At the previous Huawei P50 conference, Huawei launched two versions of this series. The Huawei P50 has only one processor, Snapdragon 888 4G. However, the P50 Pro comes with two chips, users can either opt for the Snapdragon 888 4G model or the Kirin 9000 4G version. The Snapdragon 888 version of the latter will come in September. But this is not the most interesting part of the story. The SND888 variant of the Huawei P50 will debut the Harmony OS 2.1 system. Thus, we will see how the latest version of Huawei’s own operating system behaves on a Snapdragon chip.
Back in 2019, at Huawei Developer Conference known as HDC, Huawei uncovered a self-developed operating system dubbed Harmony OS. The latter is based on micro-kernel technology and powered by the distributed capabilities to run cross-device software.
The first-gen Harmony OS 1.0 version only supported smart screens (Smart TVs). But this was not Huawei’s goal. It was the beginning of the roadmap that Huawei has presented on stage.
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Next year, at the HDC 2020, Huawei showed the Harmony OS 2.0. This version supports multiple platforms including the much-anticipated – smartphones.
A bit later, in December 2020, Harmony OS 2 finally began to test on Huawei smartphones. There have been too many betas. And after months of testing, Huawei began pushing out this system to selected Huawei models through OTA updates.
As for the Harmony OS 2.1, at the end of last month, when uncovering the Huawei P50 smartphones, the manufacturer also talked about some new features of this system. According to Huawei, they enhance the overall user experience compared to the previous version. But still, we are not aware of many features it will come with.
According to the official reports as of July 8, Harmony OS was running on 30 million devices. Thus, the company has already reached 10% of its goal. Huawei has planned to reach 300 million mark by the end of the year. But not all models should be smartphones launched by Huawei. Third of them must be from third-party companies.
There is every reason to think that Huawei will reach the goal in time. But the company still has a lot of work to do. Say, it should try to more devices with Harmony OS outside of China.
For many users, Huawei has just created an OS that reinterprets Android, borrowing a number of solutions from iOS. It looks more like a temporary system to weather the storm. But we think they will change their mind soon.