Huawei Makes Divorce From Android Official With HarmonyOS NEXT Launch

Huawei has officially launched HarmonyOS NEXT, its home-brewed operating system, marking a formal separation from the Android ecosystem. The OS is available for public beta testing on some Huawei smartphones and tablets that run Kirin and Kunpeng chips. Unlike previous versions, HarmonyOS NEXT no longer supports Android apps. However, top Chinese companies such as Meituan, Douyin, and Alipay have developed native apps for the OS. Over 15,000 HarmonyOS native applications and meta-services were launched at the time of the announcement. This number is significantly lower than the millions of apps available on the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. HarmonyOS NEXT has 110 million lines of code and is claimed to improve mobile device performance by 30 percent. The OS also reportedly increases battery life by 56 minutes and leaves an average of 1.5GB of memory for other purposes. Huawei's move to a proprietary OS is a significant step in its efforts to reduce dependence on Android. The company's decision to drop Android app support is a bold move, but it remains to be seen how users will respond to the change.