In December 2020, Huawei launched the first beta version of HarmonyOS , its in-house alternative to Android, on a handful of recent smartphones and tablets. Deprived of an Android license following US sanctions, the Chinese group has accelerated the development of its operating system in recent months. According to the latest news, Huawei would offer HarmonyOS on the P50 , its future flagship. Indeed, the international version of the smartphone would embed both HarmonyOS and Android.
According to Wang Chenglu, president of the software engineering section at Huawei, HarmonyOS is not a simple copy of Android . Richard Yu, CEO of the Chinese group's mobile division, has repeatedly said that the operating system is very different from Android. However, there are many similarities in the code of the operating system, say our colleagues at Ars Technica. After installing the HarmonyOS emulator, the media claims that HarmonyOS is only a fork of Android 10 . The article compares Huawei's interface to Fire OS, a fork of the Android mobile operating system developed by Amazon for Fire TVs.
HUAWEI JUST COPIED THE CODE FROM ANDROID
To design the modular operating system, Huawei developers would have simply copied the lines of code present in the open source version of Android. Legally, nothing prevents Huawei (or any firm) from appropriating the code of the OS and offering its own version.
Ultimately, the interface looks like EMUI, the Android overlay developed by the Chinese group. For Ars Technica, Huawei simply replaced the word “Android” with “HarmonyOS”. Huawei “presents an exact copy of the EMUI Android skin , ” the outlet said. By digging through the "application information" , we even find several times the mention of Android. “After hours of digging through HarmonyOS, I couldn't find a single substantive change from Android” underlines Ars Technica.
The development kit (SDK) of the operating system (called DevEco Studio), offered to developers to develop their applications, would even be identical to Android Studio , the kit from Google. There would be exactly the same components.
HARMONYOS OFFERS THE SAME GESTURE NAVIGATION AS ANDROID 10
Huawei has “perfectly copied every feature of Android 10,” the article continues. The Chinese OS includes all the gestural navigation developed by Google. Inaugurated in 2019 with Android 10 , gesture navigation skips the traditional Android navigation bar. Swipe up to return to the home screen. To go back, you just have to swipe the screen from a corner. It should be noted that these navigation gestures were offered on EMUI (and other Android overlays) before Google integrated them into its operating system.
Finally, Ars Technica notes that the HarmonyOS beta is “ far too complete” for a test version. According to the media, it is not conceivable that the developers of the group have developed such a complete operating system without relying on Android. This approach allows Huawei to push its fork in the shortest possible time. Thanks to the similarities between the two OS, Huawei can easily migrate its smartphones to HarmonyOS. Moreover, all smartphones already compatible with EMUI 11 will be able to install HarmonyOS when it is deployed worldwide.
On the other hand, the proximity of Harmony OS to Android suggests that Huawei will be dependent on Google to develop new functionalities , specifies the media. Likewise, the Chinese group will have to rely on Google to integrate fixes and security patches.
As a reminder, Huawei expects HarmonyOS to be installed on 200 million devices worldwide by the end of this year, including 100 million devices designed by other brands . Thanks to its in-house OS, the Chinese manufacturer hopes to stem the collapse in its sales of smartphones. Deprived of Google Mobile Services since 2019, the manufacturer has no other choice than to bet everything on its in-house solution.
Source: Ars Technica