5 ms·

Huawei launches Mate 70 Series with self-developed HarmonyOS

37 points by WaitWaitWha 2y ago

lopis 2y ago
This article is a very superficial press release and very poor on details. I was hoping to learn a bit more about HarmonyOS.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  HarmonyOS: https://www.harmonyos.com/en/ https://www.harmonyos.com/en/ But most of the documents are in Chinese.
  - byyoung3 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - Always42 2y ago
    From a quick glance it looks like they are setting up for people to write apps for this specific OS. Surprised, thought they would try and be android app compatible.
    - markus_zhang 2y ago
      No I think they cut off compatibility after a while. I'm not familiar with Harmony so don't know if there is a translation layer.
      - MichaelZuo 2y ago
        It’s a fully custom micro kernel design, at least for HarmonOS Next, and from what I heard probably closer to QNX than Linux. So it would be practically impossible to guarantee all android apps to be compatible, without running them in VM at least.
        dlahoda 2y ago
        as per wiki, it seems still alpha and is not shipped with devices?
        MichaelZuo 2y ago
        The Mate 70 is shipping with it… as indicated in the article? Obviously wiki pages are not 100% always up to date or even correct, which you should know considering you’ve been on the internet for at least seven years…
- dlahoda 2y ago
  even english wiki looks like marketing and poor on details. i was wandering how easy to root device, can it run android apps, what processor tech used, what is battery capacity, phone weight. one can use old processors tech with bigger battery for example. harmonyos can be some existing mobile linux shell.
idiotsecant 2y ago
Truely the promise of the age of the internet has arrived: our choice is between an increasingly closed source android developed under the watchful and loving gaze of the worlds largest advertising firm or a totally closed source HarmonyOS developed under the watchful and loving gaze of the Chinese government.
- shafouzzz 2y ago
  great time to be alive
- roenxi 2y ago
  Reliable systems can be built from unreliable components. The more competition there is the more chances that one of the options turns out to be good or - even better - is forced to be.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- cyp0633 2y ago
  HarmonyOS is built upon open-source OpenHarmony (which seems to have many variants, not sure all of them are open), and OpenHarmony runs on Linux / HongMeng kernel (see OSDI '24 paper for the latter, code not open yet)
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    I think HarmonyOS != OpenHarmony because the later still retains compatibility with Android while the former does not. I could be wrong.
    - cyp0633 2y ago
      The OS compatible with Android apps is HarmonyOS (<5.0), which you can literally think of as Android + some (maybe much) Huawei stuff. The thing based on OpenHarmony is sometimes referred to as HarmonyOS Next / 5.0, and some of those having upgraded to HMOS 5.0 are always complaining its compatibility in Chinese communities. Huawei always invents so many names so that people often confuse them.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
em500 2y ago
This is really meant for just the Chinese domestic market, and of very little interest to the RoW. For the Chinese this is a relatively small leap. The Chinese internet has always been it's own separate world, with very little dependence on the US tech giants. Google and Meta have been banned for over a decade, and for almost any significant digital service where the RoW depends on US software/service providers there are large Chinese substitutes. Although most phone makers still rely on Android, Google Play Store and Play Services are banned in China, so for the domestic market they've always been running AOSP plus domestic middleware. Huawei is now substituting the remaining dependency on AOSP, but the open sourced base layer is really not the valuable part of Android.
- freefaler 2y ago
  The Wikipedia page has a lot of good details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT?useskin=vector The most interesting part is that it is based on realtime LiteOS that was build long time ago for IoT applications. It's not a time-sharing OS like AOSP is.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
I'd love some good technical western coverage of OpenAtom's OpenHarmony or Huaweii's hard fork & rebuild Harmony NEXT. In particular, they claim a distributed bus DSoftBus underneath, that allows very seamless inter-dice operation. An example use case from one of the few docs online talks about example use cases of videoconferencing using multiple devices... I've done similar with scrcpy on Android & felt like a small demi-gos. But ambient capabilities seem perhaps just part of the OS here, & apps can allegedly easily move between devices & tap a network of resources. The world is sleeping hard on this. Would be so good to know more to have visibility into these very interesting creations. (Feels very Webinos to me, which was more an iot os & protocols than consumer os, but interesting at pooling distributed resources across networks). Ref: https://device.harmonyos.com/en/docs/apiref/doc-guides/harmonyos-features-0000000000011907 https://device.harmonyos.com/en/docs/apiref/doc-guides/harmo...

37 points by WaitWaitWha 2y ago

This article is a very superficial press release and very poor on details. I was hoping to learn a bit more about HarmonyOS.

markus_zhang 2y ago
HarmonyOS: https://www.harmonyos.com/en/ https://www.harmonyos.com/en/ But most of the documents are in Chinese.
- byyoung3 2y ago
  [flagged]
- Always42 2y ago
  From a quick glance it looks like they are setting up for people to write apps for this specific OS. Surprised, thought they would try and be android app compatible.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    No I think they cut off compatibility after a while. I'm not familiar with Harmony so don't know if there is a translation layer.
    - MichaelZuo 2y ago
      It’s a fully custom micro kernel design, at least for HarmonOS Next, and from what I heard probably closer to QNX than Linux. So it would be practically impossible to guarantee all android apps to be compatible, without running them in VM at least.
      - dlahoda 2y ago
        as per wiki, it seems still alpha and is not shipped with devices?
        MichaelZuo 2y ago
        The Mate 70 is shipping with it… as indicated in the article? Obviously wiki pages are not 100% always up to date or even correct, which you should know considering you’ve been on the internet for at least seven years…
dlahoda 2y ago
even english wiki looks like marketing and poor on details. i was wandering how easy to root device, can it run android apps, what processor tech used, what is battery capacity, phone weight. one can use old processors tech with bigger battery for example. harmonyos can be some existing mobile linux shell.

idiotsecant 2y ago

Truely the promise of the age of the internet has arrived: our choice is between an increasingly closed source android developed under the watchful and loving gaze of the worlds largest advertising firm or a totally closed source HarmonyOS developed under the watchful and loving gaze of the Chinese government.

shafouzzz 2y ago
great time to be alive
roenxi 2y ago
Reliable systems can be built from unreliable components. The more competition there is the more chances that one of the options turns out to be good or - even better - is forced to be.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
cyp0633 2y ago
HarmonyOS is built upon open-source OpenHarmony (which seems to have many variants, not sure all of them are open), and OpenHarmony runs on Linux / HongMeng kernel (see OSDI '24 paper for the latter, code not open yet)
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  I think HarmonyOS != OpenHarmony because the later still retains compatibility with Android while the former does not. I could be wrong.
  - cyp0633 2y ago
    The OS compatible with Android apps is HarmonyOS (<5.0), which you can literally think of as Android + some (maybe much) Huawei stuff. The thing based on OpenHarmony is sometimes referred to as HarmonyOS Next / 5.0, and some of those having upgraded to HMOS 5.0 are always complaining its compatibility in Chinese communities. Huawei always invents so many names so that people often confuse them.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

em500 2y ago

This is really meant for just the Chinese domestic market, and of very little interest to the RoW. For the Chinese this is a relatively small leap. The Chinese internet has always been it's own separate world, with very little dependence on the US tech giants. Google and Meta have been banned for over a decade, and for almost any significant digital service where the RoW depends on US software/service providers there are large Chinese substitutes. Although most phone makers still rely on Android, Google Play Store and Play Services are banned in China, so for the domestic market they've always been running AOSP plus domestic middleware. Huawei is now substituting the remaining dependency on AOSP, but the open sourced base layer is really not the valuable part of Android.

freefaler 2y ago
The Wikipedia page has a lot of good details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT?useskin=vector The most interesting part is that it is based on realtime LiteOS that was build long time ago for IoT applications. It's not a time-sharing OS like AOSP is.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

I'd love some good technical western coverage of OpenAtom's OpenHarmony or Huaweii's hard fork & rebuild Harmony NEXT. In particular, they claim a distributed bus DSoftBus underneath, that allows very seamless inter-dice operation. An example use case from one of the few docs online talks about example use cases of videoconferencing using multiple devices... I've done similar with scrcpy on Android & felt like a small demi-gos. But ambient capabilities seem perhaps just part of the OS here, & apps can allegedly easily move between devices & tap a network of resources. The world is sleeping hard on this. Would be so good to know more to have visibility into these very interesting creations. (Feels very Webinos to me, which was more an iot os & protocols than consumer os, but interesting at pooling distributed resources across networks). Ref: https://device.harmonyos.com/en/docs/apiref/doc-guides/harmonyos-features-0000000000011907 https://device.harmonyos.com/en/docs/apiref/doc-guides/harmo...