Testing the latest Huawei product lineup

This was... an interesting watch. Coming from the Apple side of the tech world, I have very mixed feelings - on one hand, yes, it does seem like Huawei made the best out of a bad situation. On the other hand, many choices made here leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

For as long as I can think, Huawei was seen as the "poor man's alternative" to "proper" tech products, from the Samsungs and Apples and Microsofts of the world. A long running joke was that whatever Apple announced, no matter how silly, Huawei would have it copied and shipped within the week. They lacked their own identity, they lacked their own style, and they lacked confidence. Instead of shipping good products that have their own thought behind them, they just copied whatever Apple did and called it a day. They haven't stopped doing that, evidently.

I mean, Kudos to them for not bowing down to the US shutting them off from what was basically their entire business model - but I do have to ask, has this made them change? No, not at all. There's no Play Store anymore, so Huawei is faced with a unique problem they can't use the "simply copy what everyone else is doing" solution on - leaving users with the App Gallery, which - let me remind you - forces users to download apps from third party websites if they know they can't deliver the experience themselves.

I mean, I can see the less tech-savvy be impressed by the features on offer. Super Device is actually really cool, and while I think the name is stupid, being able to just directly connect your phone and your tablet seems like a cool thing. Using your tablet as a pen display for your laptop is also cool, and I can tell you that for a fact because - no surprises there - that's also a feature they plagiarised from Apple in basically everything but name.

I'm just... confused, I suppose. Everything they make, from earbuds to tablets, everything rips off something else. The watches have the Apple Watch app menu. The phones have nearly pixel-perfect recreations of the iPhone widgets. The headphones would be seized by customs for copyright infringement if they weren't silver - and the ones that look completely alien, the ones that they completely designed themselves, feel bad and are poorly thought out. Go figure.

And that's not even to speak of the privacy concerns. I'm not anti-China on principle, but this phone comes with advertisements on the home screen and more than fifty pre-installed apps. Make of that what you will. And then the whole segment about the chips? How did they just manage to pull a 7nm 5G chip with performance on par with the new Snapdragons out of their ass? A lesser man would point to the blatant plagiarism in software and hardware design and imply industrial espionage. Alas, hat's off, well done, impressive that they improved their chip design that quickly. Same with the glass. That was legitimately impressive - I've seen Ceramic Shield shrug off being slammed into the corner of a metal table, and Huawei's glass is even stronger - that's cool, and I'm saying that without a hint of irony.

But maybe that's my bias. After all, I've never taken Huawei seriously. The only thing I'm taking away from this video is that they remain mostly devoid of ideas or integrity and love to plagiarise, but their glass and a few of the features do mean that a broken clock is right twice a day.