Huawei’s HarmonyOS NEXT launch marks a divorce from Android

Huawei formally launched its home-brewed operating system, HarmonyOS NEXT, on Wednesday, marking its official separation from the Android ecosystem.

Huawei declared it released and “officially started public beta testing” of the OS for some of its smartphones and tablets that run its own Kirin and Kunpeng chips.

Unlike previous iterations of HarmonyOS, HarmonyOS NEXT no longer supports Android apps.

Huawei maintains top Chinese outfits aren’t deterred by that. It cited Meituan, Douyin, Taobao, Xiaohongshu, Alipay, and JD.com as among those who have developed native apps for the OS. In case you’re not familiar, they’re China’s top shopping, payment, and social media apps.

Huawei also claimed that at the time of its announcement, over 15,000 HarmonyOS native applications and meta-services were also launched. That’s a nice number, but well short of the millions of apps found on the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.

The Chinese tech player also revealed that the operating system has 110 million lines of code and claimed it improves the overall performance of mobile devices running it by 30 percent. It also purportedly increases battery life by 56 minutes and leaves an average of 1.5GB of memory for purposes other than running the OS.

If you like the sound of that performance boost on your smartphone or tablet – the OS runs on both, with a consistent interface – we’re sorry to report that Huawei told us it currently has no plans to offer Harmony OS NEXT outside of China. That’s despite previously saying it planned to take an older version of HarmonyOS offshore.

Huawei did try to export the last version of the OS – and even offered assistance to developers who coded for the platform and targeted offshore markets – without success.

But it has succeeded in having offshore entities develop for the platform: Singapore-based rideshare-and-more app Grab, and the airline Emirates, have created apps for the OS.

The release marks a moment in China’s push for tech independence. Before the upgrade, Huawei’s HarmonyOS still relied on the Android Open Source Project for core functionality – a move driven by 2019 US sanctions that blocked Huawei’s access to Google Mobile Services. That dependency has now been ditched.

Huawei hopes to bring its OS to PCs, too. Last month the chair of the Chinese giant’s consumer business group, Yu Chengdong, revealed it would no longer run Windows on its future machines, but Harmony OS instead. When such machines will emerge, and whether other PC-makers will use the OS, are unanswered questions. ®