Huawei launches HarmonyOS Next, cuts ties with Android
With the official launch of HarmonyOS Next, Huawei has ushered in a new page in its history. It aims to transition its devices to an entirely in-house OS and the launch marks Huawei’s first operating system built independently of Android. The company has been building out HarmonyOS as its own platform for phones, tablets, and more since the ban that changed Huawei’s entire business in 2020.
HarmonyOS started off as little more than an Android fork, but has evolved in the time since, with its biggest change coming in the form of HarmonyOS NEXT. This latest update was announced in 2023 and, while it still visually looks like the Android-based platform Huawei has been using this whole time, it lacked a key feature. It doesn’t support Android apps.
Through late 2023, the rush for developers to create versions of their apps for HarmonyOS NEXT was widely reported, with developers needing to port their work to a new app format to make them compatible with Huawei devices going forward.
HarmonyOS Next is set to power the current and future generations of Huawei devices in China for now, though a global release was confirmed previously. It will work across a broad range of devices ranging from smartphones to wearables, smart home devices and car cockpits. HarmonyOS Next uses a self-developed microkernel based on the OpenHarmony open-source core. It supports apps via the Huawei Ark compiler with Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) and promises a seamless unified architecture between HarmonyOS Next devices, the cloud as well as interconnectivity across various device form factors.
Richard Yu, Huawei Consumer Business Group Chairman, announced that 15,000 apps and services are now part of the HarmonyOS Next ecosystem with more on the way. The company also disclosed that the previous versions of HarmonyOS are currently running on over 1 billion devices globally. This figure includes smartphones, tablets, smart wearables, smart home and car infotainment systems.
The in-house OS comes with a refreshed visual identity with new lockscreen and home screen customization options, redesigned control center, faster animations, and app launch speeds. There are impressive AI features on deck which are powered by system-level AI based on the Pangu large language model.
For security, HarmonyOS Next brings a self-developed Star Shield architecture with system-level protection. Huawei also managed to achieve a 30% increase in device fluency and 20% lower power consumption in communication between software modules. Huawei Share 2.0 promises seamless connection and file sharing between devices – Huawei says you can transfer a 1.2GB file between two HarmonyOS Next devices in just 8 seconds.
Huawei is seeding a public beta version of HarmonyOS Next to users in China. The supported device list includes the Pura 70 series, Huawei Pocket 2 and MatePad Pro 11 (2024).