Its a huge month for Huawei and not because it’s announcing new phones. Actually, it might tease some new phones but the focus of its event will be on the new HarmonyOS software that will run on those phones. This mobile operating system is Huawei’s vision for a Google-less world. Of course, its success will depend on how many phones it will be available on and it seems that the company will be pushing it hard even on Huawei phones already out in the wild.
We expect to see HarmonyOS is come pre-installed in future Huawei devices, but whether it will die a Windows Phone OS is yet to be seen. These include the still-absent Huawei P50 series as well as the recently rumored MatePad Pro 2. Those, however, will only be a fraction of the phones under Huawei’s command and it seems that the phone maker really wants to push its new OS to everyone.
A leak on Weibo, indicated that Huawei will be making HarmonyOS available on some existing phones as well. It includes the entire Huawei Mate 40 and P40 series as well as the older MatePad Pro. The foldable Huawei Mate X2 will also be updated and the mid-range Nova 8 and Nova 8 Pro will also be able to taste the new OS.
The leak says that these updates will be available on June 2, right on the day that Huawei debuts HarmonyOS for phones, a.k.a. HarmonyOS 2.0. More interestingly, the source says that phones are also being upgraded in offline stores, suggesting that any new phone from this list that you buy will be running HarmonyOS instead of Android.
There is no doubt that HarmonyOS 2.0 has been built on the Open Source Android Platform with a custom Huawei EMUI skin with some visual enhancements. Huawei has consistently denied this. We will at least finally get our answer after June 2, especially when Huawei’s Google-free OS starts rolling out to existing phones.
