Huawei had no choice. Behind the American vetothe Chinese firm was exposed by not being able to implement Google services on its Android phones, as it traditionally did. That’s when it embarked on its own adventure, HarmonyOS, whose fourth version arrived last summer. Since then, the plans for this operating system, which starts from Android, are precisely to move away from its origins with HarmonyOS Next.
The distance between the two platforms faithfully reflects what is also happening in the chip manufacturing industry, where China and the United States want to be the reference in technological development, with some disagreements. Now, Huawei and its nation are lucky: HarmonyOS Next has completed the certification of its kernel or core.
HarmonyOS Next kernel doesn’t smell like Android
If you’ve been following Huawei news, you may know that its operating system is about to say goodbye to Android. HarmonyOS booted from Google OSits free version, to adapt to Huawei devices and its own ecosystem. Not only smartphones have been updated, but all types of devices have also entered the equation: televisions, tablets, smartwatches and finally laptops.
Now, in the middle of a Technological-commercial confrontation between the United States and China (which aspires to complete independence), the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (known by the acronym CAICT) has certified the core of HarmonyOS, giving it a grade A autonomy level. What does this mean? That the operating system has achieved a 100% self-development rate.
This is an important milestone for Huawei, as after many years of development, it has finally independently perfected the core aspects of the platform, namely: without relying on third-party technologies or components.
Huawei Mate60 Pro and Pro+ running HarmonyOS and displayed in a Chinese store. Image by Eva Rodriguez de Luis
The government entity under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said the importance of autonomy at the heart of this system lies in Ensuring national information security capabilities. Thus, they believe they have improved technological innovation and international competitiveness, to form an ecosystem favorable to their own development.
“This certification not only reflects the high level of autonomy maturity of Huawei’s HarmonyOS kernel, but also marks a new milestone in the autonomy maturity of operating system kernels in China.”
It was on June 28 that the CAICT announced that it had completed the evaluation of the privacy protection capabilities of Huawei’s operating system in its Next version. After exceeding 38 indicators, it is certified that complies with the standards set by the entity
On the other hand, taking advantage of the context of the annual developer conference (HDC 2024), Huawei’s software president said that operating systems have been dominated by Europe and the United States, and that Your own platform has achieved in 10 years what took others 30 years.. Incidentally, he boasted about the HarmonyOS kernel: he comments that it outperforms the Linux kernel in terms of both security and fluidity, with a performance improvement of 10.7%.
For now, without knowing how this new version will behave, we can say that Huawei has succeeded where other giants like Microsoft or Samsung have failed. Applications will not be a problem -as was the case for Windows Phone, for example- and they already have 380,000 developers creating applications for HarmonyOS.
By | Weixin
Cover image | Composition with images by Ricardo Aguilar for Xataka and Huawei
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