Huawei Emui 9.1: more than a smartphone
3.4.2019
Translation: Eva Francis
Huawei has released the features and specs of its latest Android version, Emui 9.1. It turns your phone into a car key. Among other things.
Huawei has been known to make bad software choices that don’t boost the usability of their phones. In fact, much the opposite. Their user interface of choice is called Emotion UI, or Emui for short, and sparks all the wrong emotions: frustration.
More memory, more fitness, more Internet of Things
The P30 series devices with Emui 9.1 provide you with features that are designed to help you in your everyday life and not only simplify, speed up or improve the use of your smartphone. The P30 Pro, for instance, features App AR Measure, a quick measurement tool for length total area and volume. What makes this possible, and applies to the P30 Pro only, is a built-in Time of Flight Camera (TOF) that’s designed for distance measurement.
Sharing between Huawei devices is simplified. NFC allows you to exchange certain file types between the P30 devices and the Matebook series. But not all file types are supported: According to latest Huawei insights, NFC Sharing – named OneHop – only works on the following devices.
Plus, only the following file types and Office 2016, 365 and more recent are supported.
- PPT
- DOC
- DOCX
- XLS
- XLSX
- TXT
If you're not doing office work, you can connect your smartphone to a treadmill – if it’s one by Precore or Core Health. More treadmill manufacturers are said to be added in the future.
We learn little from the ten-second commercial clip with the file name videoPerfectPartner_long.mp4. Just makes me think: how long is the short version? But fact is the system records your movements and steps and can interact with at least one music service. The music icon at the top right of the screen indicates this.
The Chinese text translates to something like this:
New travel experience
The smartphone becomes your car key
Travelling is easier. Let's go.
I translated this, so it might not be 100% correct, but I think I got the gist of it. Although Audi isn’t mentioned, the headlights of the car look like those of the Audi A7.
Optional user interface
Emui 9.1 comes with an ad.
Fortunately, you don't have to work with a user interface that’s trying to be iOS, but has to make compromises because it’s actually Android. Launchers – such as Nova Launcher – are a great help.
When manufacturers create an Android version for their own devices, it usually goes wrong. They rarely do justice to the performance of the hardware and often end up making things worse. What manufacturers usually do is put a new user interface on top of Android, which then looks like the result of a drunken night had between Android and Apples iOS.
But if Emui 9.1 proves one thing, it's that Android versions made by manufacturers don't necessarily have to result in a messed-up user interface. Though Samsung got lucky with One UI, it's the behind-the-scenes features that can make a manufacturer's version really interesting. In this case, Huawei was successful.
And that’s it for today. I'm still reconfiguring my Huawei P30 Pro after all. And you can, too. My fight against emuis graphic atrocities continues.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
Smartphone
Follow topics and stay updated on your areas of interest
News + Trends
From the latest iPhone to the return of 80s fashion. The editorial team will help you make sense of it all.
Show all
