Huawei has opened a new page in its history with the official launch of HarmonyOS Next. It is Huawei’s first operating system built independently from the Android and Linux kernels as it aims to transition its devices to a completely in-house OS.
HarmonyOS Next is set to power current and future generations of Huawei devices in China right now, though a global release was confirmed earlier. It will work on a wide range of devices, 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 with Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) through the Huawei Arc Compiler and HarmonyOS promises a seamlessly integrated architecture between Next devices, the cloud as well as interconnectivity across different device form factors.
President of Huawei Consumer Business Group, Richard Yu, announced that 15,000 apps and services are now part of the HarmonyOS Next ecosystem with more to come. We also learned that previous versions of HarmonyOS are currently running on over 1 billion devices globally. This figure includes smartphones, tablets, smart wearables, smart homes and car infotainment systems.
HarmonyOS Next comes with a refreshed visual identity with new lockscreen and home screen customization options, a redesigned Control Center, faster animations, and app launch speeds. There are impressive AI features on deck that are powered by system-level AI based on Pangu large language models.
Huawei also managed to achieve a 30% increase in device throughput and 20% lower power consumption in communications 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.
For security, HarmonyOS Next brings a self-developed Star Shield architecture with system-level security.
Huawei is rolling out a public beta version of HarmonyOS Next for users in China. The supported devices list includes Pura 70 series, Huawei Pocket 2 and MatePad Pro 11 (2024).
