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Huawei officially announced its latest flagship smartphones on Thursday, both lacking 5G capabilities due to ongoing US sanctions.
The handsets – the P50 and P50 Pro – max out at 4G/LTE, putting them behind rival higher-end devices.
They also both run Huawei’s HarmonyOS 2, which is the open-source Linux kernel and core of Android wrapped in Huawei's proprietary mobile apps and software store. Though this OS does run Android apps, it does not come with Google's proprietary suite of Play, Gmail, etc.
This is all because under the previous White House administration, the US government's Department of Commerce placed Huawei and dozens of its subsidiaries and affiliates on a so-called Entity List that made it difficult, if not impossible, for American organizations to do business with the Chinese mega-corp. Said organizations need special permission from Uncle Sam, permission that is rarely granted.