In one fell swoop, Huawei is about to address one of the biggest longstanding weaknesses in its Android phones. As reported this past week, Huawei soon will unveil a major new version of its EMUI software, with the timing likely to coincide with the company's IFA 2016 press conference in early September. (Also likely: a new Huawei Mate handset to showcase this new software.)

It'll be the first chance we get to see the work of former Apple creative director Abigail Brody, who Huawei hired in September 2015 to oversee user experience, building a team out of its newly established San Francisco design center. That in itself should tell you how serious Huawei is about software design. Expect Huawei's new UX — and possibly Brody herself — to feature prominently in the upcoming Huawei IFA presser. Verizon is offering the Pixel 4a for just $10/mo on new Unlimited lines We haven't seen anything of Huawei's re-tooled interface yet, but what we've heard is tantalizing. The future of EMUI is reportedly geared towards making Huawei phones more palatable to Western audiences, in stark contrast to the Asia-centric design of the company's current software. That mirrors what we've heard from our own sources over the past year, which have suggested something much, much closer to stock Android than present-day EMUI, which riffs on iOS.

In late 2015 Huawei made a major design hire, and quietly established a new design center in San Francisco. Indeed, even before Abigail Brody officially came on board, we were hearing of plans to significantly pare back EMUI from those close to the company. There were whispers of notifications being done the Google way, less tinkering with icons, and (finally!) the introduction of an app drawer. The important but incremental changes from EMUI 3 to 4 were described by one source as "nothing" compared to what lay ahead in the next major version. A more streamlined, Googley Huawei UX layer should also help the company push out Android updates faster — like many phone makers, Huawei has struggled to push out new versions in a timely manner. In a recent interview, Huawei smartphone chief Changzhu Li revealed that the company has set a two month target for updating its phones in future. Sure, it's one thing to set such a target and another to achieve it, especially with carrier certification and other hoops to jump through.