New Huawei P20/P20 Pro update finally fixes Play Store certification, brings August security patch

Despite maintaining a heavy skin, Huawei is known for delivering swift and periodic software updates. The Chinese OEM already started the public beta initiative to pilot test the Android 10 based EMUI 10 for Huawei P30 family. They even published a tentative roadmap with the next set of eligible devices.

Don’t get confused by the naming convention as the Mate 20 series is actually younger than the P20 series. The Kirin 970 powered Huawei P20 and P20 Pro received EMUI 9.1 update during the period of last two months. The security patch level in those builds was July 2019.

Interestingly, Huawei broke the Play Store certification as well as tripped the SafetyNet green status for both phones via this July update. As a result, owners of Huawei P20 and P20 Pro could not use banking or media streaming apps without downgrading to older software builds.

My phone was running 9.1.0.320(C782E3R1P9) so I downgraded to 9.1.0.317(C782E3R1P9) but still got the same result, I then downgraded to 9.1.0.316(C782E3R1P9) and again same result, Finally I downgraded to 9.1.0.311(C782E3R1P9) and now my device passes all safetynet checks and is listed as certified.

Obviously Huawei have only submitted 9.1.0.311(C782E3R1P9) to Google and that’s the only revision certified for use with Google

(Source)

Some P20 Pro owners manually downloaded a new build (9.1.0.325) with August patches from Huawei update servers, but we were unable to gather sufficient user feedback regarding SafetyNet status on it.

No need to worry though, as the OEM is now finally pushing a new OTA for the phone duo. They took some time though – after almost a month from the incident.

While the version of the stable update (9.1.0.328) is slightly different from the earlier build, the size is quite enormous (~4 GB) for a typical monthly security OTA. Upon inspecting, it looks like they indeed updated the GMS package.

Device: CLT-L29C432
Build number: CLT-L29 9.1.0.328(C432E5R1P9)
Product Base version: CLT-LGRP2-OVS 9.1.0.328
Base OS version: ???
System Version: System 9.1.0.040(065A)
Google GSM Version: 9_201905
GSM Baseband version: 21C20B369S009C000
Build date: Thu Aug 1 18:42:52 CST 2019
Power Genius version: 9.1.31.0
Camera version: 9.1.0.318
System UI version: 9.0.0.1
Android security patch: August 1, 2019
Kernel version: 4.9.148
Kernel date: Thu Aug 1 11:22:55 CST 2019
EMUI Version: EmotionUI_9.1.0

(Source)

As you can speculate, Huawei finally resolved the certification issue with this new update. The SafetyNet status is back to green after installing the OTA, although there is something funny about the Play Store certification.

I have a P20 and a week ago I updated to EMUI 9.1 with 4.02GB (9.1.0.311) and today I received the August security patch with a weight of 4.03GB … (9.1.0.328) but I found something curious in Google Play Store , the information of the “Device is certified” is no longer simply nothing appears in the Google Play settings, but everything works normal, play protect, I can download and update App and above all Google services work correctly. My brother also received the August patch in Mate 20 lite and the certification information no longer appears.

(Source)

The OTA should hit your phone any time soon. You can also force the update via HiCare app, but remember to get it downloaded using Wi-Fi due to the gigantic size of the package.

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