During this year’s Developer Conference, Huawei released a lot of important information about its in-house operating system. Most important is probably the release date. Already next year the Chinese company wants to release HarmonyOS 2.0 for smartphones, tablets and wearables. This will make Huawei independent from Android.
The next steps
The first people can already enjoy HarmonyOS 2.0. So Huawei has already released the operating system for some developers after the release was announced. But this does not affect all devices. The beta version can be tested on Smart-TVs, Smartwatches and infotainment systems of cars. In addition to the trial version, Huawei wants to provide other practical tools for the development processes. An SDK, documentation, developer tools and a simulator will be released by the Chinese company. Smartphone owners will also not have to wait too long for a beta version. HarmonyOS 2.0 should be available as a beta for smartphones as early as December. Huawei would like to include different developer tools in this release as well.
2021 the first smartphones with HarmonyOS
Huawei was forced to develop its own operating system. This is a consequence of the ongoing trade war between China and the USA. After all, Google’s services within AndroidOS on Huawei devices are very limited. Next year Huawei will take a step towards absolute independence. Not only the operating system itself, but also smartphones with pre-installed HarmonyOS will be launched. This was announced by Richard Yu, CEO of the Consumer Business Group at the event. However, it is not yet known whether Huawei will also supply our market with corresponding smartphones next year. However, we can clearly assume that the end devices will definitely be launched in China in 2021.
Stepwise development
Huawei is following a step-by-step roadmap so that the developers can slowly familiarize themselves with the new operating system. For this reason, the Chinese group has initially only released a beta version for low-power devices such as smart TVs, infotainment systems and smart watches. However, the list of devices is to grow longer bit by bit. In particular, Huawei wants to support devices with a maximum of 128 MB RAM at the beginning. The Chinese want to increase this from April 2021. From this time on devices with a maximum of 4 GB RAM will be supported. This will allow developers to start developing for smartphones. In October next year, the third and final stage is to be reached. Then Huawei wants to support devices with more than 4 GB RAM. This would pave the way for the use of HarmonyOS also on high-end smartphones. So we can possibly expect the first flagship smartphones based on HarmonyOS by the end of 2021.
