2 reasons why HarmonyOS cannot afford to replace Android on Huawei smartphones

After months of rumors, eventually the mysterious operating system developed by Huawei revealed itself, named HarmonyOS for the international market and HongMeng OS for the Chinese market. According to Huawei’s statement, with the new design architecture, it brings many interesting advantages compared to modern operating systems today, when it can be used on many different devices.

But don’t expect it to replace Android.

It is true that HarmonyOS can be an open platform for smart TV, smartwatch and mountains of IoT devices around. Its microkernel architecture is very compact, but more importantly, it doesn’t have heavy components like the Linux kernel for Android. (It can be understood that micropropagation is like a shortened version of the operating system kernel, when removing unnecessary components, only retaining one to two command sequences, instead of all 10 strings).

While smartphones are not the main focus in Huawei’s announcement, it is clearly still their top priority. Mr. Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s consumer device, said in the HarmonyOS press release: ” If we can’t use Android in the future, we can switch to HarmonyOS immediately .” He even emphasized that the conversion took only a few days.

However, things are not so simple.

The application port from Android to HarmonyOS is not as easy as imagined

It is true that they can only take a few days to bring HarmonyOS to their smartphones, but having an operating system doesn’t mean you will have a useful smartphone – it needs applications, lots of applications. Without the application, HarmonyOS is not very attractive to users.

Despite Huawei’s announcement of a $ 1 billion investment for developers to put applications on a new platform, those applications will be difficult to come soon. Application developers can port the Android application to HarmonyOS, but that process may not be worth the obstacles they encounter.

Honor brand smart TV, the first device running HarmonyOS.

Patrick Moorhead, president of technology analysis firm Moor Insights & Strategy, said: ” I think Huawei is communicating too little about what to do to make it successful. Almost all Android applications are written with Android specific APIs, so any code for interactions with cameras, fingerprint readers, infrared cameras, microphones, proximity sensors and even privacy and security standards will also have to revise . ”

A large amount of work to do can hinder any developer. In addition, whether they will give up on not knowing whether the smartphone running HarmonyOS will be released, because Huawei is prioritizing this operating system for other devices, such as TVs. However, there may still be exceptions from the Chinese market, where the company has enough influence to attract developers.

But this is a global company with global ambitions. Reaching internationally, Huawei will encounter a vicious cycle similar to Windows Phone and Tizen and many other operating systems have encountered: no application, no people will buy equipment. Without equipment buyers, developers will hesitate to build applications.

Applications that run everywhere do not mean quality

There is still one more question about the ability to realize the smartphone running HarmonyOS. While Huawei is proud of its ability to write applications once and run on many different types of devices, this flexibility may have to be exchanged for application quality.

A sparkling image on smartwatch can also be a disaster on 4K TV.

” To run on every device, you won’t be able to take advantage of the unique advantages of each device .” Michael Facemire, director of analysis for Forrester Research, said: ” For example, when I want to put an experience on both TV and phone, then I will have to write a huge amount of logic code conditions – basically means building two separate user interfaces at the same time – or I’ll just create the most basic generic patterns, making the experience on both devices poor . ”

Android application developers have had a headache in making their apps beautiful on many different phone screen sizes. As for HarmonyOS, the problem is even more complicated when it is an entire universe with many different interface styles. A sharp image on smartwatch screen may be full of serrated on a 4K TV.

Another example closer to HarmonyOS is Google’s Fuchsia – an operating system with Huawei’s active involvement in development. Although its details are still very small, but like HarmonyOS, Fuchsia is a micro-operating system, open source, and designed to run on many different connected devices and IoT. And like HarmonyOS, it’s not nearly ready to run on smartphones.

However, with Huawei, while facing escalating stress from the US, it is understandable why they need solutions for both hardware and software to replace Western choices, and HarmonyOS is such a solution. But with the above limitations, it’s easy to understand why Mr. Yu said that Android is still Huawei’s top choice. Currently, HarmonyOS is still a backup plan for the worst case scenario, as well as more time for development.

Refer to Wired