getting used to the phone?

To a certain extent, yes. What I would suggest is, load the free version of Nova Launcher, as well as the app called "HomeSmack". Home Smack will allow you to switch back and forth between the 2 user interfaces. But, in the settings of Nova Launcher (not sure if this is only for the Prime version or not), there's a way you can import the settings for your homescreen that you've currently set up. Good news is, Nova Launcher (or many 3rd party launchers, for that matter), does have an app drawer at your disposal. In order to lock Nova Launcher in as your primary User Interface, follow the following steps:

On the phone:
Settings Menu>Apps>Advanced>Default App Settings>Launcher> Select Nova Launcher with the circle toggles, and hit the back button until you're out of settings.

If you don't want to "reconfigure" the homescreens again, you can try the "Import" function, within Nova Settings. To get to that, follow the following steps:

Nova Settings>Backup & Import settings> Import. When clicking on Import, you'll get a prompt saying that it will erase the current settings on Nova. This should be fine, since you've never set up Nova before. From there, I'd imagine that you'd be able to copy the homescreen settings that you had on the Huawei stock EMUI Launcher.

Now, the one thing to take note of is that typically, Nova Launcher (and other 3rd party apps) sometimes have difficulty using widgets that are stock (proprietary) widgets. What I love about using Nova Launcher vs. the OEM user interface, is there's a "backup" function that allows you to save all your homescreen settings. So, when transferring to another phone, it's very easy to restore what you did on Nova Launcher.

Hope this tutorial will help you. This should give you a little more peace of mind in choosing phones, just based on the OEM's user interface. Nova Launcher is the primary reason that I never worry about what the OEM's do in the software. Some people are particular about the stock settings menu as well, but even that doesn't bother me, as long as my homescreens can be configured the way I want them to be, without relying on how the OEM's have tweaked the Android software.

 

[LucW]

Hello drexappeal,

Thank you very much for all the explanations, as soon as I find some time I will surely try this out!

If we ever have a chance to meet, beers are on me

Best regards,

To a certain extent, yes. What I would suggest is, load the free version of Nova Launcher, as well as the app called "HomeSmack". Home Smack will allow you to switch back and forth between the 2 user interfaces. But, in the settings of Nova Launcher (not sure if this is only for the Prime version or not), there's a way you can import the settings for your homescreen that you've currently set up. Good news is, Nova Launcher (or many 3rd party launchers, for that matter), does have an app drawer at your disposal. In order to lock Nova Launcher in as your primary User Interface, follow the following steps:

On the phone:
Settings Menu>Apps>Advanced>Default App Settings>Launcher> Select Nova Launcher with the circle toggles, and hit the back button until you're out of settings.

If you don't want to "reconfigure" the homescreens again, you can try the "Import" function, within Nova Settings. To get to that, follow the following steps:

Nova Settings>Backup & Import settings> Import. When clicking on Import, you'll get a prompt saying that it will erase the current settings on Nova. This should be fine, since you've never set up Nova before. From there, I'd imagine that you'd be able to copy the homescreen settings that you had on the Huawei stock EMUI Launcher.

Now, the one thing to take note of is that typically, Nova Launcher (and other 3rd party apps) sometimes have difficulty using widgets that are stock (proprietary) widgets. What I love about using Nova Launcher vs. the OEM user interface, is there's a "backup" function that allows you to save all your homescreen settings. So, when transferring to another phone, it's very easy to restore what you did on Nova Launcher.

Hope this tutorial will help you. This should give you a little more peace of mind in choosing phones, just based on the OEM's user interface. Nova Launcher is the primary reason that I never worry about what the OEM's do in the software. Some people are particular about the stock settings menu as well, but even that doesn't bother me, as long as my homescreens can be configured the way I want them to be, without relying on how the OEM's have tweaked the Android software.

 

[drexappeal]

Hello drexappeal,

Thank you very much for all the explanations, as soon as I find some time I will surely try this out!

If we ever have a chance to meet, beers are on me

Best regards,

No problem at all. That's what these forums are for and why I've participated in them for such a long time. One thing that I've learned over the past 6 years of using Android is that, there are many more options for customization than I could even think up. My experience into custom launchers didn't happen until 1/2 a year with my first Android device. Coming over from Windows Mobile (not Windows Phone, but the original Windows Mobile), I was so used to a world where system files needed to be changed and tinkering took a whole lot longer than I had time for (especially as my work responsibilities increased). The original Launcher that opened up my eyes to Android's customizability was Launcher Pro. Unfortunately, the developer for that launcher couldn't support it anymore and I moved on to Nova Launcher Pro, which has been even better than my experiences with Launcher Pro. I can't re-iterate enough that using a 3rd party Launcher really makes me disregard any review that talks about an OEM's User Interface being the only "bad" part of a device. Instead, I can pay attention to the hardware made available on any Android device.

The software rarely bothers me, to the point that it makes me dislike the device, since there's always a customizable option I've found on Android through the Play Store (by recommendation of tech forums). Just another quick example, for a long time, Samsung devices turned a device on every time a notification would come up from the Calendar or text message SMS. I found apps to disable that wake-up function on both the Calendar and SMS text message. That helped me prevent any unnecessary battery drain from the phone waking up and staying awake in my pocket. It seemed like that was finally changed, when I recently purchased (and subsequently returned, due to recall) the Galaxy Note7, but I still keep those apps on my wishlist, in the event there's another OEM that "thinks" it's a good idea to force phone wakeup, without providing an option to disable, like Samsung did.