Contrary to what you might have heard, Huawei's Mate 30 series smartphones are still running the Android mobile operating system (OS).

It is not running HarmonyOS, the upcoming free microkernel-based distributed OS that is being developed by Huawei. In fact, the Mate 30 and the Mate 30 Pro are running the latest Android 10 mobile OS.

The only difference between the Mate 30 series smartphones and other mainstream Android phones is that the former do not come with Google Mobile Services, or GMS, which refers to a suite of Google services that includes Google Play Store, Google Maps, Google Chrome, Gmail and YouTube.

This is due to the ongoing trade war between China and the United States, in which the Trump administration has imposed a ban that prevents US companies from working with Huawei. Thus, Google is unable to sell GMS to Huawei.

But as the Android mobile OS is an open-source OS, Huawei is able to continue utilising the platform. All the Android apps that you are using can thus be used on the Mate 30 series.

To help users move the apps on their old smartphones to the Mate 30, Huawei has created the Phone Clone app.

This app allows you to have most of the apps on your old Android smartphone on the new Mate 30 or Mate 30 Pro smartphone.

Before starting the cloning process, make sure both smartphones are placed next to each other, with their Wi-Fi switched on and with both on the same Wi-Fi network. Take out the SIM card in your old smartphone and insert it into the new Mate 30 smartphone.

You should not be performing any operation on either the old smartphone or the Mate 30 smartphone. If not, the connection between the two phones might be lost and the data cloning will be interrupted.

Here are the steps to take when moving your old Android smartphone to the new Mate 30 smartphone.

First, download Phone Clone from Google Play Store on your old smartphone.

Start Phone Clone on your new Mate 30 phone and choose "This is the new phone". In the next window, choose Android when asked to select the old phone system.

Start Phone Clone on your old phone and choose "This is the old phone". The phone will invoke the camera function.

Next, scan the QR code on the new Mate 30 phone with the old phone to establish the connection between the two phones.

After the connection is established (the Mate 30 will display the "Connected to old device" message), select the data you want to transfer, such as contacts, messaging, notes, calendar and photos. After selecting the data, tap on "Transfer" to begin cloning.

When the message "Transfer complete" is displayed on the Mate 30, tap "Done" to complete the data cloning.

You will find your Mate 30 smartphone having most of the apps that are on your old phone.

Continue to set up the Mate 30 smartphone by following the on-screen instructions.

And in no time, you can start using your Mate 30 as though it were your old smartphone.

Next week, we will look at the Mate 30 series' AppGallery, Huawei's app store.

This feature is brought to you by Huawei.

Read more:

Clone your existing Android smartphone to the Huawei Mate 30 - The Straits Times