14 DAY TRIAL // Huawei might be working on a new operating system for their hardware, but the company seems intent on keeping Android as the primary OS for their phones, at least for now.
When the United States put Huawei on a special naughty list, which prohibited American companies from doing business with the Chinese hardware maker, it became evident just how much Huawei depended on Android.
In fact, it was revealed that Huawei depended a lot of American technologies and patents, which forced the company to look for alternatives. It’s possible to find hardware alternatives for ARM and other components, but there is no real alternative for Android. The only option is to build your own OS.
Huawei continues to rely on Android
Just a week ago, Huawei unveiled Harmony OS, an operating system that seemed to be designed as a replacement for Android. The surprise came when Huawei announced that it’s aimed at smart TV and not phones.
Most likely, the operating system is not yet ready for deployment on smartphones. Huawei insists that the OS is much faster than Android and explained that it uses a micro-kernel. That means that it packs only the necessary drivers and instructions, for a limited number of hardware components.
According to a CNET report, Huawei Senior Vice President Vincent Yang explained that Harmony is only the backup solution. The idea would be to keep a single experience across devices and to keep people from confusing upcoming phones.
Vincent Yang also said that Harmony would be used on an upcoming smartwatch, but the new Huawei Mate 30 Pro will ship with Android. The only way to see Harmony OS on a Huawei smartphone would be in the worst-case scenario; the United States enforces the ban, by which point that phones would become unusable for the western market.