Huawei Installs GoPro’s Quik App Without User Permission

During the MWC 2017 held in February this year, GoPro and Huawei partnered to bring the GoPro’s Quik app to the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus smartphones. While the app is available for free on PlayStore, it came as a system app on the Huawei smartphones and the users cant even find it in the settings unless the “show system apps” is enabled. With the Honor 8 Pro, the partnership has been even extended to the Honor branded smartphones. With the EMUI 5.1, the features of the Quik app are integrated into its own Gallery app.

Now, the company is facing severe criticism over secretly installing the Quik app on Huawei & Honor smartphone without users permission. According to the Android Planet, several Huawei users in Netherlands have reported about the presence of GoPro’s Quik app on their smartphones. The company’s spokesperson quickly responded saying that the installation is the result of an internal error. He also apologized for the inconvenience caused by this issue and said that their developers are already working to fix it as soon as possible.

Since its a system app, the users cannot uninstall the app manually. Instead, they can only revert back to the factory version. As of now, there is no exact information about the list of devices affected by this issue. Based on the reports, the latest high-end smartphones including the Mate 10 Pro and Honor 9 are seeing the automatic installation of the Quik app. The problem is already spread across other European countries like Spain, Russia, Italy, and France. Looking at the reviews of the Quik app on Google Play Store, we can quickly find several reports of the auto installation of the app on the user’s smartphones

However, there is no information about the devices on which the users are experiencing this issue. While Quik is a good video editing app that is available for free on Play Store, we feel bad to see this kind of practices by the reputable brands like GoPro and Huawei. Next month, Honor will be launching the mid-range Honor 7X smartphone in India. There is also a global event scheduled for December 5th in London, where the company might unveil the high-end Honor 9 Pro or Honor 10.