The tussle between the US and Huawei is not a new thing. As a reaction to this trade-war, Google joined in and banned Huawei from using its operating system on any of its devices.
In today’s smartphone market, if we talk about mobile operating systems, then there are only two major players, i.e. Android and iOS. While iOS is just meant for Apple products, Android is used by multiple smartphone OEMs.
Since Apple keeps all the control over iOS. OEMs have an open-source alternative in the form of Android. Smartphone OEMs like Samsung, Huawei, OnePlus, etc. build their custom skin around Android OS.
Samsung has One UI, Huawei has EMUI, OnePlus has OxygenOS, etc. However, despite being open-source, Android depends on Google for GMS (Google Mobile Services).
After facing the ban, the US cut off Huawei from having access to new GMS license agreements. Fortunately for Huawei, being a major player in the smartphone world helped.
Instead of giving up, Huawei started working on its own HMS (Huawei Mobile Services) and developed Harmony OS. And now, the company has released Harmony OS beta for select Huawei smartphones and tablets.
Harmony OS was unveiled over one and a half years ago, and the first device that came powered by this new home-grown OS was Honor Vision smart TV.
Back in 2019, Huawei reaffirmed that Android is very much part of its smartphone and tablet lineup. But this year, several reports highlighted that the company would soon release the Harmony OS for its devices, especially smartphones.
Huawei has started recruiting developers for the Harmony OS 2.0 beta for mobile devices
Today, Huawei has begun the recruitment of developers for the Harmony OS 2.0 beta for mobile devices. Apparently, as stated by Huawei, Harmony OS comes with over “15,000 APIs.”
This will help support development across smartphones, wearables, cars, larger displays, and many more. The devices that are eligible to install Harmony OS 2.0 developer beta include Huawei P40 and P40 Pro, Mate 30 series, and MatePad Pro lineup tablets.
Here is the complete list:
- Huawei P40 (ANA-AN00) and P40 Pro (ELS-AN00)
- Huawei Mate 30 (TAS-AL00), Mate 30 5G (TAS-AN00), Mate 30 Pro (LIO-AL00), and Mate 30 Pro 5G (LIO-AN00)
- MatePad Pro (MRX-AL19), MatePad Pro 5G (MRX-W09), and MatePad Pro Wi-Fi (MRX-AN19)
To check out the new Harmony OS 2.0, you can try out the emulator in Huawei’s DevEco Studio IDE (version 2.0 Beta 3) from the Harmony OS official website.
In fact, you can register with the program to receive an OTA on your supported Huawei device to migrate to the Harmony OS 2.0 beta. Notably, this is an unstable developer beta update.
Meaning that the beta OS is for the developers to begin working on this platform. Nevertheless, if you still wish to check out the OS, then you should take a complete backup of your data.
At a first glance, looking at the screenshots shared by developers, the Harmony OS looks similar to EMUI 11 based on Android. Moreover, the developer document also mentions that apps are coded in Java.
Besides, the layouts are defined in XML files, which is similar to Android. For more information on this Harmony OS 2.0 beta, you can check out the XDA Developers website.
