Huawei seems to be showing lock screen ads on the P30 Pro, P20, Honor 10, P20 Pro, and others when the built-in magazine background images are used
Corbin Davenport / Android Police :
Context & Ripple Effects
Android Police spotted ads appearing inside the built-in Magazine wallpaper feature on the P30 Pro, P20 Pro, P20 and Honor 10 — meaning the lock screen of flagship phones was serving promotions without any opt-in. Huawei moved within a day, saying the ads appeared inadvertently while it tested advertising in the Magazine service.
The episode reads differently with hindsight: the lock screen has since become contested ad real estate across Android. InMobi's Glance struck deals to put its media service on carrier devices in the US (partnering directly with carriers), and by late 2025 Nothing's Phone (3a) Lite shipped with Lock Glimpse wallpapers linking to clickbait articles — so what looked like a one-off testing slip was an early instance of a durable pattern.
First-order effects
- Owners of the P30 Pro, P20 Pro, P20 and Honor 10 using Magazine wallpapers saw third-party promotions on their lock screens, prompting immediate backlash and forcing Huawei to publicly attribute the ads to internal testing rather than policy.
Second-order effects
- The incident demonstrated that lock screens can carry ads at scale, encouraging adtech players like InMobi's Glance to pursue carrier partnerships that pre-install lock-screen media services on Android devices.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, default lock-screen surfaces on budget and midrange Android phones trend toward monetized content — Nothing's Lock Glimpse clickbait wallpapers being the current endpoint — making ad-free lock screens a differentiator premium buyers pay for and a possible target for platform-level rules.
The trend: The Android lock screen is being converted from a neutral surface into ad inventory, with OEMs and adtech firms normalizing what began as accidental or test placements.