Weekly poll results: HarmonyOS shows early promise

13 June 2021
Huawei's new mobile OS looks promising, but it needs to create its own identity separate from Android.

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i think it's just a skin also is based on android 10 so nothing special here

    VectorR, 13 Jun 2021Huawei should sell their smartphone business straight from ... moreThat's another different story. HarmonyOS is not only for smartphones but a "run-on-all" operating system that can be used on IoTs, TVs, car head units, smartwatches, PCs etc..

      I'm going to laugh on people who say 'HarmonyOS is an Android fork' when I run its own .Hap app that can't be run on their lovely Android devices (excl, emulation/rooted/modified ones, of course).

      See, the key for success here for an operating system is to make it run other system's apps AND it's OWN apps because it must have it's own identity, and that's what HarmonyOS is. A hybrid operating system for both worlds that will make tech geeks happier but won't satisfy western media followers because of the obvious reasons (the policy of against China).

        Anonymous, 13 Jun 2021Nothing promising at all That's because YOU don't need it, while WE (many other people) want to see more options beside current two mobile operating systems.

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          • Anonymous
          • pv$
          • 13 Jun 2021

          Nothing promising at all

            Huawei should sell their smartphone business straight from the time ban started. What they do now is just prolonged suffering, slow death. All hope is gone, sorry Huawei.

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              • Anonymous
              • vxI
              • 13 Jun 2021

              JohnW1981, 13 Jun 2021The past failures of BB, Microsoft etc keep getting brought... moreSymbian, Blackberry OS, Windows Phone all suffered from a lack of apps, which is the exact problem Harmony will suffer from outside of China, the lack of GMS pretty much seals its fate. In China there was never GMS to begin with, but Huawei's shares also began to collapse there against Xiaomi and BBK brands, probably due to a lack of chips though.

                The past failures of BB, Microsoft etc keep getting brought up but their problems were also hardware; which was competitive against Samsung and other OEMs at the time. Huawei has this covered but I think their downfall is lack of GMS more than the harmony OS itself

                  There's nothing exciting about HarmonyOS, but then again Huawei don't have much choice either.

                    Kangal, 13 Jun 2021Clearly there's a bias here. There's nothing &qu... moreAs they say.... Anyway, you will eventually get it at the end. So for now keep mumbling . my advice, start following Huawei news not this bias GSMarena news

                      It should be possible for an existing, established hardware maker to introduce a new unique OS.
                      Google had nothing to lose and have proved the massive changes that can be made in a market very quickly, with a big bit of luck, bribery etc, and a willing public.
                      Huawei can basicaly enforce use of a new OS within China, something Google couldn't, they know all about phones, and profits, Google didn't, possibly willing to spend/risk maker than Google did, the biggest problem is that their chinese.
                      If they don't open up the boot loader etc fully, like Google allowed for years, it just won't get the take up needed, if fevs etc can't play with it first, forget it, it's them that slowly convince others to start using, then snowball effect takes over, but without devs access , it would flop..
                      I alone convinced hundreds of enterprise clients to try android very early, I could see its potential if handled properly, my site had 4700 employees, about half of them had HTC HD 2's,so could run anything, I ran the first non-public, invite only pre aplha version, forgotten its code name, on my hd2, site was a major coms firm, all sorts of usual goodies, I could clone about 20 hd2s in my lunch time, then a few others, actual employees, started cloning etc for other staff (I was the site gardener !!) so many running android that Google contacted some users to find why such a hot-spot of users...
                      In theory, it could be done today, but by a total outsider like Google did ? And as for a Chinese firm with existing problems with Western govs, I realy don't think its possible, it would take time, lots of money, and would have to be a massive, magnitude step improvement over existing OS's to have any chance, something like magic telepathic control of assistants and devices while boosting existing cpu/gpu/ram by at least double, and using only a tenth of the battery power, its going need one or two bloody miracle "unique selling point's " to threaten existing OS's, meanwhile Google is very probably plodding along still in the background with a "universal" OS, no matter what they say, as the first out of the big 3, ms, alphabet or apple to introduce a true universal OS, to introduce one is looking at huge dominance, with all the profits too.
                      Take their mobile sides away, and 2 out of 3 don't look too good..

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                        • AlienKiss
                        • 3RM
                        • 13 Jun 2021

                        🤢🤮🤮🤮

                          skedge, 13 Jun 2021like any Huawei OS would be truly open source and wouldn’t ... moreSo identical to everything else then.
                          you realy think western states don't spy on their own ppopulation as well others ?
                          No backdoors in anything but huawie ?

                            Anonymous, 13 Jun 2021Calm down. It takes time to develop to develop an independe... moreIt certainly didn't take 10 years, more like less than half that, about 4 years is all it took.
                            Millions of enterprise clients went from years of winmo use and feature phones, to full fat android smartphones, in a very short time.
                            Microsoft could not have done a worse job of keeping all those annual lovely profitable enterprise sales if they had tried, and with what they also did at Nokia, you can only assume they commited suicide on purpose, from number 1 to zero in 4 years...

                              They got devices, they got nxt lvl devices, they got many devices and they install it on them. Also a lot of apps works even if not so eas6 as pure google, its usable. They need n3w devices coming though.

                                Huawei didn't realy have much choice but to use a fork of Android if they had come out with a totaly new, unique OS, it wouldn't stand any chance at all of take up outside China,western govs would insist it full of back doors etc, ban it, etc etc, that's much harder to claim if its simply a fork of an existing OS.

                                  ae86, 13 Jun 2021If Huawei wanted Harmony to truly blow up, first they have ... moreTrue

                                    SHAZAMM, 13 Jun 2021See this is what happens when you dont read out an article.... moreWhy would you assume that I didn't read the article?
                                    And why would you assume that I was talking about the User Interface?

                                    Besides, your point is bogus. There is nothing stating that Huawei couldn't use a different UI, in fact, it would've been beneficial to use it up-front (can be a selling point, wow-factor, and give them an early lead).

                                    I would be more satisfied if Huawei used their same UI, but on a different base. For instance, I think the upcoming JingOS (see JingPad A1) is much much more innovative than HarmonyOS. Sure the JingOS is also using many assets from the open-source community (mainly Ubuntu), however, the team at Jingling had to develop much more of the base software and ecosystem. That's what I want to see.

                                      SpiritWolf, 13 Jun 2021Oh christ. Typical long and wrong from you. Different kerne... moreMate, I read all your comments on the previous article.
                                      You CLEARLY have a bias.

                                      As you everyone can see, you have NOT refuted any of the facts and points I raised. That is because I am not a fan of Google or Huawei or Sony or what-have-you. I am not interested in debating about the politics of the issue (so don't take it there). I am interested in real innovation. As someone who's been using SailOS on a Nexus, I've been surprised and frustrated with it. I've been wanting for someone to do something as ambitious as that, but someone that is a large corporation with lots of money to sustain it.

                                      PS: Yes, of course it has taken years to create Android10. We have evidence in github. You can see them for yourself. It's not just the drivers, kernel, user space, and APIs... there is a lot that goes into it. I think it is an estimated 20 Million lines of code for reference.

                                        Kangal, 13 Jun 2021Clearly there's a bias here. There's nothing &qu... moreSee this is what happens when you dont read out an article...gsmarena stated that their UI design which looks similiar to android is to get individuals familarized with its basic UI and possibly go on and beyond when their OS has reached a larger number of devices. Of course that plan is better rather than forcing a whole new design to Huawei users so they dont have to drastically learn a whole new learning curve to operste their devices.