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Tout ce que vous devez savoir sur HarmonyOS NEXT, le nouvel système d’exploitation de Huawei en remplacement d’Android
Huawei has undergone a drastic transformation in recent years, following strict sanctions imposed by the United States and Western countries. These restrictions greatly hampered the company’s ability to access software products and electronic components developed with American technologies. One of the biggest challenges the company faced was the ban on using Google services on its phones, leading to a sharp decline in its global sales. Huawei lost its leading position as one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world, falling behind in the global market. In response to these challenges, Huawei developed a system called HarmonyOS and launched it in 2020 for some of its devices, showcasing its ability to achieve self-sufficiency programmatically. However, in reality, it was just a « modified version of Android. » Today, Huawei has ushered in a new chapter in its history by fully migrating from Android to a self-developed operating system, officially launched under the name HarmonyOS Next. Let’s explore how this system works, its advantages, and compatible devices.
Huawei’s HarmonyOS NEXT System
What is HarmonyOS originally?
HarmonyOS was first revealed in 2019 when it was surprised by former US President Donald Trump’s commercial ban, which prevented Huawei from using Android and Google services. Therefore, the company introduced HarmonyOS in 2020 as an alternative to the « US-supported version of Android » for its new smartphones. Huawei developed this operating system based on three key strategic pillars.
The first pillar is Smart Integration, where the system is distinguished by its ability to achieve seamless integration between various Huawei devices, similar to Apple systems and the Ecosystem environment, allowing connected devices to function as an integrated unit, enabling the integration of capabilities and features to meet user needs instantly and effectively. The second pillar focuses on Unified Development Environment, making it easier for developers to write their applications’ codes once and then run them on all Huawei devices, ensuring a consistent and smooth user experience across different devices, whether smartphones, tablets, or others. The third pillar is Flexibility and Adaptability, as HarmonyOS was designed from scratch with a flexible standard design that allows it to adapt to various devices according to their capabilities and resources, enabling the system to operate efficiently on a wide range of devices, optimizing its performance according to each device’s properties and requirements.
The Chinese giant managed to achieve these pillars in HarmonyOS to make its spread rapid in the market. Huawei decided to develop the system based on the open-source code of Android system, allowing the company to benefit from the extensive library of apps available for Android, while maintaining its technological independence. This also enabled Huawei to easily attract Android users to its new phones with its self-developed operating system. A Huawei phone user working with HarmonyOS could easily install their favorite Android apps on the phone, whether by downloading the APK file or through the Huawei AppGallery store, which hosts a huge collection of Android apps available in the Play Store and modified to be compatible with HarmonyOS environment.
However, the use of HarmonyOS of the open-source code of the Android system resulted in making the new system similar to Huawei’s famous « EMUI » interface, which raised criticisms. Some considered this system to be nothing more than a modified version of Android, which was often the reason HarmonyOS did not garner widespread attention in the tech circles at the time. Later on, after the launch of 4 versions of HarmonyOS, Huawei announced that the system is now available on more than 100 million of its devices. The company also announced that it is working on developing an original version (independent from Android) of its new system, exclusively supporting the operation of apps designed for it, to compete against both iOS and Android, the dominant players in the smartphone operating system market— and it was about time!
Launching HarmonyOS NEXT and the Radical Transformation
It seems that we will not see a fifth version of the HarmonyOS system, and if there is, it will not be like its predecessors! Huawei officially launched the trial version of its new system called HarmonyOS Next, which is a completely isolated system from the Android environment and associated services. This transformation represents a significant leap and a historic event for the Chinese tech giant. This shift means that HarmonyOS Next needs to develop its apps completely separately as it lacks support for Android apps, meaning its users will not be able to install APK files outside Huawei’s official store, ensuring a safe and stable user experience.
Huawei’s launch of HarmonyOS Next reflects the company’s focus on the Chinese market, which has witnessed a strong comeback lately, climbing to the top list of phone sellers in China during the last quarters. Huawei is expected to aim towards introducing its new operating system to the global competition arena, as it later announced its intention to launch HarmonyOS Next globally. This move also reflects Huawei’s future vision of building a completely independent system, combining superior performance and advanced security, focusing on developing an integrated ecosystem specific to the company, almost resembling the Apple model of designing its software and components internally.
This challenge presents a historic opportunity for Huawei to prove its ability to compete in a market characterized by difficulty in penetration and it seems ready for it. Over the past two years, Huawei has been improving HarmonyOS in collaboration with leading Chinese tech companies to create original apps for the system. Richard Yu, CEO of the Consumer Business Group at Huawei, mentioned that the number of original apps available for the system surpassed 15,000 apps, with more in the pipeline. The company is paving the way to make HarmonyOS Next an operating system for both current and future generations of Huawei devices, ranging from smartphones to wearables, smart home devices, and car systems.
Features of HarmonyOS NEXT
HarmonyOS NEXT comes with performance improvements compared to the previous version, as Huawei has completely reprogrammed HarmonyOS with a focus on performance, achieving a 30% increase in device smoothness and a 20% decrease in power consumption compared to previous versions. The system is expected to see further developments that enhance the harmony between hardware and software, which is the standard that gave the system its name – Harmony means harmony, cohesion.
On the other hand, HarmonyOS NEXT offers visually smooth graphics, more fluid motion effects thanks to Huawei’s Ark Engine graphics engine, as well as improvements in security and deeper integration of artificial intelligence. Overall, the new system aims to compete with the unique user experience offered by Apple through its various smart devices. Confirming this, HarmonyOS NEXT features the « Continuation » feature, allowing users to seamlessly switch between different Huawei devices by simply bringing them closer together. These devices include smartphones, tablets, allowing the user to run an app on the phone and continue using it on the tablet, for example. The feature of Continuation is currently available in a selected group of apps such as Amap, DingTalk, and WPS, enabling users to transfer photos and texts between devices instantly and directly when they are in proximity. The system has also improved the speed of file sharing and transfer between devices more efficiently compared to competing operating systems through the Huawei Share feature. According to Huawei, iOS takes about 14 seconds to transfer a 1.2 GB file, while HarmonyOS NEXT only takes 8 seconds.
The rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, Huawei introduced its smart services package Huawei Intelligence, to compete with systems like Apple Intelligence. This package includes the advanced AIGC service that allows users to intelligently edit photos, remove unwanted elements, create hand-drawn graphics and graffiti-style, expand the image boundaries, and add new details to it. Huawei also developed the artificial intelligence assistant « Celia, » also known as Xiaoyi, to work similarly to Google’s Gemini with Android phones, where users can summon it through a voice command to ask about anything and get instant responses. Celia also recognizes the content on the screen to provide context-based answers. Celia was developed to interact with third-party apps, offering various services such as instant translation, smart autofill, face and text recognition. Huawei has updated the assistant to become a smart integrated companion based on the Pangu 5.0 LLM artificial intelligence model, enabling it to perform complex tasks on behalf of the user. Huawei has developed the Pangu 5.0 LLM model in several versions to suit different needs, ranging from a version tailored for smartphones, a version with 90 billion variables, to a massive version with 230 billion variables designed for the enterprise sector, and an advanced version with a trillion variables.
Celia has been developed to interact with third-party apps, offering various services such as instant translation, smart autofill, face and text recognition. The assistant recognizes the content on the screen to provide contextual answers. Celia was developed to be able to interact with third-party apps, providing various services such as instant translation, smart autofill, face and text recognition. The assistant has evolved from a traditional voice assistant to a smart companion that relies on the Pangu 5.0 LLM artificial intelligence model, empowering it to perform complex tasks on behalf of the user. Huawei has developed the Pangu 5.0 LLM model in several versions to suit various needs, from a customizable version for smartphones to a version with 90 billion variables, ending with a massive version with 230 billion variables for the enterprise sector, and an advanced version with a trillion variables.
In terms of security, HarmonyOS Next offers a self-developed Star Shield engineering with system-level protection. Like other systems, users can set permissions for apps to access only the data they choose. The new system will not allow the installation of any apps outside the store to ensure a safe and stable experience.
Devices Compatible with HarmonyOS NEXT
