Ever since Huawei kicked off its proprietary OS, the HarmonyOS for its phones in 2019, the OS has continued to develop. Back in June, the second iteration of the OS, the HarmonyOS 2 was pushed for many Huawei devices. Today, Huawei has officially confirmed that the Harmony OS 2 is installed on over 40 million devices.

If you are unaware, the software was booting on over 10 million devices within a week of its launch. News broke out that within a month it was booting on over 25 million Huawei phones. Now, with the 40 million milestone, Huawei’s HarmonyOS has accomplished a higher position across phone operating systems.

At this pace, the OS seems to compete head-to-head with other operating systems. Huawei has also been adding open source components to the OS and it had recently added 400+ open source components.

Apart from this, Huawei is expected to bring the HarmonyOS 2 on all of its smartphones. Some of the premium phones to get the update would be Huawei’s Mate 40 series, P40 series, Nova8 phones, MateX2, and MatePad Pro.

Today, the flagship Huawei P50 was also launched with the same HarmonyOS version. Speaking of its specs, the series includes P50 and P50 Pro models with Huawei-only Snapdragon 888 4G chipset. Some units are also powered by a Kirin 9000 processor with up to 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

RELATED:

• Huawei Sound X 2021 Smart Speaker features 360° surround LED lights & improved design
• Huawei P50 and Huawei P50 Pro announced: fresh design, groundbreaking cameras, and the Snapdragon…
• Huawei Smart Screen V 75 Super with a MiniLED panel & 20-unit audio system…
• Here’s why the HUAWEI P50 series is limited to 4G LTE

The post HarmonyOS 2 userbase crossed 40 million users, that’s 8 users upgrading every second appeared first on Gizmochina.

There is no more doubt that June 2 will mark a significant milestone for tech giant Huawei in its pursuit of software independence. Huawei is expected to officially launch its homegrown HarmonyOS operating system for smartphones as a viable alternative to Android.

A list of Huawei devices migrating to the platform has now surfaced online. The leaked list includes the Mate 40 series (Mate 40, Mate 40 Pro, Mate 40 Pro+, Mate 40 RS), Mate X2, and MatePad Pro. We would certainly see more devices joining the bandwagon, and this is expected to be pretty rapid. However, Huawei will formally announce the devices that will be among the first to migrate to the new platform on June 2, just days away.

The company hopes to achieve more than a quarter of a billion devices running on HarmonyOS by the year’s end. The bulk of the projected devices that will ultimately rely on the Android alternative will come from existing devices that migrate to the new platform, while a fraction will come from new devices.

Huawei’s HarmonyOS is a product borne out of the extended and stringent sanctions imposed on the Chinese company by the US government. The sanctions saw Huawei’s smartphone business gasping for breath as Washington tightened the noose.

The release of an alternative platform to Google’s Android has significant ramifications in the short term. It could signal the beginning of some level of independence and over-reliance on suppliers from the United States for critical software components. Huawei has so far been able to shield the HarmonyOS from prying eyes since not much is known about the platform. However, it may not be significantly different from the current Android 11 in terms of the user interface and design functionality.

RELATED:

• Huawei trademarks “Luban”, could be a new product line
• Midea will launch most of its products with Huawei HarmonyOS: Exec
• Huawei Watch 3 officially teased to come powered by HarmonyOS

(source)

The post Expected list of devices with HarmonyOS surfaces before June 2 launch appeared first on Gizmochina.

Huawei launched its HarmonyOS 2.0 platform at its annual Huawei Developer Conference (HDC) 2020 conference in China today. The company’s rotating CEO, Richard Yu, confirmed at the event that Huawei will release HarmonyOS powered smartphones in 2021. The first beta release of HarmonyOS for smartphones will be available in December 2020 for developers.

Until now, Huawei had denied that it was planning to use HarmonyOS on smartphones. The company said that the OS was developed for smart devices and it didn’t have any plans to release it for phones anytime soon. But it looks like the increasing pressure from the US ban has forced the company to fast track the development of its own OS for smartphones.

Since May 2019, Huawei is barred from using Google Mobile Services that power Android phones across the world. And last month, after the US failed to renew its Temporary General License (TGL), the company lost access to Google’s support and updates to older devices. While Huawei confirmed that security updates will continue to roll out to its older devices, it still marked a big blow to the company’s smartphone strategy.

Huawei will release the HarmonyOS 2.0 beta version for smartphones with SDK, Documentation, Tool, and Simulator to developers in December 2020. The company adds that we can expect smartphones running on HarmonyOS in 2021.

Editor’s Pick: Huawei’s CEO says the challenges facing the tech giant will help forge “heroes”

Richard Yu reveals that the initial version of HarmonyOS 2.0 will support devices with 128KB to 128MB of RAM. In April 2021, Huawei plans to add support for larger RAM devices between 128MB and 4GB. Finally, in October 2021, the company will add support for devices with 4+ GB RAM. This roadmap is for the HarmonyOS 2.0 version and not specifically for the smartphone OS. But it hints that the first batch of HarmonyOS smartphones may be targeted at the budget or mid-range segment with less than 4GB of RAM.

Note that Huawei’s HarmonyOS is an open-source platform, similar to Android. So you can consider Huawei’s relationship with HarmonyOS similar to Google’s relationship with Android. Even though Huawei will develop HarmonyOS, since it’s an open-source platform, Huawei is likely hoping that other companies can use it on their own devices in the future.

Now that it aims to take on Google’s Android with its own OS, the next few months will be extremely interesting. It remains to be seen if HarmonyOS powered smartphones can coexist with its Android competitors next year.

UP NEXT: Huawei telecom market share grows, widens the gap with Nokia

The post Confirmed: Huawei HarmonyOS 2.0 is coming to smartphones in 2021 appeared first on Gizmochina.