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Originally Posted by Slava
I'm heading to China (mainland and HK) later this year and this brings up something I was wondering; will my phone and google services work? I have an Android, so basically everything is google reliant or close enough.
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HK and Macau has no restrictions on Facebook, Gmail etc. as long as you can get connection.
Shenzhen has partial restrictions on Facebook/Gmail. I don't know which connections bypass and which don't, but I think part of it is the fact Shenzhen is a somewhat special state due to its proximity to HK. I'm thinking certain wifi actually had a VPN integrated into it or pretended to be in HK, which was why I was able to randomly get Facebook/Gmail, while others didn't so it was blocked for me. I have no idea if you were to "roam like home" whether you could access Facebook/Gmail, or if your traffic technically filters through China, and thus is blocked. For less headache, I'd just suggest paying for a VPN or using a free VPN trial for your phone during your stay in China as Mainland China IIRC should block certain apps and sites.
I was meh about not having Facebook in Mainland China, but no access to Gmail was a serious problem as FB + Gmail was about 90% of my communication. Whatsapp works fine though if you want an alternate messenger to use. If you go Mainland, you'll need a VPN to get to Facebook, Google, Gmail and many other sites. But in HK and Macau, no such issue.
Searching with Baidu isn't a huge issue, except for the remembering the website name part. But IIRC, Yahoo works fine in China (I might be wrong on this though, but I doubt it's blocked due to its ties with Alibaba).
I have never downloaded an offline map in Google maps and used it. I presume it's doable in mainland china as the phone goes off the GPS which isn't blocked.