I always try to title these blogs so that it might come up if you are looking for really specific information. The word “safe” is really subjective though. Like is the Chinese government going to spy on you if you have a Huawei? Well… Yeah.
Should you care? Meh. Does it make you unsafe? I’d venture to say no.
My big worry when I was in China was “will it work outside of China?” And “can I use an American sim card with it?”
And then when I was finally all set to buy one, Huawei blocked Google. No Google play store on Huawei? That was really a deal-breaker for me.
I didn’t know anyone who owned a Huawei that I could ask about it, but there was one day we ran into a bunch of teenagers in a cafe and they wanted to practice English, so I asked them if you could still get any apps I might want like Twitter and Facebook and Netflix and stuff. They said not to worry about it, but everything I saw online said it was incompatible and that you could get most apps from the Huawei store, but not everything.
Eventually I decided to take the risk and just buy one. The price was right, and I couldn’t say no to those camera specs.
I was a little worried about setting up a new phone in mainland China without a VPN, but it turned out better than I could have possibly imagined.
I turned it on for the first time and it offered to port all of my apps over from my old phone over bluetooth!! Including Google play store!!
As long as your old phone is still functional, I’d say you have absolutely nothing to worry about when switching to a Huawei.
My only side note that I want to include is that sometimes American apps don’t sync notifications super well, but it’s not a big deal to me.
Finding Eden 