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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: 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