Huawei is officially bidding farewell to Android as its smartphones and tablets will run on a completely separate operating system from next year, named HarmonyOS NEXT.
This is a proprietary distributed operating system developed by the company to support only native apps and it marks its first fully self-developed mobile operating system.
The company is debuting this on the Mate 70 its new flagship smartphone and the successor to the Mate 60. The new phone range is already open for pre-order and will be available to customers on December 4.
According to Bloomberg, the chairman of Huawei’s consumer business group Richard Yu said HarmonyOS NEXT will still need another two to three months to improve its user experience, but the plan is to use it on upcoming gadgets.
Huawei focuses on its self-developed mobile operating system
Huawei was previously a Google partner running full Android on its products, but it was in 2019 that this began to change. The Chinese technology giant then separated from Google’s Android operating system and created its version: HarmonyOS.
Now, the company has gone one step further as it pushed toward technological independence in the wake of U.S. sanctions on chips. The full technical details aren’t yet known, but it’s likely more information will be made available in due time.
“HarmonyOS Next has good potential as an alternative in China,” Will Wong, senior research manager at IDC, told CNBC.
“This is not only because of Huawei’s brand name but also because it has been putting effort into attracting developers to join its ecosystem.”
The company is a week away from seeing how its Mate 70 series is received by the public, with all eyes on the sales count. There will be three devices – the Mate 70, Mate 70 Pro and Mate 70 Pro+.
The standard device, along with the Pro, will come in Black, White, Green, and Purple colors with 12 GB RAM. Storage will be either 256 GB, 512 GB or 1 TB.
The Mate 70 Pro+ will come in Black and White with different color finish options like Gold and Sky Blue. This will be available with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB or 1 TB storage.
Featured Image: Screenshot from VMALL