Huawei is apparently showing ads on lockscreens for some of its phones

A number of Huawei phone owners have noticed that their devices have suddenly begun displaying ads in their lockscreens, according to Android Police.

Users began complaining yesterday that ads from Booking.com have appeared on their phones. 9to5Google notes that a variety of phones appear to be displaying them, and that Huawei appears to have slipped them into the phone’s Magazine Unlock feature. That feature allows users to have a rotating set of images on their lockscreen, which change every time they unlock their phone.

We’ve reached out to Huawei and Booking.com for comment, and will update this post if we hear back.

In a reply to one user, Huawei’s German Twitter account apologized, saying “I’m sorry that you think we want to advertise”, and said that users could deactivate the ad by swiping up on the screen and going into settings to deleted the individual image, something that Reddit users found worked, although it’s a manual process. 9to5Google says that changing your lockscreen image to something that’s not one of the phone’s defaults will also get rid of the ad.

Whatever the reason, it’s not a good look, especially at a time when Huawei is under so much public scrutiny.

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