Huawei officially announces Harmony OS, its first party OS to compete with Android

Huawei has finally taken the curtains off its first-party Harmony OS. We learned about the existence of Harmony OS when the US enforced sanctions against Huawei earlier this year. The company later revealed that it had been working on an Android replacement for years as it expected interference from the US government.

The Operating System, unfortunately, isn’t ready yet as Huawei said they aren’t ready to show it on a smartphone. The company did, however, confirm that they will be showing Harmony OS on the Honor Vision TV tomorrow. The OS is micro-kernel based, just like Google’s rumoured Fuchsia OS. Huawei said it will allow the company to develop the OS for several devices without compromising with the security. The company confirmed that the OS will be locked, i.e, users won’t have root-level access which the company deems is a security hazard on Linux based OSes like Android. The OS boasts an EAL 5+ certification level.

The company confirmed that the work on the new OS began 2 years back and was accelerated in 2019, probably due to the ongoing trade issue between the US and China. The company plans to release version 2.0 of the micro-kernel next year which will be followed by version 3.0 in 2021. Huawei said it can migrate to Harmony OS in 1-2 days but chooses not to do so out of respect for the current partners who rely on Android. The company will be shedding light on the OS in the next few days at its Annual Developer Conference.

Via XDA Developers