There are a few ways to get Google Apps on Huawei’s Mate 30 but the most comprehensive way was an app called LZ Play. It offered a one-click method (well, two or three, but it was pretty simple) to download anything necessary to get Google’s apps and services running on the Mate 30, but as with all things that seemed too good to be true, there was more to this tale as well.
John Wu, the man behind the most well-known mod Magisk from Android, looked a little deeper into how LZ Play worked and wrote a fairly long article about how it worked on his platform. In short, it used some Huawei hidden APIs that allow users to install such apps, but they are viewed as–and granted the same permissions as–device apps.
Not everyone seemed to have access to the system. Rather, it seemed to be open to an app to use for this API, it had to be signed by Huawei cryptographically – in other words, an approval process occurs.
This revelation evidently raised a few eyebrows, because not long after John’s piece was published, two things happened. First, the website hosting LZ Play disappeared (and it hasn’t, as yet, returned). Secondly, Mate 30s which had Google Apps installed by this method were no longer passing SafetyNet checks, whereas the week prior, they had been.
Seeing as Google’s SafetyNet check only matters if a phone actually runs Google’s apps and services, it kind of fits that Huawei’s Mate 30 wouldn’t pass, and wouldn’t – by design, at least – even need to. Therefore, it’s surprising that the Mate 30 ever managed to pass, especially with side-loaded Google apps.
For those customers who managed to sideload Google Apps this way before LZ Play disappeared, most Google services will continue to work.
However, without SafetyNet, chances are Google Pay won’t work, and any DRM services built on SafetyNet also won’t – so, things like Netflix, video streaming services, and even banking and financial services apps may not work.
Obviously, the choices will be far smaller in the future. Even without LZ Play, users can still use well-documented methods to download most Google apps and services, but they won’t work the same way.
Simple services such as Gmail, Drive, and even the Play Store are likely to work, but again, anything that depends on Google’s SafetyNet mechanism won’t work, and without device permissions–that Google’s apps can’t get on Mate 30 now–it’s probably some things that just won’t work, or at all.
