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HarmonyOS 2.0 Beta Released, HarmonyOS Devices Coming in 2021
Due to geopolitical tensions, Huawei cannot rely on Google Android operating system over the long term, and in May 2019 we reported HongMeng OS may become Huawei's OS alternative to Android. HongMeng (鸿蒙) OS will finally be called HarmonyOS outside of China, and we recently reported Huawei was trying to attract more developers with monetary incentives to brings more apps to HMS (Huawei Mobile Services).
We now have a more clear timeline with the company's recent release of HarmonyOS 2.0 beta that's currently available for smart home applications, smartwatches, and head-on-displays, and will become available for smartphones in December 2020.
Previously: Huawei Announces HarmonyOS, a Smartphone OS and Android Alternative
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Sunday September 13 2020, @11:30PM
FTFY.
Then again , you can't remove Google's spyware apps so you're already screwed - and paying for it. They should be paying every Android user $10 a month.
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(Score: 4, Funny) by isocelated on Sunday September 13 2020, @11:43PM (8 children)
The spyware comes preinstalled right?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Monday September 14 2020, @12:05AM (7 children)
Then the vendors do shitty things like pre-installing other crap like Facebook and marking them as system as well:
And there's built in obsolescence because vendor updates don't last long.
I like my phone - no Google', no YouTube, no Chrome, no Google Maps, no Google Translate, no Gmail. Don't need google, don't want google.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday September 14 2020, @04:41AM (3 children)
Interesting...what phone and portal do you use? I'd sure like something like that (if it didn't cost too much).
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @06:09AM (2 children)
I imagine it's an iPhone. I switched from Android to iOS last month, and while I do hugely miss F-Droid and having a proper browser with proper adblocking, it was refreshing to see that almost everything is removable (apart from Health for some reason). You can even disable Siri without the system constantly nagging you to use it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @09:45AM
Almost everything also costs real money. This choice is rather dangerous one.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 14 2020, @12:12PM
Yep.
To block ads, download Firefox and tell it to disable images. It's not just images that don't get downloaded - no stupid auto play videos. No web bugs. No social media sharing icons.
So web sites load faster and you don't kill your mobile data plan. No more looking for wifi.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @04:27PM (2 children)
I agree, anyone that cares about privacy is better off with an Apple product. But that cuts out huge portions of the population. The privacy-respecting smartphone answer for someone making $11 per hour shouldn't be, "You are fucked, sorry."
In 1985 people and companies would have paid millions for hardware we routinely throw out today. Yet there are no good options, at least that I've seen, for cheap, reliable, privacy-respecting smart phones.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 14 2020, @05:36PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @09:17PM
Again, I agree that makes it the best option consumers have. But it's still absurd that $25 hardware should be fine, if the software was right.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Monday September 14 2020, @12:20AM
Asking for an old still-kickin Huawei Nexus 6p.
(Note - Don't bother trying to watch the video, it starts at almost 9 minutes in and the translated voice is the same volume as the speaker making it both annoying and nearly unintelligible.)
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @01:57AM
I can't come up with any reason why another successful mainstream phone OS would be a negative to anyone except Google and Apple. And, who cares about them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday September 14 2020, @02:49AM (3 children)
I really wish they had the money to get something with some more CPU grunt in there, say a Snapdragon 632 or so. I'd love a machine with that, 4 GiB memory, 64 GiB of UFS storage, and an HD or FHD screen that was open and would run Linux or *BSD.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday September 14 2020, @03:12AM
Not counting the PineTime, Pine has picked Allwinner or Rockchip for all of their devices as far as I can tell. One advantage in picking the A64 is that it's the same chip as in the Pine A64 and PineTab. So if they start announcing powerful new SBCs, one of them might have the chip they would use in a new phone.
They already upped RAM from 2 GiB to 3 GiB with the "Convergence Edition". 4+ would be next for a PinePhone 2.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Monday September 14 2020, @04:38AM
I would settle for just having a decent OS for it :/
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday September 15 2020, @03:02PM
Has there been any news about the Purism phone? All I've heard here is news about how the Pinephone is almost working.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @03:47AM (5 children)
Is it just a rebranded AOSP, or a new mobile OS?
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday September 14 2020, @02:05PM (4 children)
Looks like a new OS, kernel and standard library: https://gitee.com/openharmony/docs/blob/master/docs-en/Readme-EN.md [gitee.com] https://gitee.com/openharmony/docs/tree/master/docs-en/kernel [gitee.com]
From a quick glance-over, it's a distributed RTOS with design cues between MINIX3 and NuttX with enough posix linux/bsd-like touches to keep things compatible where it's appropriate so they'll be able to port things back and forth or maybe just use linux for smartphones and this for embedded... Holding off judgment until a third-party technical write up is available.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @04:32PM (2 children)
The fact that it won't support more than 128MB of RAM until next year and they're just starting to draw developers mean to the platform makes it many years away from a serious Google competitor.
If it was some kind of American or European startup attempting to take on Android (and iOS) I would call it doomed. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese government gives Huawei resources and assistance to get a serious Android alternative off the ground. And as long as the project stays open source, I don't care. The world needs Android alternatives, and open source project that is de facto managed by one corporate owner stifles innovation almost as much as a proprietary project.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday September 15 2020, @03:40AM (1 child)
I can understand having hardware that has only 128MB of memory nowadays (but wonder why? Ran out of space on the chip?), but I cannot imagine what they have done to have the *software* impose this restriction. The natural address-size boundaries are at 64K, and 4G (with maybe 2G if you're superstitious about negative addresses.) (or 16MB if you're emulating an IBM360)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday September 15 2020, @02:51PM
Hmmm. 127MB needs 27 address bits. I wonder what they use the other 5 bits of a 32-bit word for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @05:59PM
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday September 14 2020, @06:54PM (1 child)
It is a shame that Sailfish OS is not in the running, but Jolla don't seem to have got to critical mass.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday September 15 2020, @02:30PM
Even if Jolla *had* achieved critical mass, I suspect Huawei may well be chary of relying on any foreign licencing at this point.