Apple and Google’s coronavirus exposure notification initiative — previously called contact tracing — looks like it will make its way to most of Huawei’s handsets. According to TechRadar, Huawei announced that the bulk of the company’s smartphones released before the US trade ban went into effect will be able to run the exposure notification API.
Unfortunately, because of the ban, Huawei phones released after May 2019 won’t be able to support exposure notification. This includes Huawei’s latest P40 and Mate 30 series.
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Huawei didn’t say exactly which phones would support the API, but they need to support Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) functionality. It’s not always clear which handsets support BLE, but they must at least run Android 4.3 or newer, so that’s one possible identifier.
Compatible Huawei devices will see the update when the exposure notification system goes live in the coming months. Google and Apple are expected to release the API framework next month, so hopefully, the public release won’t come too long after that.
