Huawei announces HarmonyOS to replace Android on its devices

Huawei has announced a brand new operating system named HarmonyOS to replace Android on its devices if needed.

Huawei consumer group CEO Richard Yu made the announcement at the tech giant’s annual developer conference on Friday, saying the new platform can replace Android on Huawei smartphones “at any time”, reports Android Authority.

But Huawei will still stick to Google’s Platform for the time being.

“If we cannot use Android in the future, then we can immediately switch to HarmonyOS,” Yu explained, adding that migrating from Android to the new platform “is not that difficult”.

The new HarmonyOS, previously known as Hongmeng OS, is an open-source platform and “the first microkernel-based distributed OS for all scenarios”, Yu said.

The new platform supports smartphones, smart speakers, computers, smartwatches, wireless earbuds, cars and tablets. But the very first product to use HarmonyOS will be the Honor Vision TV set, which is expected to launch in China on Saturday.

Yu said the platform will support RAM sizes ranging from kilobytes to gigabytes, which explains the huge number of devices it will support.

The ARK Compiler used in HarmonyOS app development will support Kotlin, Java, Javascript, C and C++, leaving a good number of options open for the app developers to develop app for the platform.

The new platform will also support a range of apps, specifically HTML5, Linux, and Android apps will be compatible in the future.

The new OS is expected to launch later this year.