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China Operating Systems Technology

HarmonyOS is Huawei's Android Alternative For Smartphones, Laptops and Smart Home Devices (techcrunch.com) 80

After months of conflicting statements from Huawei executives, the Chinese networking giant on Friday officially unveiled HarmonyOS, the much-anticipated microkernel-based, distributed operating system that it has developed to power smartphones, laptops, and smart home devices as the company attempts to reduce its reliance on American firms. From a report: HarmonyOS will be made available for deployment in smart screen products such as TV, smart watches, and in-vehicle infotainment systems later this year, said Richard Yu, CEO of the Huawei consumer division at company's developer conference. In next three years, Huawei, the world's second largest smartphone vendor, will look to bring HarmonyOS to more devices including smartphones, he said. Yu said, without offering any proofs, that HarmonyOS is "more powerful and secure than Android." He said HarmonyOS' IPC performance is five times that of Google's Fuchsia. The top executive also claimed that HarmonyOS' microkernel has "one-thousandth the amount of code in the Linux kernel. The company said it intends to continue to use Android moving forward, but HarmonyOS is officially its back-up plan if things go south. "We will prioritize Android for smartphones, but if we can't use Android, we will be able to install HarmonyOS quickly," Yu said.
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HarmonyOS is Huawei's Android Alternative For Smartphones, Laptops and Smart Home Devices

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  • The smartphone OS that spies on you.
    • Re:Harmony (Score:5, Informative)

      by Errol backfiring ( 1280012 ) on Friday August 09, 2019 @09:50AM (#59068780) Journal

      The other smartphone OS that spies on you.

      There, fixed that for you.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Every major Android vendor has their own OS, they want desperately to replace Android with so they can keep all the "store" money.

        LG has WebOS, Samsung has Tizen, Microsoft (when they bought Nokia) had Windows Mobile/Full Windows/and the Symbian OS, Amazon has their own OS, and so forth.

        All the shitty chinese-market cell phones will actually only find a market with people who never install apps on their device, like Grandparents and people who don't have internet to begin with.

      • The other smartphone OS that spies on you.

        There, fixed that for you.

        There's spying which floods one with ads or political messages, and there's spying which denies one access to public services virtually forcing somebody to home arrest for saying bad things about the government in charge - pick one or two.

    • Re:Harmony (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Alwin Henseler ( 640539 ) on Friday August 09, 2019 @10:30AM (#59069096)

      That's an assumption not based on any fact since no devices using this OS have been released afaik.

      But even assuming an OS that spies on you: regardless what you think of Chinese companies, for non-Chinese buyers (especially those in the US) that may be a better proposition than OS loaded with spyware from the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon & co. With their considerable influence on US politics, unknown ties with 3-letter agencies and so forth. Not to mention their advertising crap.

      It's a sad state of affairs that "The company said it intends to continue to use Android moving forward, but HarmonyOS is officially its back-up plan if things go south." Even though Android already is an open source OS. Says a lot about what it means to have that, but with a private company (Google) acting as gatekeeper through its app store, Android's broken update model, and the problems with running alternative OS/apps on most hardware.

      If / when Huawei decide to employ Harmony OS as a full-blown mobile OS (rather than embedded / IoT type uses), let's hope they give a lot of thought to issues like updates, 3rd party app stores, indie developers, open source drivers & so on. That could be make-or-break for wider uptake of the OS.

      Personally I'd definitely be interested in a device powered by this OS. And what microkernel it's based on. Maybe something from the L4 microkernel family? (just a wild guess). A microkernel is a lot less code than a big project like what Linux is these days. So it's certainly something that a company could write from scratch. But at the same time, that's not an easy thing to do. Well designed microkernels are few & far between, and most more-or-less successful ones have a long history or derive from a large, old family tree. Better pick a good one from that than re-invent the wheel, poorly.

  • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Friday August 09, 2019 @09:45AM (#59068752)
    Is Social Credit app baked into kernel or simply pre-installed with no way to remove?
    • Well of course, especially with a name like "Harmony", you can be sure the enlightened guidance of the CPC will guarantee that the citizenry adhere to standards of behavior and thought that lead to a harmonious and prosperous country.

  • Open source? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bert64 ( 520050 ) <.moc.eeznerif.todhsals. .ta. .treb.> on Friday August 09, 2019 @09:51AM (#59068794) Homepage

    The availability of the mobile operating system, which is open source, will be limited to China for now, though the company has plans to bring it to international markets at a later stage, he said.

    So if it's open source, where do i get the source?

    • by Mad Geek ( 102911 ) on Friday August 09, 2019 @10:00AM (#59068878)

      Right next to where they put human rights?

    • The availability of the mobile operating system, which is open source, will be limited to China for now, though the company has plans to bring it to international markets at a later stage, he said.

      So if it's open source, where do i get the source?

      You won't necessarily. Their "open source" license can include as many restrictions as they want. It can be shared source with trusted business partners, proprietary blobs, whatever they want. Calling it something doesn't make it so. And any real opening the source is just a "future plan". Plans change. Marketing 101.

      • Re:Open source? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday August 09, 2019 @10:41AM (#59069172) Homepage Journal

        Calling it something doesn't make it so.

        When/If you can get the code, it will be Open Source. There the Source will be, Open! You will get to study it for the purposes of compatibility, which was what was always meant in computing by the word "Open" — documented and interoperable. The earliest documented commercial "Open Source" software was Caldera OpenDOS, whose license did not permit redistribution. It was not even clear if you could use the code.

        This lack of further meaning in the phrase "Open Source" is the reason that we needed a thing called Free Software, which was intended not to promote mere openness, but actual freedom. And the ambiguity of whether the code in hand is the code on the device is why we especially need the GPLv3 when it comes to operating systems, because we need protection from Tivoization. Anything less is inadequate to the task of protecting freedom where our devices are concerned.

        • Seeing is believing. Have you seen any code? They have said that this is only a backup plan and that for now they'll stick with Android. IOW, they might never use it.p> Also, they get to define what open source means to them. They can refuse to release the source unless people agree to an NDA. They can include binary blobs. If they do, you have no recourse. Good luck in China courts.
    • I don't think source is released yet, so plenty of time to change their minds.
    • Re:Open source? (Score:5, Informative)

      by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Friday August 09, 2019 @10:56AM (#59069314)

      So if it's open source, where do i get the source?

      Here:

      https://github.com/LiteOS [github.com]

      HarmonyOS is just a marketing name. Before that it was called LiteOS. On top of it, they ported their EMUI (Huawei's android Skin), huawei's redundant apps (Huawei calendar, huawei dialer, huawei ... etc), they put in their own store, chinese apps like baidu and weechat (which, in china is huuuuuge), and probably they have some sort of ART runtime in the wings to be released if (and only if) they get cut out from google completely...

      From the point of view of a person in china who comes from previous Huawei phones, there is not much difference, the phone looks the same, the apps are the same. Since the google apps and store do not operate in china, baidu works the same, weechat works the same, there is an app store to get trinkets, and wink/wink you probably can sideload googleplay due to the ART runtime....

  • Some of what they are saying seems like complete snake oil...

    "more powerful and secure than Android."

    So why wait until now to switch?

    The company said it intends to continue to use Android moving forward, but HarmonyOS is officially its back-up plan if things go south. "We will prioritize Android for smartphones, but if we can't use Android, we will be able to install HarmonyOS quickly

    So you won't be switching after all? If you've spent all this time (10 years according to the article) and feel comfortable enough to introduce it to the world, what's stopping you from rolling with it?

    • Total agreement! If something is better on your device, you would use it. Period. If the experience is better, then use it. I would say they don't purely for the amount of apps and dev community around Android is too difficult to walk away from. However, I am positive you can emulate on the HarmonyOS just like an 80s ROM can emulate on a 2019 desktop OS. So, Huawei is being lazy.
  • much-anticipated microkernel-based, distributed operating system

    Looks like the Chinese built the HURD before he could.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Doesn't Logitech own the HarmonyOS name as the operating system on their remote controls?

    • Doesn't Logitech own the HarmonyOS name as the operating system on their remote controls?

      Depends on whether they also trademarked it in China.

      • Doesn't Logitech own the HarmonyOS name as the operating system on their remote controls?

        Depends on whether they also trademarked it in China.

        Logitech owns Harmony, or Harmony Pro, or Harmony elite, or Myharmony..... not HarmonyOS.

        Maybe they forked the code for a Logitech remote control and that's what they used to build their awesome new OS.

        I mean they figured out how to call an iPhone a Huawei. Maybe they also figured out how to steal remote controller code to make an OS.

    • A remote control needs an Operating System? OMG how silly things have become. This used to be done with some assembly code on bare metal (small 8-bit uC's, mostly). Or even hardwired in silicon.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Blackberry 10 was also a microkernel-based OS and disappointed in the smartphone space. Let's wait and see how HarmonyOS performs. Copying works well in some parts of the world, innovation no so much.

    • The problem with Blackberry using QNX wasn’t the QNX part. BlackBerry OS was way behind iOS and Android in terms of features and stability. It was launched less than a year after RIM acquired QNX which wasn’t a lot of time for developing a new OS based on a new kernel they had never used before. In fact, at launch, it lacked some features of older BlackBerry devices like contacts if I remember. You had to pair the PlayBook with another Blackberry if I remember.

      Ultimately the OS suffered from th

      • Ultimately the OS suffered from the same problems as Windows Phone. There are too few developers who want to create apps for a phone with very few users. And users donâ(TM)t want to buy a phone that doesnâ(TM)t have a lot of apps.

        It's really quite amazing how Microsoft was finally able to abuse developers so severely that they wouldn't develop apps for their platform. People made tons of apps for Windows Mobile even back when it was based on WinCE, and the .NET runtime was gimped. But I guess they finally got up and got out.

        • I used to own a PocketPC (WInCE 3.0).

          The operating system was not at all designed to run on a handheld device.
          I regretted the money I spent, should have gone with Palm instead.
          Could play Doom on it though.

          I had a Casio Casiopeia E-125. The hardware was really good, well designed and powerful, for the time.
          The OS was horrible.

        • Yeah if there is a case study on how not to develop it would be Windows Phone. If you thought hardware-software compatibility with Android or iOS was terrible, that was nothing like Windows Phone. It seemed every single major version and some minor versions after 7 would require developers to put out a new app just for that version.
  • From the Article:

    "Yu said, without offering any proofs, that HarmonyOS is “more *bullshit* than Android.”

    He said HarmonyOS’ IPC *bullshit* is five times that of Google’s *bullshit*. The top executive also claimed that HarmonyOS’ *bullshit* has “one-thousandth the amount of *bullshit* in the Linux *bullshit*.”"

    “A *bullshit* HarmonyOS can be nested to adapt *bullshit* to any device to create a seamless *bullshit* experience. Developed via the distributed *bu

  • Did they re-write the stolen code, or just copy and paste sections?

  • Oh Good (Score:4, Funny)

    by guygo ( 894298 ) on Friday August 09, 2019 @11:33AM (#59069626)
    Just what the world needs... a phone OS written under the "guidance" of the Chinese state.
  • Just what we didn't need: another single-vendor mobile OS that no one else uses.

    What we actually need is a mobile OS that's completely open source (none of this "open source except the parts that aren't" like Android), developed entirely in the open, controlled and directed by a broad community rather than a single company, and designed from the start to be modular so vendors can customize the appearance and support new hardware without needing to modify any core components.

    Unfortunately, Huawei has passed

    • Unfortunately, Huawei has passed up a great opportunity

      Huawei will do what they're told, and like it.

    • by TheSync ( 5291 )

      Just what we didn't need: another single-vendor mobile OS that no one else uses.

      This is a single country OS, and will be used by a billion people, all because Donald Trump is a trade idiot.

  • Guess Huawei coders decided it was easier to build a backdoored, surveillance OS from the ground up, than to undo all the security precautions against such things in a real OS. Kind of like how Microsoft baked it's licensing checks into basically every module of Windows, so you can't ever get around it? Easier to build an OS that's intended to spy on you in every way possible when it's baked right into every single part of it, so it's basically impossible to stop it from doing that without completely wrecki
  • Ambitious name (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jbmartin6 ( 1232050 ) on Friday August 09, 2019 @12:20PM (#59069984)
    The Chinese name, hong2meng2, refers to a primeval state, the chaos which dominated before order was brought to the universe. So probably HarmonyOS is still in beta.
  • by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Friday August 09, 2019 @01:12PM (#59070364)
    The last decade is littered with the corpses of dead mobile OSes and I honestly don't see anything different here. If there are no apps then nobody will buy the devices. And app makers are only going to bother if they're remunerated. Huawei can harp on about the number of lines of code or the microkernel but none of it matters a damn really.
    • If Trump cuts the Chinese off from US tech they will have no choice. China has a third of the world's population so forcing Chinese companies to develop US tech free stacks is suicide for the US tech industry.
  • by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Friday August 09, 2019 @03:26PM (#59071414) Homepage

    The top executive also claimed that HarmonyOS' microkernel has "one-thousandth the amount of code in the Linux kernel".

    He is saying it is 1/1000th the lines of code that are in Linux's source tree ...

    So what ...

    Most of those lines in Linux are kernel drivers for devices that will never be in a cell phone, so they are not compiled for a phone's kernel ...

    • by sad_ ( 7868 )

      linux appears to be part of it though, this is from the github page;

      "The underlying layer of HarmonyOS is composed of HarmonyOS micro kernel, Linux kernel and Lite OS."

      how this is all implemented i don't know, linux kernel could be running in some kind of vm managed by the HarmonyOS micro kernel (why go through all that trouble though).

  • Did he forget he wasn’t speaking to the ignorant Chinese masses? Surprised he didn’t say China invented the cell phone.

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