Remember the Huawei Mate 30 Pro? The brilliant phone that we said you should never buy because of the lack of Google Mobile Services? 

Well, it's coming to the UK and the price is £899, with a release date of 20 February. A form is available for you to register your interest at Carphone's site. 

As a sweetener, Huawei is offering a free 46mm Huawei Watch GT 2 and a white pair of its decent wireless noise-reduction earphones, the Freebuds 3. Note that it's the 4G version of the Mate 30 Pro, rather than the 5G model. 

• Huawei chief: The Mate 30 Series won't work with the Play Store and you can't install it yourself

To be honest, Huawei did say it would be launching the phone in the UK and Europe during the September launch. But we didn't believe it, because there was no confirmation of date while networks distanced themselves from it because, well, UK customers like Google apps.

As you'll know by now, the lack of Google apps on new Huawei mobile devices is due to Huawei's trade blacklisting by the US.

That means Google can't deal with it to sign off the devices to have Google apps and services. Google isn't keen on the ban because it means companies like Huawei have to develop their own rivals to the Google Play app store - in this case, it's Huawei's App Gallery. The phone still runs Android 10 under the guise of Huawei's EMUI 10 software. 

On the Carphone Mate 30 Pro preorder page, the Huawei statement says "This device doesn't come with Google Mobile services so we have a VIP Support Team on hand for you once purchased."

Huawei and Carphone will have to be careful to explain to potential customers the limitations of the device - just as we think it will for the upcoming P40 and P40 Pro. Otherwise, it risks a lot of them being returned.