Huawei has announced its latest operating system (OS) in China which has been developed independently of Android. Dubbed HarmonyOS Next, it does not leverage Google’s Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code, which is adopted by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for developing Android skins for their devices. Instead, it is built on the Hongmeng kernel and system architecture, as per the company. HarmonyOS Next brings new home and lock screen customisation options, features powered by artificial intelligence (AI), and faster animations and app launch speeds.
HarmonyOS Next is set to power the current and future generations of Huawei devices in China for now, though a global release was confirmed previously. It will work across a broad range of devices ranging from smartphones to wearables, smart home devices and car cockpits.
HarmonyOS Next Features
Huawei’s new OS brings new ways to customise the home and lock screens. It borrows certain design elements from Harmony OS – the company’s Android skin. This includes app arrangements, widgets, a notification bar and the control centre. It features a new physical light engine which is claimed to make the interaction smoother and has a new wallpaper feature which recognises the object in the image and suggests a suitable composition.
A major component of HarmonyOS Next is the inclusion of AI, embedded in its core, from the kernel system to apps. It leverages an AI agent dubbed Celia, built on the company’s proprietary Pangu large language model (LLM). The agent can also take advantage of third-party cloud-based AI models to provide enhanced services. Thus, the OS is capable of providing personalised content and smart services based on different scenarios. It also features a built-in system-level AI assistant that has high-level understanding and interaction capabilities. Its capabilities include on-screen content awareness, contextual understanding, document analysis and summarisation, and a Circle-to-Search-like functionality.
Huawei says HarmonyOS Next has over 15,000 apps and more will arrive soon. It is also claimed to result in 30 percent better system-wide fluency and an increase of up to 1.5GB in system memory. Leveraging the new star shield security architecture, the OS has nuclear-level system-wide security, as per the company.