Huawei P40 Pro Plus with Curve, the latest App Gallery arrival.
David PhelanAugust 14 update below. This post was first published on August 12, 2020.
Huawei’s App Gallery has just has a shot in the arm with the arrival of the cool new banking app, Curve.
Huawei makes some of the best phones around, with innovative hardware, great build quality and dazzling cameras. But Huawei is prevented from using Google Mobile Services, meaning there’s no Google Maps or Gmail or Play Store, and its own alternative to Play Store has some big holes. In some cases, Huawei has been able to plug the gaps magnificently: the free Here WeGo mapping app is in several ways better than Google Maps, and Huawei is working with TomTom on its own navigation feature. However, financial service apps have been a notable App Gallery weakness.
August 14 update. Further proof, if it were needed, that Huawei is keen for its AppGallery to be taken seriously comes from a slew of recent additions. I can exclusively reveal that a major British TV listings and streaming app, My5, is just landing in the AppGallery. The store’s numbers are growing fast, but increasingly quantity is matched with quality.
Recently added is the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus, a highly-regarded dictionary app – and there is something appropriate about the fact that it’s an American publication which was hitherto unavailable to any American Huawei P40 users thanks to the absence of the Google Play Store. It also comes with a year’s access to premium services for the first to apply.
Similarly, there are new converts in sectors from transport to entertainment. Such as Trainline, which British readers will recognize as being the leading train and coach times and ticketing app is a recent addition. A smaller player, Live London Bus Times, has also recently launched. In terms of media players, VLC is regularly seen as a major player and Huawei is describing this as one of the new apps it loves.
Other new apps include Quidco, a major cashback site for deals and voucher codes. Radio stations, besides LBC and Absolute mentioned below, now include Magic Radios range of stations. And there are plenty of staples like Snapchat, Tinder and Deliveroo already on board.
Huawei has for some time been emphasizing that it is strongly encouraging app developers to join the platform and it looks like this is beginning to pay off. Of course, without the key apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Twitter and Instagram, important gaps will remain. But things are changing.
Finally, proof that it was quite a coup for Huawei to land Curve comes from the fact that Samsung has announced its own connection with Curve. The Samsung Pay Card, a digital payment solution, is “powered by Curve”, the company says. When the card officially launches in the UK later in 2020it will be in partnership with Curve.
This has been an issue for people considering Huawei but realizing they use their smartphone as a digital wallet. Curve is far from the first financial services app to arrive on Huawei’s store, but it’s easily the coolest.
Curve is a smart credit card, operating in the U.K. and Ireland now but with ambitions to be in more countries. It works in a unique way: you add your Visa and Mastercard debit and credit cards to the Curve card and use just the one card to spend from any of your accounts. It makes managing your money and all your accounts straightforward and seamless, all from within the Curve app.
Like other challenger bank cards, there are cute benefits like the capability to freeze a card instantly from within the app if you lose it, and thaw it again when you find it was at the bottom of your bag all along.
It also shows real-time updates on your balances as you spend.
Huawei P40 Pro Plus.
HuaweiThe fact that this app has arrived in the Huawei App Gallery is potentially game-changing for Huawei as it will allow other banks to check out how it fares on the platform. It was announced in the last day and has already attracted some interest with over 7,000 installs. A small start, but it’s something.
The Huawei App Gallery has been growing fast since its launch just over two years ago. While its 81,000 apps are no match for Android’s total in the millions, its credentials have been burnished recently by the addition of LBC and Absolute Radio, Deezer, Booking.com and TikTok, plus the Bolt ride-hailing app.
It’s a long way from critical mass, then, but it’s doing increasingly well. The App Gallery is well laid-out, has the excellent Petal Search to help you find stuff, and even a cute way of installing apps, where the download shows up in the app icon like a fast-filling liquid (in a way that’s oddly meditative).
Each new big-name app is another step towards the tipping point for those held back from choosing Huawei by the software while coveting the hardware.
Follow me on Instagram by clicking here: davidphelantech and Twitter: @davidphelan2009
The Link LonkAugust 14, 2020 at 09:31PM
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