The Harmony OS, which, in the view Huawei, was supposed to replace Android on the brand's branded smartphones, always left me with the impression of something ephemeral. On the one hand, I seemed to know that it exists, but, on the other hand, I never even saw it in action. Therefore, it was hard for me to believe that Huawei really has a plan to transfer branded devices to its own platform, which, as it seemed to me, could hardly pull a TV, but not smartphones. But I was wrong.
Huawei finally announced the launch of Harmony OS 2.0
Today, September 10, Huawei officially introduced Harmony OS 2.0 with support for several new types of devices at once: smart watches, smart TVs, smart home control hubs and smartphones. The beta version of the operating system for the first three types of gadgets will be available starting today, and for smartphones it will be released a little later, on December 10. Despite the fact that Huawei took a short time out before launching the test version of Harmony OS for smartphones, it is obvious that the platform is almost ready and only needs minor improvements.
What devices are supported by Harmony OS
Harmony OS 2.0 will be available on four types of devices this year
The head of the consumer sector Huawei Richard Yu said that Harmony OS is already ready a few days ago. According to him, the company's proprietary operating system is already 70-80% close to the development level Android.
But if then it was just words, now we can know for sure that he spoke the truth. This means that only three months will pass, and Harmony OS will become available to everyone, albeit in the beta testing stage. But that's not the only good news. In Huawei, they expect that the first smartphone on the new OS will be released next year. But things will not happen as quickly as we would like. Here is the chronology that Huawei plans to follow:
- September 10, 2020 – Harmony OS 2.0 launches for devices with 128KB to 128MB of RAM;
- December 10, 2020 – Harmony OS 2.0 launch for smartphones;
- April 2021 – Harmony OS launches for devices with up to 4GB of RAM;
- October 2021 – Launch of a universal version of Harmony OS for all types of devices;
- October 2021 – OpenHarmony project launched.
Apart from Harmony OS 2.0 itself, Huawei today presented the OpenHarmony project. It is an open source operating system that is analogous to Android Open Source Project. Third-party developers will be able to take the source code of Harmony OS as a basis and create their own firmware based on it.
When the Harmony OS smartphone comes out
Huawei will open source Harmony OS for everyone
According to representatives Huawei, they place a lot of emphasis on Harmony OS performance as well as usability in the ecosystem. One of the functions available to users of the operating system will be the built-in ultra-high speed data transfer function. Apparently, it will be something similar to Nearby Sharing and AirDrop, but with much higher bandwidth. However, when exactly the launch of this innovation will take place has not yet been specified.
It is difficult to say yet if Huawei will be able to launch the smartphone on Harmony OS in 2021. Despite the fact that Richard Yu promised to do this, it is highly likely that the novelty will clearly not be in demand. The fact is that until the end of 2021, Harmony OS will only support fairly weak devices, which indicates that Huawei will have to launch a frankly budget model. However, maybe this is for the best. After all, hardly anyone will run headlong to buy an expensive flagship on an OS without clearly defined prospects.