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Huawei

Guides for Huawei P Smart

63 guides

Calls & Messages

Factory Reset Phone

If your Huawei phone has slowed down, keeps freezing, or you are about to sell or hand it over, wiping it back to factory settings usually fixes the root cause in one step. A factory reset removes your Google account, all system and app settings, installed apps, and every file stored in internal memory. Back up anything you need before starting, since none of this data can be recovered afterward.

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Calls & Messages

Add a Birthday to a Contact

Saved contacts on your Huawei phone often stay incomplete right after you save the first number. Without a birthday field filled in, your phone can never remind you when that date comes around. Adding it later takes a few taps in the contact details.

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Calls & Messages

Restore Deleted Contacts

Accidentally deleted a contact on your Huawei phone and now it seems gone for good? EMUI actually keeps deleted contacts in a temporary folder instead of removing them right away. That window closes automatically after a set number of days, so the contact becomes unrecoverable once it expires.

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Calls & Messages

Merge Duplicate Contacts

Seeing the same person listed twice or three times in your phonebook usually means the contact was saved separately by your SIM, a synced account, and an app like WhatsApp. Each source keeps its own entry until you combine them, which also splits Calls and Messages history across multiple records. Huawei's built-in merge function is designed to clean this up without deleting any of the underlying data.

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Calls & Messages

Delete a Single SMS or Message

Deleting an entire conversation wipes out every message at once, even the ones you wanted to keep. On a Huawei phone, you can also pull just one SMS or chat message out of a thread without touching the rest. That matters when a typo, an old address, or a message sent to the wrong person is sitting in an otherwise useful conversation.

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Calls & Messages

Send a Group Text Message (SMS/MMS)

When you text several people at once on a Huawei phone, EMUI can either fire off individual messages to everyone or bundle everyone into one shared conversation. If your friends keep replying only to you instead of the whole group, your device is likely stuck in mass text mode instead of true group MMS. This setting decides whether replies land in one thread or scatter into separate chats.

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Calls & Messages

Enable or Disable Quick Calling

On some Huawei phones, holding the volume down key and saying a contact name starts a call even while the screen is off. If that happens by accident in your pocket, or if you want that shortcut but cannot find it, the Quick calling function is the setting responsible.

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Calls & Messages

Mark All Messages as Read

Scrolling through dozens of unread chats in the Messages app on a Huawei phone takes forever if you have to open every single conversation. The unread badge on the app icon can also stay stuck even after you already caught up on the messages elsewhere. A single menu option clears every unread flag in one tap, without touching the content of your chats.

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Calls & Messages

View Call History for One Contact

Your Huawei call history mixes every call together, so tracking how often you have talked to one specific contact means scrolling through the entire list. Instead of filtering manually, the Phone app can pull up a focused call log for that contact. This same screen is also where you clear that person's call records without touching the rest of your history.

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Calls & Messages

Delete a Contact

Deleting a contact on your Huawei phone removes it permanently, even if it is synced as a Google contact. Once gone, EMUI does not offer an undo option, so a wrong tap can cost you a number for good.

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Calls & Messages

Choose Which Contacts Account to Display

If your contact list on a Huawei phone mixes SIM entries, Google contacts and messenger numbers into one messy view, the display setting is set to show every account at once. This makes it hard to find people saved only on your SIM or only in Google, especially after switching phones or adding a new account. You can limit the list to a single source instead of scrolling through duplicates.

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Calls & Messages

Share a Contact

Typing out a phone number or email address by hand almost always leads to a typo somewhere, especially when copying it into a text message. Huawei phones let you send an entire contact card directly as a QR code, vCard or plain text instead of retyping every digit. Which format works best depends on the app you want to use and whether the recipient is standing next to you or on the other side of the country.

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Calls & Messages

Merge Call History by Time or Contact

If your call log on a Huawei phone lists every single call separately, spotting all conversations with one contact takes forever. EMUI lets you merge these entries either by time or by contact, which changes how the log groups calls and where details like duration show up.

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Calls & Messages

Show Frequently Contacted Numbers

If you keep scrolling through your Huawei call log to find the people you actually talk to most, the frequently contacted list is easy to miss. EMUI keeps these automatically tracked contacts inside the Favourites screen, mixed in with people you pinned manually, so the two groups look the same but come from different sources.

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Calls & Messages

Mark a Contact as Favorite

Scrolling through a long alphabetical contact list every time you want to call your partner or best friend wastes time on a Huawei phone. Marking a contact as favorite pulls them into a separate favourites list inside the call app, so frequent contacts stay one tap away. The saved contact data itself does not change, only how it appears in the call app.

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Calls & Messages

Add Calendar Account

If your Huawei calendar only shows events from one source, you're likely missing a second sync account like a work inbox or a personal Google calendar. The Calendar app supports several account types side by side, but each one has to be added manually, and picking the wrong type (Exchange, Google, or Corporate) can lead to sync errors or missing invites.

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Calls & Messages

Make a Phone Call

If you just switched to a Huawei phone, the dialer layout can look unfamiliar compared to other Android phones you have used before. Contacts, recents and the keypad all sit inside one Phone app, and it is not always clear where to type a number and how to start the call.

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Calls & Messages

Answering an Incoming Call

When a call comes in on your Huawei phone, a single tap on the screen does not answer it. Instead of a fixed accept button, the lock screen shows a draggable circle icon, which confuses anyone expecting a simple tap-to-answer control.

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Calls & Messages

Swipe to Go Forwards/Backwards in Browser

Swiping in from the left or right edge of the screen in the Huawei Browser app suddenly jumps to a different page, even when you only meant to scroll. This happens when the built-in 'Swipe to go forwards/backwards' gesture is active and reacts to touches that start too close to the edge. Turning the feature off or back on resolves the conflict without touching any other browser setting.

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Calls & Messages

Copy Contacts to Phone, SIM or Google

If your contacts are split between the SIM card, phone storage and your Google account, finding the right entry gets confusing fast. Huawei's Contacts app lets you duplicate existing entries and move them to a different storage location, including contacts that came in through WhatsApp. This matters before swapping a SIM or when you want every contact backed up in the same place.

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Calls & Messages

Enable or Disable Call Waiting

If a second call comes in while you are already on a call, your Huawei phone plays a short knocking tone and shows a notification on screen. This alert comes from the Call waiting setting in the Phone app, and turning it off silences the notification for incoming calls during an active conversation. On dual SIM devices, this setting can behave differently depending on which SIM line receives the call.

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Calls & Messages

Enable or Disable Call Forwarding

By default, your Huawei phone forwards calls according to your carrier's standard settings, not your own preferences. Calls might get diverted whenever your line is busy, goes unanswered or your device is unreachable, even if you never asked for that behavior. Each of these three forwarding conditions can be switched on or off separately.

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Calls & Messages

Export Contacts

Huawei's Contacts app keeps the export function simple, almost too simple: there's no way to export a single contact, only the entire list at once. If you just need to back up one number, EMUI still bundles all your contacts into one VCF file before you can share or store it. That behavior often confuses people looking to transfer just a few entries.

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Calls & Messages

Hide or Show Caller-ID

If your phone number keeps showing up on the other person's display even though you would rather stay anonymous, EMUI is still following your carrier's default caller-ID setting. The same issue works in reverse: if calls go out as 'unknown' when you actually want your number visible, that same setting is the cause. On dual SIM devices, each SIM slot keeps its own separate configuration.

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