Huawei HarmonyOS 2.0 is a poorly-disguised Android 10 clone
Unsurprisingly: Huawei is but again copying something and calling it its include, as the corporate is inappropriate for its aggressive company espionage efforts. In the case of Android, or no longer it is a glorious more uncomplicated affair inflamed by the working system’s underlying code is originate source. Huawei can name HarmonyOS an customary creation all they need, but in actuality is a rebranded Android fork.
Two years ago, Huawei confidently defined that it became ready to renounce the use of Android on its phones and tablets in case the US had been to dam its partnership with Google. On the time, the Chinese language tech wide hinted on the opportunity of an alternate working system developed fully in-dwelling and in a position to supporting the similar apps customers loved on Android by the Play Store.
Navigating the commerce war between China and the US has certainly taken its toll on Huawei and its skill to source instrument for its devices, which has forced the corporate to place cash where its mouth is. Nonetheless, it turns out the corporate is barely copying an older model of Android and slapping its Emotion UI (EMUI) on high of it.
Ars Technica’s Ron Amadeo got his hands on the Team spirit OS 2.0’s SDK and became in a purpose to defend a include a look at out a “a long way-off” system emulator, which required sending a scan of his passport, ID card, driver’s license, and monetary institution card, moreover to going by a two-day background look at (yikes!). This became arguably vulgar on Huawei’s fragment, but after waiting by the bureaucratic ordeal, Amadeo’s social rating became high adequate to enable him the extraordinary privilege of deep diving into Huawei’s “all unique” mobile working system.
Calling this a fork of Android would possibly well be an overstatement, as Amadeo found on the realm of no difference between Team spirit OS (aka Hongmeng OS in China) and Google’s Android 10. It be true Android 10 with the EMUI pores and skin, which is precisely what Huawei has been shipping with its latest smartphone lineup. The “About” page has no references to Android, but the originate apps, one can with out complications have faith about the Android parts running the purpose out. One more tiresome giveaway is the truth that HarmonyOS is presented as “Model 10.”
Image: Ars Technica
Aloof, one doesn’t have to battle by all this to safe that Huawei’s simply the use of Android and calling it something else. The documentation of Team spirit OS is in the marketplace online for someone to defend a look, but except you are going to be in a purpose to have the obscure language and the bombastic description of sides that are commonplace on Android (and iOS, for that matter), or no longer it is no longer worth reading even for accurate builders.
In the documentation, Huawei brags a few novel app structure that if reality be told is trusty an .apk file with a “.hap” extension, which stands for “Team spirit OS Skill Kit”. Constructing a “.hap” kit is the similar project as constructing an app concentrating on Android API stage 29 — in assorted words, Android 10. Huawei’s SDK is a carbon copy of Google’s Android Studio SDK, but the corporate became careful now to now not mention it in any fragment of the documentation.
Huawei chairman Guo Ping at an analyst meeting in Shenzhen
Bottom line, this looks to be nothing cherish what assorted firms cherish Amazon were doing with their include forks of Android (Fire OS), or in the case of Samsung with Tizen which became constructed from the bottom up as a Linux-basically based fully mobile working system.
When Huawei published Team spirit OS 1.0, it described it as a “microkernel-basically based fully, disbursed OS for all conditions,” which on the time fully intended TVs, smartwatches, and IoT devices. The 2d model of that’s nothing cherish it, but that would possibly well also no longer matter for its main intended market — China. Huawei intends to free up Team spirit OS 2.0 alongside its next flagship phones later this year, and by then this could most likely well even include removed all references of Android.
As of writing, Huawei is aloof among the many high five smartphone manufacturers in the enviornment by market part, and has one of the best thing about being the darling tech company of the Chinese language government, whose idea is to bolster its native tech commerce till it achieves self-sufficiency. Copying Android became easy adequate, since or no longer it is originate source, but the refined fragment will most likely be making high-quit chips for its devices once its stockpile runs dry. To that quit, Huawei is exploring the premise of constructing a producing plant in Shanghai, so we will have to wait and gaze.
