SINGAPORE - Upon being tasked to use the Huawei Mate 30 Pro as my only phone last weekend (Oct 5-6), I was quietly confident that I would not only survive but also come out of the no-Google Play experience unscathed.

The Mate 30 series phones are Huawei's first to lack access to Google Mobile Services, meaning that while it still runs on Android, Google apps like app store Google Play, Gmail, and Google Maps are not pre-installed and cannot be downloaded.