[Honor View 10 Guides, News, & Discussion] freibooter:
I switched from a phone running Near-AOSP Android 7.1 and now 8.0 to my first EMUI 8.0 device.

EMUI 8.0 on my Mate 10 Pro is a flaming piece of sh*t.

I don't even care about the design. Yeah, it looks like iOS puked all over Android KitKat after a drunken stupor - but that can mostly be remedied with a custom launcher and/or an EMUI theme.

I don't even care that the settings menu feels like it was organized by someone trying to hide their porn collection inside a labyrinth of subfolders back in the 90s. It's stupid, but you get used to it.

I *do* care about the insane amount of things that Huawei/Honor actively broke, removed or replaced with ****tier versions of the same thing.

That things that don't work is staggering:

* Many widgets don't reliably update, they simply die after a while and never show new information. Even Google Widgets are affected, like Google News & Weather.

* Notifications are unreliable. If you don't use an app for a while, don't expect to get any more notifications until you open it - even after fully whitelisting it from everything. I missed several important Facebook Messenger messages because of this. And if Do Not Disturb is enabled, notifications aren't just silenced, they frequently simply disappear into nowhere.

* Some apps simply can never show notifications when in the background on EMUI for more than half an hour, no whitelisting possible.

* Forget about running apps in the background long term, they are frozen eventually, regardless of your settings. And, no, not via Android Doze but via Huawei's own battery management that has all the surgical precision of a sledgehammer.

* You can't disable many system sounds. They also ignore the do not disturb setting and play full volume regardless (like the battery charging sound).

* You can't enable "Do not disturb" for x minutes/hours - that was removed for no reason at all.

* The AOD is essentially useless, it only supports Huawei's own apps, nothing else.

* Lock screen messages can't be expanded or interacted with - the arrow to expand them exists but doesn't do anything.

* You can't even set WiFi connections as metered, the feature was removed - you can't limit background traffic for those connections in EMUI. Forget about ever using a mobile or otherwise metered hotspot with EMUI.

* AdGuard doesn't survive a network connectivity change. When it reconfigures the VPN connection the battery manager kills it, regardless of whitelisting. The only workaround is to never let it reconfigure.

* You can't configure your billing cycle. If it doesn't start at the beginning of the month you are out of luck. One of the many, many native Android features that were simply removed in EMUI with a sledgehammer for no sane reason at all.

* You can't reliably set default apps or even launchers, EMUI loves to reset them back to default randomly. So you launcher of choice decided to roll out an update on the Play Store? Time to enjoy Huawei's launcher again from now on ...

* The same goes for many settings, even in Huawei's own apps - many settings just don't "stick" and are reset after some hours or weeks.

* By default the battery management eventually even stops Chrome from running in the background. Which is the sole WebView provider - breaking just about anything that uses WebView. Insane. At least here the manual whitelisting works as a workaround.

* The camera shortcut was moved from the power button to the volume button for no sane reason, which means it doesn't work when you listen to anything or when the screen is on.

* It has a ludicrous amount of Bluetooth compatibility issues. You though Bluetooth on Stock Android could be iffy? It's compatibility heaven compared to what Huawei somehow managed to do with it.

* Huawei removed Google's Smart Lock and replaced it with ... Huawei Smart Unlock, which currently *only* supports Bluetooth unlock, nothing else, and naturally doesn't even do that reliably.

* You enjoy "OK Google"? Well, Huawei has "OK Emy" as the only assistant capable of waking the phone. It literally has exactly two features (find phone, make a call) and the only semi useful one does not work - at all.

It's the dumbest, most infuriatingly, most idiotic take on Android I have ever experienced.

I still *love* the hardware of the Mate 10 Pro. It's near perfect for me: It's beautiful, fast, great display, amazing build quality and the best battery life and fastest fingerprint sensor of any current flagship.

But I hate EMUI's guts after a couple of months with it. And I really, really tried to like it.

Seriously, why anyone would prefer EMUI over AOSP, or pretty much any other Android skin, is beyond me.

I just miss an Android experience that just works and that I don't feel like I'm constantly fighting. I still love Huawei's hardware, but I'll avoid future EMUI phones like the plague.