Huawei’s HarmonyOS NEXT launch marks a divorce from Android • The Register

Huawei officially launched its operating system, HarmonyOS NEXT, on Wednesday, marking its official break from the Android ecosystem.

Huawei Announce It has launched and “officially begun public beta testing” of the operating system for some of its smartphones and tablets running its Kirin and Kunpeng chipsets.

Unlike previous versions of HarmonyOS, HarmonyOS NEXT no longer supports Android apps.

Huawei confirms that the best Chinese companies are not deterred by this. It cited Meituan, Douyin, Taobao, Xiaohongshu, Alipay and JD.com among those that have developed native apps for the operating system. In case you’re not familiar with them, they are the top shopping, payment and social media apps in China.

Huawei also claimed that at the time of its announcement, more than 15,000 native HarmonyOS apps and services had also been launched. That’s a good number, but it’s much lower than the millions of apps on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

The Chinese tech player also revealed that the operating system contains 110 million lines of code and claimed that it improves the overall performance of mobile devices running on it by 30 percent. It is also claimed to increase battery life by 56 minutes and leave an average of 1.5GB of memory for purposes other than running the OS.

If you like the sound of that performance boost on your smartphone or tablet — the OS runs on both, with a consistent interface — we’re sorry to report that Huawei has told us it currently has no plans to offer Harmony OS NEXT outside of China. This is despite it previously saying it plans to take an older version of HarmonyOS overseas.

Huawei has tried to export the latest version of the operating system – and even offered assistance to developers who programmed the platform and targeted foreign markets – but to no avail.

But it has successfully developed entities external to the platform: Singapore-based ride-sharing app Grab and More, and airline Emirates, have created apps for the operating system.

The release marks a moment in China’s push toward technological independence. Before the upgrade, Huawei’s HarmonyOS still relied on the open source Android project for core functionality – a move prompted by 2019 US sanctions that blocked Huawei’s access to Google Mobile Services. This dependency has now been eliminated.

Huawei hopes to bring its operating system to PCs as well. Last month, the head of the Chinese giant’s consumer business group, Yu Chengdong, revealed that the company would no longer run Windows on its future devices, but Harmony OS instead. When such devices will appear, and whether other computer manufacturers will use the operating system, are unanswered questions. ®