The 2019 Huawei Developer Conference is on and we are already getting to business as was expected. A lot of anticipation in the build up to the event pointed at the launch of the long awaited HongMeng OS and the forthcoming EMUI 10.
Well, the first announcement has come in and it is of the OS. Huawei has indeed unveiled the new open-source platform, naming it Harmony OS, while retaining the originally though-of HongMeng name for the Chinese market.
We had earlier informed you about Huawei’s plans to trademark Harmony OS as the name to refer to their OS in European boundaries, and the announcement comes as a result of the application.
The company defines the new operating system as “the first microkernel-based distributed OS for all scenarios”. It will reportedly support smartphones, smart speakers, computers, smartwatches, wireless earbuds, cars, and tablets. Huawei CEO Richard Yu says the platform supports RAM sizes ranging from kilobytes to gigabytes.
Additionally, it is said to be more secure and faster than Android, does not need root-level access to sensitive services, it is modular and adaptive, and will not need separate coding for each platform it runs on.
Harmony OS will, in its releases, support a wide range of apps with compatibility to HTML5, Linux, and Android. Huawei also says that the ARK Compiler used in HarmonyOS app development will also support Kotlin, Java, Javascript, C, and C++.
We had previously known of Huawei plans to use th enew Hongmeng OS with its Honor sub-brand as it debuts its smart TV lineup. The smart TV is said to launch this August and will act a hub of control for Huawei’s smart home ambitions as well as an entertainment centre.
In May, Google banned Huawei from using Android, following the latter’s inclusion in the US entity list. We can only wait to see if the OS will run on any upcoming Huawei devices as earlier expected.
This is a developing story.
