Can someone get a perfect something? When it comes to smartphones perfection can be defined as a smartphone you can comfortably use for the next 5 years without requiring an upgrade. That is, it is made of durable materials, has slightly above minimum hardware specs that can withstand the ever growing big data demand, and has next generation hardware and software iterations. On top of those, you should be able to afford it. Huawei Y7p has all those, except two. I’ll come to these later but first let us talk about getting your favourite Apps through Huawei Mobile Services and other third party apps.
Can’t find your favourite App on Huawei Y7p? No worries!
After unboxing and firing up your brand new Huawei Y7p, you may notice that you need to install a number of your favourite Apps, be they local or International. The second thing you may notice is that the phone is missing Google Play Store, and that’s because since last year Huawei has been launching phones without including Google Mobile Services. As a replacement for Google Play Store and associated Google Services, Huawei introduced its own Huawei Mobile Services, which by now includes a significant portion of your favourite Apps.
Apps such as GB WhatsApp, TrueCaller, SnapChat, Xender, and local varieties such as Timiza, Jumia, MySafaricom and thousands of others, mostly games, are already available through Huawei Mobile Services
However, there are Apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger that are not available in the Huawei App Gallery but when searched for through the gallery, the Gallery directs you to a download link and allows you to download them from somewhere else.
Then there are Apps you won’t find in Huawei App Gallery. These ones you will have to download from third party App Stores and the most recommended third party app store that I have personally installed is the APKpure.
To download APKpure, you will need to fire up Huawei’s Internet browser, type in Apkpure, download the Apkpure Store, install, and there you go, you shall have opened the doors to millions of Apps already available on Google Play and iOS – their APK versions. From APKPure (Huawei should buy this one) you will be able to download WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and even Google Apps. Some of the Google Apps like Chrome and Contacts from APK store will be usable, but partially. For example, you will still have troubles access your contacts saved in Gmail to be synced with your Huawei Y7p device.
And that brings me to the questions: 1. How do you go around using Google Apps? 2. How do you get your Gmail contacts?
Using Google Services in Huawei Y7p
As already mentioned, there are some Google Apps you can get from APKpure for partial use – but these area apps that you can use without having to sign in. I tried Google Contacts, Google Search and Chrome – working sometimes but hanging most of the time. But if it is an app that you must sign in in order to use, don’t even bother.
The best way to access the Google Apps such as Maps, YouTube and even Gmail is through the web browser. They perform seamlessly okay and after a few hours you won’t even notice that you are using a browser to access those services. For Gmail, if accessing it through the browser is not what interests you, you can add your Gmail account to Huawei’s own email App. Fire on the Email App and you will be asked to add an email account. One of the email accounts you will be asked to add is Gmail, where you will only add your Gmail username and password, then allow the App to access your Google account. By default, the app will be syncing with your Gmail every 15 minutes – unless you change the timing to some other less frequent intervals e.g. to Never.
The biggest challenge is getting your Gmail contacts to Huawei Contacts. To do this you need a PC (laptop) and a method to transfer a file from the laptop to the device – the phone’s USB cable should be enough.
Login into your Gmail in a PC, go to Contacts, go to Export Contacts, Export your Contacts for iOS (the .vcf) format, save the contacts in the PC e.g. Desktop – then copy the contact file from the PC to the phone.
After you have successfully transferred your contacts from the PC to Huawei Y7p, fire up Huawei Contacts (you will find it under Tools Folder), go to Import, choose from Storage, and let the device sync the contacts automatically. It will take less than 30 seconds but that depends on the number of contacts that you have.
As you continue to use the phone and save new numbers into the devices, you will need to from time to time to manually export the contacts to Gmail for backup, at least until Huawei figures out how to automate the process.
An excellent for Kshs 18.5K
On durability, Huawei Y7p is a strong phone. It is made of plastic glossed body with a metallic feel – just the type of body you are not scared of letting go – or if it accidentally falls to the ground, you heart doesn’t have to skip several beats. To add to durability, the glass on the device feels strong that feels to be at least corning glass 5. The idea here is anyone who purchases the Huawei Y7p doesn’t have to worry about the durability of the phone material wise. But of course this doesn’t give you the greenlight to go around dropping the phone as if it is some Nokia 3310.
On technical specs I usually insist that there are only four things someone needs to worry about – and that’s the speed, the memory, the RAM and the battery. Huawei Y7p is already perfect on these – alright, almost perfect. For a phone you’d want to use until 2025, the minimum RAM you should bargain for is 6GB, which is slightly above the current requirement of 4GB that the Y7p ships with. Trust me though, the device will still be very useful in 2025 – even if at that time people could have moved to the next-gen tech where RAM size probably won’t be part of the specs techies mention in reviews.
Build – check. Hardware – check. What is not a complete check is next-gen tech. There are two things here I should mention – the first being that phones that come out post 2017 particularly those that are marketed to Kenya out to feature Ban 28 a.k.a 700MHz LTE. This is the band that Faiba 4G uses for their affordable Internet. If you can remember, there was a time all TV broadcasters were forced to stop using own frequency to broadcast but rather let Signet and PAN to broadcast on their behalf. The frequencies these broadcasters were using (plus respective white spaces), were amalgamated into the 700MHz spectrum (698MHz to 806MHz), and part of the frequency was given to Jamia Telecommunication for their mobile Internet infrastructure. Now as it happens, not every smartphone supports that frequency, and Huawei Y7p is one of those smartphones. What that means is that if you are a user of Faiba 4G, you will not be able to use Huawei Y7p on your Faiba line. All the other lines (Safaricom, Airtel, Telkom, Equitel) do work excellently with the Huawei device.
The second thing I need to mention and this is in respect to the next gen tech, is 5G. I’m mentioning this because of the perfection I alluded to above. If you are to buy a smartphone you intend to use up to 2025 on the minimum, it is very necessary to have 5G network as as important consideration. From late last year throughout to this year we will be experiencing a number of the telecommunication companies upgrading their mobile Internet offerings to 5G, and in three or so years 5G will be as common as 4G is right now – of course led by Safaricom. The leader in this front is of course Huawei but sadly Huawei Y7p is not the phone that will make you 5G ready – and that’s because the device is of low budget where
