EMUI 9 beta based on Android Pie is here for the Huawei Mate 10, Huawei P20, Honor 10, Honor View 10, and Honor Play

At IFA, Huawei unveiled EMUI 9 based on Android 9 Pie and announced that the beta program would go live today. EMUI 9 beta is available for the Huawei Mate 10/Pro, Huawei P20/Pro, Honor 10, Honor View 10, and Honor Play. The beta program opened up for limited numbers of users per country. Here’s what you need to know.

What’s new in EMUI 9

The gist of the update is that it brings a more streamlined user interface (fewer menus to go through) with an updated design. There’s also going to be a new gesture-based navigation system (which is distinct from Google’s default implementation in Android 9 Pie), but this new gesture control system isn’t yet available in the beta. Furthermore, Huawei has implemented their own take on Google’s Digital Wellbeing with parental controls built-in.

There are other optimizations in the software that supposedly improve performance as well as “GPU Turbo 2.0,” but we can’t really tell you how much the performance has really improved. The best way for you to find out is to update yourself and play around with it. In any case, here are some screenshots of the new user interface.

Many thanks to FunkyHuawei.club for the screenshots!

Of course, other standard Android 9 Pie platform features are also included with the release. Those include, but are not limited to:

• App Actions and Slices API – the former API allows apps to show predictive actions while the latter allows apps to show a part (“slice”) of their UI inside of another app
• Adaptive Battery – with App Standby Buckets, Android limits power consumption for the apps that you don’t use all that often

Sign-up for EMUI 9 beta based on Android 9 Pie

To be eligible for the beta, you must own one of the following devices:

• Huawei Mate 10
• Huawei Mate 10 Pro
• Huawei P20
• Huawei P20 Pro
• Honor 10
• Honor View 10
• Honor Play

If you own any of these devices, here’s how to sign up for the beta:

1. Go to Huawei’s Friendly User Test (FUT) website.
2. Download the beta app.
3. Sign up for an account if you haven’t already
4. Go to Personal –> Join project
5. Find the EMUI 9 beta program and sign up

Updating to Android 9 Pie unofficially?

There are reportedly only 100 slots available for each country in the official beta test. That’s a big bummer considering how many people own these devices. If you would rather not wait to grab the update, FunkyHuawei.club managed to grab the beta update for the listed devices though there’s no guarantee the update will work. (The screenshots I posted were from a user who installed the beta on his P20 Pro.)

We wish Huawei had not closed down their bootloader unlocking program. There is an abundance of Android 9 Pie custom ROMs available that work on many Huawei and Honor devices. Given that few users will be eligible for the EMUI 9 beta, flashing a custom ROM or updating unofficially would be the only way for most users to experience Android Pie without having to wait months for the official release. Be sure to follow the XDA forum for your particular device as users figure out how to get the latest update unofficially.