Huawei releases Android Pie kernel sources for its flagship phones

Say what you want about Huawei’s anti-consumer stance on smartphone bootloaders but the company, over the past year or so, has adhered strictly to GPL standards. The Chinese company releases kernel source codes for its devices, and does so on time, too—which is more than can be said about a number of OEMs. Xiaomi comes to mind. Huawei has now released the Android Pie kernel sources for its Kirin 970 and Kirin 980-powered phones.

Seeing as how the company only has Pie available for its devices powered by those two SoCs—the Mate 20 flagships that were launched on Pie, and devices like the Mate 10, Mate 10 Pro, P20 duo, and Honor flagships—there’s not much that can be faulted about this release schedule. Even more so considering all of those devices received Pie within the past four weeks, too.

As usual, kernel sources will allow third-party devs to be able to work on the devices more effectively. Huawei has dropped support for official bootloader unlocks, although it’s still available for a fee via a third-party provider. As a result, community development for these devices is far from strong, making the release of kernel sources mostly useless to the general public.