Comment by xyzal
19 days ago
Many Chinese OEMs are not Google certified, so it won't for sure apply to them. Some (Huawei) even had to implement their own app store and replacement for Google services. They are basically de-googled devices, though, sadly, often loaded with spyware from the other camp.
But some, like Oppo and Vivo are--they ship with a Google-OKed copy of GMS, and redistribute the Play Store on their own app store as a way to install it (ostensibly for use when traveling outside the mainland, though it can also be used with a VPN). So clearly they are on some level Google certified.
However, they also contain switches to disable background GMS, which makes them almost de-googled. All of them, not just Huawei, have their own app store/updater, and have some sort of push notification to replace Firebase Cloud Messaging (as I understand, Tencent provides a one touch service so devs don't need to hardcode each OEMs notifications). Otherwise, it would be impossible to get apps or notifications without a VPN/proxy.