Android Central ran a piece a few days ago explaining how it's time for smartphone fans to get excited about Huawei, because -- and I made the same point in my MateBook hands-on -- that the Chinese tech giant has begun its aggressive expansion in hopes of overtaking both Apple and Samsung as the world's top dog smartphone brand (that's not an assumption on my or Android Central's part: the company's head of consumer electronics, Richard Yu, said so to the Wall Street Journal last month). Now, that's easier said than done, but Huawei is a huge company with lots of financial backing, its products are seeing sales growth, and it's already mastered the art of crafting top of the line hardware. The only thing holding back Huawei's phones, at least to tech reviewers, is its very iOS-like EMUI mobile operation system. But even that's about to be changed, as Huawei has hired a former Apple designer to overhaul EMUI to make it more streamlined, more "usable", more ... Google.
Now I personally don't have a big problem with EMUI. I like some of the changes it's incorporated, though I think those square-ish iPhone-like icons don't look that great. But I can't deny that there's one major flaw to EMUI, one that have angered at least one other reviewer so much, he's declared Huawei phones unusable because of it.
That problem is this (well, if you've read the title of this piece you already know): Huawei phones often fail to send you notifications. It could be something major, like a Facebook messenger message from the girlfriend wondering where you are (respond too late, and be prepared for an interrogation). Or something minor, like that Instagram like of your lunch. Chances are, if you're using a Huawei phone just out of the box without any tweaks, you won't get alerts on updates to some of your apps.
This is partly due to EMUI's very aggressive battery saving methods, which forbid apps from running in the background when the phone's screen is off. It's also partly due to the phone somehow thinking notifications aren't worthy to take up real estate on your pull-down shade unless you've marked the app "priority."
EMUI (short for Emotion User Interface) has a lot of critics. While I don't think it's all that bad,... [+]
Just going into the phone's notification center and marking, say, Google Spaces a priority isn't enough. You might still miss that link your friend just posted. Neither will "whitelisting" Facebook messenger in the battery manager part be enough to ensure you get every Facebook message. Going into Doze settings and telling them to quit putting your Whatsapp to sleep won't do the trick either. With Huawei phones, you have to do all three.
Step 1: Go to settings --> advanced settings --> battery manager --> protected apps, then find the app you want to see notifications from, and protect it. This is "whitelisting" the app so Huawei's overeager software doesn't shut it down for no reason.
Step 2: Go to settings --> apps --> advanced --> ignore battery optimizations, then find the app and ignore it. Don't be tricked by the misleading wording, "ignoring" the app actually means to let it run, because you're telling the battery optimization function, aka Doze, to "ignore" that app.
Step 3: Go to settings --> notification panel & status bar --> notification center, then find the app, then activate "allow notifications" and also "priority display". You have to activate the priority part too to make sure you get notifications. I've tried just activating allow notifications but not priority and I still didn't get notifications from that app.
You have to complete all three steps to ensure you get full notifications from that app. It's not a big deal to hardcore Android users who know how to around a phone, but the average smartphone user aren't going to know how to do that, and they'll just wonder why they never get notified of Facebook messages.
Hopefully, Huawei's new and improved software that's coming this fall will address this issue and make the phone's notifications functional right out of the box.
