TECH NEWS – If you have a Huawei branded mobile phone, you might have noticed the topic we will discuss.

Nobody likes advertisements (it’s pretty much a necessary evil for the most part), but on phones, this is still the case. Now, Xiaomi, a Chinese brand, got negative attention because of ads when they aggressively pushed ads into its MIUI apps. (In future versions, you can at least opt out of these advertisements.)

Now, the situation is much different. Locking our screen is something that we regularly do (because who wants to call someone unintentionally while our phone is shaking around in our bag on a bus?), and Huawei sees money in this function: on Twitter, multiple users complain (and for a good reason) that their lock screens are suddenly having mostly booking.com advertisements if they use one of the pre-installed landscape background images. The affected Huawei phones are the following: P30 Pro, P20, P20 Lite, Honor 10, P20 Pro.

On Reddit, going by the experience from people around the world, we can say that unlike Xiaomi‘s regional approach, Huawei is on a global level of ads – the UK, Netherlands, Ireland, South Africa, Norway, and Germany seems to be affected. Thankfully, you can quickly get rid of the unwanted advertising – all you have to do is to not use the pre-installed Huawei background images on the lock screen.

It’s an unusual method of recovering some costs (as both Huawei and Xiaomi sell their phones for lower prices than the competition), but this event doesn’t help Huawei‘s reputation. They already are facing rejection from the United States government, and multiple countries are not supportive of them helping to create the 5G infrastructure. (And not to mention the possible link between Huawei and the Chinese Communist Party.)

Source: WCCFTech

#Huawei has turned the random landscape backgrounds on the lock screen into ads. Wtf fuck this pic.twitter.com/6dAUeu17Jf

— Alex (@ValexWhoa) June 13, 2019

Wtf. https://t.co/Fv4RzUmM1D ads on my lock screen. Anyone else with a Huawei getting this? pic.twitter.com/ILI6vs6wVD

— Ed Spencer (@efjspencer) June 13, 2019

@Huawei_Europe Why is there advertisement on my lock screen?! Have I signed up to this in some small print T&C somewhere? pic.twitter.com/w6zS9ysuwk

— RAYZ (@justicefingers) June 12, 2019

Ah hear… @Huawei why am I now being served ads on my lock screen? Stop it! Moreover @bookingcom what idiot in marketing thought this was ok? #ads #DigitalMarketing #Huawei #measure pic.twitter.com/Ta1lslMwsP

— Dave Rooney (@daverooney) June 13, 2019