Huawei users are reportedly seeing ads on their phones' lockscreen.
Huawei phones in several regions like Ireland, South Africa, Norway, the UK, Netherlands, and Germany started showing ads on their lockscreen.
One needs to disable the Magazine Unlock feature to stop seeing the ads.
UPDATE: Huawei reached out to Digit.in and said that lock-screen images which were displaying ads are now taken down from its servers and they shouldn't be appearing on lock screen of its phones anymore. However, some images with ads might have already been downloaded on a handset, which can be deleted manually by the user by swiping up on such an image and navigating to the operation toolbar. One can then tap on the "Delete" button and click "Remove" in the confirmation box that shows up. The company has not revealed whether this was an inadvertent mistake or was it trying to introduce ads on its phones in a not so subtle manner. However, it has apologised for the inconvenience and says it will continue to improve its services.
Xiaomi is known for serving ads in its MIUI skin that runs on top of different Android versions. Users have been complaining about these advertisements and the company has reportedly taken note and could soon bring some changes. While Xiaomi seems to be listening to its users, it seems like Huawei might have taken a step in the wrong direction. Multiple Huawei smartphone users have reported seeing ads out of nowhere on their smartphones. First noted by Android Police, Huawei phones in several regions like Ireland, South Africa, Norway, the UK, Netherlands, and Germany started showing ads on their lockscreen.
As per the report, various Huawei handsets are showing ads from Booking.com. Affected phones include the company’s last year flagship Huawei P20 series, along with the new P30 Pro. The P20 Lite and Honor 10 users have also complained about the same issue. Users note that these ads are served when one selects preinstalled landscape background wallpapers feature called Magazine Unlock. This option displays different landscape wallpapers everytime the phone’s screen turns on and the only way to avoid ads is to turn it off. We have reached out to Huawei for a comment on this and will update the article when we hear back.
@Huawei_Europe I just got an add of https://t.co/7GRlpt8z3k on my lockscreen. I am using a Huawei and I am not the only one who gets it. pic.twitter.com/mhfGixcwED
— Ceel Beckers (@BeckersCeel) June 12, 2019
While it’s not confirmed whether Huawei is planning on introducing ads to its ecosystem, or whether this was a mistake. However, replying to an irked user, Huawei’s German Twitter account apologised and said, “I’m sorry that you think we want to advertise.” The tweet also mentioned that one can deactivate the ad by swiping up on the wallpaper from the bottom and navigating to settings. They can then manually delete the image which is displaying the ad.
As mentioned earlier, Xiaomi has reportedly announced that it will now monitor and optimise the advertisements users see on MIUI. This doesn’t mean that ads are completely going away on the MIUI but they could be shown in a way that doesn’t ruin the overall user experience on Xiaomi phones.
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