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I think their goal is to slowly migrate their entire stack to something China has full control of, independent of outside influence. That's why it started as a

I think their goal is to slowly migrate their entire stack to something China has full control of, independent of outside influence. That's why it started as a smart underlying layer approach to run Android (something the above article seems to have completely misunderstood) and is now having the Android compatibility layer moved out in this upcoming release. Much easier than trying to replace the world in one shot. From that perspective, it doesn't much matter what a phone with software from the West can do - this is the only phone China has full self reliance and control on.

wkat4242 3y ago
It was not a compatibility layer though. It was just Android, as Ars Technica showed. Maybe it became so in later versions but it started as just any other Android skin like "ColorOS" or "EMUI" But yeah if it's only meant for their internal market it could work, as the CCP has the power to force everyone to make apps for it. They'll have to ban sales of foreign brands though.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  It was, Ars just missed where the compatibility layer was as you couldn't see it by booting a smartphone and seeing what it said the kernel was. Harmony splits things up into layers and one thing it provides at the base layer is a KAL to allow for multiple kernels for different devices. The point of allowing swapping the kernel layer for different device types to have different device compatibilities. In the case of phones it meant still being able to load Linux to run an AOSP base and in the case of smartwatches or IoT devices running the LiteOS kernel without AOSP on top. The Huawei specific SDKs target interfaces available in both environments so if you make an app in that ecosystem it'd work on all devices even though the smartphone versions were using Linux+AOSP (because it wasn't ready to replace the entire smartphone stack yet, just the simpler use cases). HarmonyOS NEXT is the version that replaces the whole shebang on all devices. One could simply look at what you see poking around on a smartphone only and conclude that means they are finally doing something different but that explanation highlights the hole from the Ars article - it does nothing to explain other devices or the migration plan to HarmonyOS Next. At the same time it's probably fair to say Ars's other points in the article about Huawei's marketing being a little overdone, their documentation lacking, and the way you registered for it being crazy were still more than valid. They just missed the point of why HarmonyOS was being considered a separate OS due to the limited way they investigated it.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Aha, I didn't know this, I hadn't heard of this point until now. Thank you, I will look into it more. I'm surprised Ars didn't follow up on this and amend the article. Normally they're pretty accurate.

wkat4242 3y ago

It was not a compatibility layer though. It was just Android, as Ars Technica showed. Maybe it became so in later versions but it started as just any other Android skin like "ColorOS" or "EMUI" But yeah if it's only meant for their internal market it could work, as the CCP has the power to force everyone to make apps for it. They'll have to ban sales of foreign brands though.

zamadatix 3y ago
It was, Ars just missed where the compatibility layer was as you couldn't see it by booting a smartphone and seeing what it said the kernel was. Harmony splits things up into layers and one thing it provides at the base layer is a KAL to allow for multiple kernels for different devices. The point of allowing swapping the kernel layer for different device types to have different device compatibilities. In the case of phones it meant still being able to load Linux to run an AOSP base and in the case of smartwatches or IoT devices running the LiteOS kernel without AOSP on top. The Huawei specific SDKs target interfaces available in both environments so if you make an app in that ecosystem it'd work on all devices even though the smartphone versions were using Linux+AOSP (because it wasn't ready to replace the entire smartphone stack yet, just the simpler use cases). HarmonyOS NEXT is the version that replaces the whole shebang on all devices. One could simply look at what you see poking around on a smartphone only and conclude that means they are finally doing something different but that explanation highlights the hole from the Ars article - it does nothing to explain other devices or the migration plan to HarmonyOS Next. At the same time it's probably fair to say Ars's other points in the article about Huawei's marketing being a little overdone, their documentation lacking, and the way you registered for it being crazy were still more than valid. They just missed the point of why HarmonyOS was being considered a separate OS due to the limited way they investigated it.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Aha, I didn't know this, I hadn't heard of this point until now. Thank you, I will look into it more. I'm surprised Ars didn't follow up on this and amend the article. Normally they're pretty accurate.