Huawei is preparing its own mobile operating system, HarmonyOS, to be well-positioned to replace Android if the need arises.<\/p>\n
The Chinese manufacturer has recorded impressive smartphone sales in 2019 despite being affected by the US-China trade war.<\/p>\n
The trade restrictions mean that newer Huawei devices, such as the Mate 30 smartphone series, foldable Mate X, and MatePad Pro tablet are unable to support Google Mobile Services (GMS).<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, devices released before the trade ban came into effect are still able to carry Android with its Google services, as well as receive OS updates.<\/p>\n
As a potential Plan B, the company has punted its own mobile OS as a fall-back option, should Google be forced to cut off support for Android on upcoming Huawei devices.<\/p>\n
Chief Technology Officer of Huawei South Africa, Akhram Mohamed previously told<\/strong><\/a> MyBroadband that the company would be able to roll out a working OS to its consumers immediately.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the need ever arises, in a matter of a day or two we would be able to deploy it on smartphones and it will work,\u201d Mohamed said.<\/p>\n Huawei first showcased HarmonyOS running on an Honor Vision TV in August 2019.<\/p>\n At the beginning of December, it was also revealed<\/strong><\/a> that the company would be rolling out the OS to more of its devices in 2020, although it plans to continue using Android on its smartphones.<\/p>\n More versions of HarmonyOS are expected to be available on devices such as smartwatches, smart speakers, and smart screens.<\/p>\n The fact that HarmonyOS is expected to be open-source from August 2020 will likely speed up the development of the operating system.<\/p>\n Add to this that the Huawei OS possesses several inherent design advantages, and it may not be long before it is considered a serious competitor to Android.<\/p>\n The first of these advantages is the distributed architecture of HarmonyOS, which Huawei has claimed will make it faster than Android.<\/p>\n Whereas Android contains many unnecessary lines of code and legacy problems, the distributed architecture offers a less cluttered code structure.<\/p>\n Additionally, HarmonyOS has a microkernel design. Since the most basic services are performed within the microkernel, this offers superior security and lower latency.<\/p>\n By contrast, Android executes around 1,000-times more code with its Linux-based kernel.<\/p>\n Moreover, Huawei’s ARK compiler and purpose-built IDE (application suite) would make the migration of applications to HarmonyOS easy, as it simplifies the process of tweaking applications for Android developers.<\/p>\n This will eliminate the need to redevelop an app for multiple devices.<\/p>\n Lastly, its capability to allow for easy inter-device connectivity on a range of different devices from various manufacturers makes the OS even more attractive.<\/p>\n Huawei has made it clear that it is not developing HarmonyOS as a direct competitor to Android.<\/p>\n Whether the trade war will escalate so far as to completely cut off future Huawei users from Android, remains to be seen.<\/p>\n It is evident though that Huawei will not leave owners of its devices hanging dry if the worst-case scenario should be realised, promising continued support and the best experience possible.<\/p>\n The end result may be an alternative mobile operating system that could rival the world’s dominant mobile platform.<\/p>\n Huawei is preparing its own mobile operating system, HarmonyOS, to be well-positioned to replace Android if the need arises. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":333008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[397,60457,35,1982],"class_list":["post-332624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-android","tag-harmonyos","tag-headline","tag-huawei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332624"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332624"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333080,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332624\/revisions\/333080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}OS availability<\/h3>\n
The HarmonyOS edge<\/h3>\n
Unknown future<\/h3>\n
Now read: WhatsApp drops support for older phones<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"