It seems that some newer Huawei smartphones are being blocked from installing famous VLC media player app from Google Play Store. VLC, on its official Twitter account, announced that it is blocking some of Huawei’s smartphones.
Huawei’s EMUI is known for opting from aggressive battery management under which it kills the background apps, the instant there are closed in the foreground. VLC sites this as a ‘ridiculous policy’ and says that this feature affects the app functionality. The VLC reveals that killing the background apps breaks the app’s audio background playback. According to The Verge, VideoLAN has blacklisted Huawei P8, P10 and P20 smartphones, but there could be more.
PSA: @HuaweiMobile phones are now blacklisted and cannot get VLC on the Play Store.
Their ridiculous policy of killing all background apps (except their own) breaks VLC audio background playback (of course).
See https://t.co/QzDW7KbV4I and many other reports…@HuaweiFr— VideoLAN (@videolan) July 25, 2018
The team says that they are getting too many complaints from users of Huawei smartphones regarding this issue. This is causing a wave of negative reviews on the app page and this is why the company has decided to block those devices. However, users still have an option to sideload the application from the company’s official website.
The whole problem lies in the battery management of EMUI. Users have an option to choose which app to run in the background and which not to by going to the Settings menu. However, there is no official word from Huawei on this matter at the time of writing.