At the HDC 2019 conference, Huawei presented HarmonyOS, one of the most anticipated innovations of recent months. What is the latest operating system? What devices will it support? Answers to these and other questions can be found in this article.
HarmonyOS has just been announced at #HDC2019! How are we going to build an all-scenario smart ecosystem and experience? How will we overcome the challenges of future OS for connected things? Stayed tuned with us to find out. pic.twitter.com/x7ZbgcEy2d
— Huawei Mobile (@HuaweiMobile) August 9, 2019
HarmonyOS is Huawei’s original operating system, which could soon be China’s answer to Android. Although during the official presentation there were no such statements, the complicated situation of the company may force it to take such drastic measures and become independent of Google and the applications and services of this giant.
HarmonyOS – competition for Android?
Since May 2019, Huawei has been under enormous pressure from the administration of US President Donald Trump. It was his decision to blacklist the Chinese company as an entity with which U.S. companies can cooperate solely with the consent of the U.S. government, and it is not easy to obtain such permission. The last few months have been a real roller coaster for the Chinese, because Donald Trump has changed his mind on this issue on several occasions and relaxed restrictions on Huawei to return to the original form last week after China stopped buying US agricultural products.
HarmonyOS – for which devices?
Huawei’s proprietary operating system is designed to serve as a platform for connecting different types of devices. It will be present on smartphones, tablets, smartphones, wireless headphones, personal computers, next-generation TVs, smart speakers, and even car-specific systems. The first devices with HarmonyOS are the Honor Vision and Vision Pro televisions from Huawei’s sister company.
This year we’ll also see the first HarmonyOS smartphone, but we don’t know what it’s going to be. Surely it won’t be a Mate X or Mate 30 Pro foldable. Huawei certainly won’t risk introducing a proprietary solution in its flagship devices, because the small number of applications available on this platform would discourage consumers from purchasing these devices.
#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
This is also indicated by the price of the next phone. According to information provided by Reuters, a HarmonyOS smartphone will cost about 2,000 yen, so it will be a mid-range device. It is quite possible that it will be presented under the Honor brand, which for Huawei is often a testing ground and it is in their smartphones where various solutions are tested.
HarmonyOS – functionality
Although we didn’t learn much about HarmonyOS during the HDC 2019 conference, and the speakers didn’t reveal any of the details, there’s some information that shows us what the original solution should be different from the competition. The first of these is the use of microkernels from the system. They are supposed to provide the software with the fast operation, stability, and flexibility that allows applications to scale between different hardware platforms. In the basic version (undoubtedly intended for Internet devices of objects), the operating system will only need a few KB of RAM for its proper functioning.
And finally from Richard Yu: #HarmonyOS will officially be OPEN SOURCE #HDC2019 pic.twitter.com/KK8NGNS0Py
— Huawei Mobile (@HuaweiMobile) August 9, 2019
HarmonyOS is also supposed to be more secure than Android. This will be possible by restricting root user access to critical parts of the operating system. A similar solution is the one Apple uses in iOS and we must admit that it works, but its disadvantage is that the applications and the user himself have limited privileges, so they can not perform the operations that are possible on Android.