Huawei has been building its own app ecosystem for years, and the company’s efforts intensified after it was cut off from Google’s apps and services. An important component of Huawei’s ecosystem is AppGallery, Huawei’s app store, but bringing apps to phones that don’t have Google Mobile Services isn’t always easy. Thankfully, a new SDK aims to address that.
Choice SDK is primarily developed by Austria-based BlueSource, and it provides apps with a single interface for interacting with either Google Mobile Services/Firebase or Huawei Mobile Services, whichever is present on the user’s phone. Instead of maintaining two independent codebases for Huawei devices and Google-powered devices, or writing all the code for both platforms themselves, developers can have one codebase that works on both platforms. It’s not quite a plug-and-play solution, as developers still have to replace GMS-specific calls with the Choice SDK equivalents, but it is less work than the alternatives.
Choice SDK was originally created by BlueSource to port banking applications to Huawei devices, but according to the project, Choice SDK is now used by “multiple commercial, public and private operated apps.” It supports the analytics, location, mapping, messaging, and sign-in abilities of GMS and HMS, and the code is open-source.
It remains to be seen if Choice SDK will cause a rise in popular applications being ported to Huawei phones. Maintaining applications across multiple app stores is a difficult process on its own, and the trade restrictions still imposed by the United States means many potential developers can’t legally work with Huawei. Many of the current top apps on the Play Store, currently including applications like Facebook, Discord, and Facebook Messenger, are developed by American companies. However, for the developers able and willing to bring apps to Huawei phones, the new SDK could save some time.
www.xda-developers.com
Choice SDK is primarily developed by Austria-based BlueSource, and it provides apps with a single interface for interacting with either Google Mobile Services/Firebase or Huawei Mobile Services, whichever is present on the user’s phone. Instead of maintaining two independent codebases for Huawei devices and Google-powered devices, or writing all the code for both platforms themselves, developers can have one codebase that works on both platforms. It’s not quite a plug-and-play solution, as developers still have to replace GMS-specific calls with the Choice SDK equivalents, but it is less work than the alternatives.
Choice SDK was originally created by BlueSource to port banking applications to Huawei devices, but according to the project, Choice SDK is now used by “multiple commercial, public and private operated apps.” It supports the analytics, location, mapping, messaging, and sign-in abilities of GMS and HMS, and the code is open-source.
It remains to be seen if Choice SDK will cause a rise in popular applications being ported to Huawei phones. Maintaining applications across multiple app stores is a difficult process on its own, and the trade restrictions still imposed by the United States means many potential developers can’t legally work with Huawei. Many of the current top apps on the Play Store, currently including applications like Facebook, Discord, and Facebook Messenger, are developed by American companies. However, for the developers able and willing to bring apps to Huawei phones, the new SDK could save some time.
This new SDK makes porting apps to Huawei devices easier
Looking to publish an app onto Huawei's AppGallery but need help adapting to Huawei Mobile Services? Try out the new Choice SDK!
www.xda-developers.com