Chinese tech giant Huawei officially introduced its own operating system HarmonyOS on Wednesday.
This has been worked on since 2016, but the development gained momentum when Huawei was no longer allowed to use Google’s system on its smartphones and tablets due to US sanctions.
HarmonyOS is, therefore, not wholly new. That immediately explains why the accelerated finalized edition of the operating system, the first for the general public, is going through life as HarmonyOS 2. It is also a misunderstanding to think that the system was specifically developed for smartphones and tablets.
‘On the contrary’, says Erwin Van der Weerden, marketing director Belgium-Luxembourg at Huawei. “HarmonyOS was designed from the start as the single OS for multiple devices and for the interaction between those different devices.” For example, the operating system could just as easily control a microwave oven or a smart scale as a smartphone, laptop or monitor. HarmonyOS can also run on devices with only 128 kilobytes of memory onboard – a big difference with Android, for example.
In time, Huawei wants to expand its new platform into a ‘hub’ that connects all kinds of hardware, from earplugs to smart cars. In that scenario, connected gadgets must be able to be combined into one super device, as Huawei calls it. An asset is that the apps for all those devices will only need to be developed once. This is less time-consuming for developers and can therefore make the platform more attractive to them.
Along with HarmonyOS 2, the company also unveiled its first device with the new operating system on Wednesday, the Huawei Watch 3. However, the wait is now mainly for the first Huawei smartphone with HarmonyOS, so that the company can finally compete with iPhone maker again. Apple and the many manufacturers that are still allowed to put Android and Google apps on their phones and tablets undisturbed. Think, for example, of Samsung, OnePlus, Sony, Xiaomi and Oppo.
However, Huawei did not want to say anything about the timing of such a smartphone on Wednesday.
