Huawei unveiled HarmonyOS 2.0 at its developer conference today and announced that the system will become open-source, with a Beta version for developers for smartphones at the end of the year.
Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, said that in 2019, Huawei introduced HarmonyOS, a distributed operating system that enables fast discovery, fast connectivity, hardware mutual aid, and resource sharing for smart devices.
The debut of HarmonyOS 2.0 brings a comprehensive upgrade of distributed capabilities such as distributed data management, and distributed security, as well as the release of an adaptive UX framework that allows developers to quickly reach millions of new devices and users, he said.
"Next, HarmonyOS will be officially open source, with developers getting an emulator, SDK package, and IDE tools, and it will first release a beta version of HarmonyOS for smartphones to Chinese developers in late 2020," Richard Yu said.
Huawei's Richard Yu says HarmonyOS can now reach 70-80% of Android levels
He said that from September 10, HarmonyOS will be open source for large screens, watches, car systems and other devices with 128KB-128MB memory, and in April 2021, it will be open source for devices with 128MB-4GB of memory. After October 2021, the system will be open source for all devices with more than 4GB of memory.
Huawei also said that it will donate the code to the China OpenAtom Foundation.
Huawei EMUI 11 is now equipped with the distributed technology at the core of HarmonyOS, which is no longer limited to interactions between phones, but also enables interactions with IoT devices running HarmonyOS, such as phones invoking large-screen cameras for video calls and phones and smart home devices equipped with HarmonyOS networking through touch.
According to Wang Chenglu, president of Huawei's Consumer Business Software Division, HarmonyOS 2.0 has already entered into cooperation with leading Chinese manufacturers including Midea, Jiuyang and Boss, and will soon release home appliances equipped with HarmonyOS.
Huawei also introduced a complete platform tool chain and ecology for developing full-scene applications. They include:
HarmonyOS application framework: a framework for full-scene application development
13000+ APIs: complex cross-device operations encapsulated in simple interfaces
HUAWEI DevEco: One Development, Many Deployments
Ark Compiler: Multi-Device Multi-Language Compilation (Java/JS)
Distributed applications: innovative applications across the board
Huawei's Richard Yu says to release HarmonyOS-powered phones as soon as next year
