Huawei announces its new Operating System.
The OS, called Harmony OS, has been in development for several years, but it’s recently taken on a role as a key player in Huawei’s contingency plan since the U.S. enacted a trade ban on the Chinese technology company.
At the Huawei Developer Conference, Huawei finally shared the first details about its in-house OS, but the company wasn’t ready to show off Harmony on smartphones just yet.
Tomorrow, the company will show off Harmony OS on the Honor Vision TV. For now, Android remains the go-to mobile OS for Huawei and Honor smartphones and tablets.
"HarmonyOS is completely different from Android and iOS," said Huawei's Richard Yu, who announced the project at the Huawei Developer Conference in Dongguan, China. He said the operating system would let developers create one version of their apps and then "flexibly deploy them across a range of different devices". Graphics displayed during his presentation did include depictions of smartphones as well as watches, cars and televisions. There were rumours that the company was going to replace Android in its phones, but Huawei says HarmonyOS will be used to power smart devices such as TVs, speakers and watches at least to begin with.
Performance is theoretically better than Android and other Linux-based operating systems, according to slides shared by Huawei.
"HarmonyOS is completely different from Android and iOS," said Huawei's Richard Yu, who announced the project at the Huawei Developer Conference in Dongguan, China. He said the operating system would let developers create one version of their apps and then "flexibly deploy them across a range of different devices". Graphics displayed during his presentation did include depictions of smartphones as well as watches, cars and televisions. There were rumours that the company was going to replace Android in its phones, but Huawei says HarmonyOS will be used to power smart devices such as TVs, speakers and watches at least to begin with.
Performance is theoretically better than Android and other Linux-based operating systems, according to slides shared by Huawei.
Huawei says that Harmony OS uses a distributed virtual bus with a simplified protocol: Rather than 4 layers, there is only 1 layer in the protocol stack to “boost the payload efficiency.”
The effects of this change to simplify interactions are “faster discovery and connections” of hardware like the display, cameras, speakers, etc.
However, there are restrictions on what phone-makers can do with Android if they want access to the Google Play app store, and to Google's suite of popular apps such as Maps and YouTube.
#HarmonyOS is built with a deterministic latency engine that gives a smooth interactive experience. That means latency is at a minimum; bringing fluid interactive experience to the maximum #HDC2019 pic.twitter.com/p9bnwNHJq6— Huawei Mobile (@HuaweiMobile) August 9, 2019
However, there are restrictions on what phone-makers can do with Android if they want access to the Google Play app store, and to Google's suite of popular apps such as Maps and YouTube.
In China, the new operating system will be called HongmengOS.
