Today on Weibo, Huawei confirmed the official release of HarmonyOS for smartphones in China. The date for the official release is slated to be on 2nd June, 20:00pm PST. HarmonyOS is already available for IoT devices and Smart TVs, and even electric vehicles, it is time for the OS to debut to the device it was built for: smartphones!
Huawei slated to become the biggest smartphone manufacturer by the end of 2019, but, we’ve said this a million times, they were banned from existing by the United States government and its allies, therefore halting Huawei’s plans to dominate the smartphone market. The ban ultimately led to Huawei not being able to use Google Mobile Services.
Initially, HarmonyOS was set out to be “Plan B” if things didn’t go according to plan. It was a fork of Android and even accepted apk files. Android is an open-source platform, so anyone can make an OS out of it. Also, like Android, Harmony is open-source and is also Linux-based. According to Ars Technica, the first beta of Harmony OS is based on the stock Android 10, hence the second iteration may have a feel similar to Android 11, which means users won’t be lost navigating the software.
“HarmonyOS is Huawei’s fully owned distributed operating system, which is mainly designed to reduce its dependency on Android and provide more capabilities and platform support than the existing mobile operating system.” said by a Huawei spokesperson during the Huawei China Ecological Conference 2021. He added that Huawei plans to have at least 200 million Huawei devices and at least 100 million third-party devices run HarmonyOS this year.
In addition to HarmonyOS coming this 2nd June via conference, Huawei is also expected to announce a couple of devices such as the Huawei MatePad 2 Pro and the Huawei Watch 3 series.
Source: GizmoChina