What are the differences between HarmonyOS and Android?
All industry experts know that a user interface (UI) and an operating system are different things. Differing the skin that runs on top of the operating system, is something that many Android phone manufacturers do to curate the unique “vibe” of their devices and deliver a certain type of experience to users. It comes as no surprise that Huawei didn’t make significant changes to their own UI, EMUI, as its style is part of their brand identity. It’s also plausible that the company decided the drawbacks of entirely changing up the user-oriented elements, like the UI, would outweigh the advantages.
Employing a significantly different UI would create a steep learning curve for recurring users, and may eventually slow down the adoption of the new OS. Users often want to do things in a familiar fashion on their phones. Huawei’s current user base is huge and full of people of all different ages and walks of life. Big changes to the interface they are all comfortable with would make the latest OS not very user-friendly and many may decide to never upgrade their phones.
So again, the UI change wasn’t a surprise. What many overlooked was the changes being made behind the curtain. While not as instantly obvious to a regular viewer, the new OS sitting underneath the UI, HarmonyOS, was a game changer.
It was like swapping a gas-powered car for an electric car. The body might look the same, but the powerhouse running it was completely different.
An ecosystem is integral to all mobile operating systems, and constructing a new one from scratch is no easy task. Building an OS without an ecosystem is the equivalent of building a town with only houses. Every town requires shops and doctors’ offices and schools and parking lots to support the population living in those homes. Huawei knew it would require collaboration from app developers to build their new ecosystem.
HarmonyOS’s ecosystem is essential in the making from the ground up. In typical Huawei fashion, the brand found a simple way to speed up things and then took it a step ahead. First, they created their app development platform in a manner that enables Android apps to run directly on HarmonyOS once ported over. Then, they used their proprietary Ark Compiler to make the execution of the code of these apps all the more optimized. This has already made the transfer of Android apps over to HarmonyOS super easy.
Huawei’s plan of working with apps that are readily available is an integral part of their “1+8+N” Seamless AI Life. They explain this strategy as an open concept that utilizes “1” phone and “8” supplementary smart devices (Huawei also sells devices in each of these eight categories). For people who remember their high school math, the “N” variable then signifies whatever products and services from ecosystem affiliates you can find. HarmonyOS, Huawei has explained, plays an important role in connecting all of these diverse devices. New distributed technologies let different devices share their abilities with each other over low-latency networks, creating a Super Device.
It can be compared to Apple’s approach. Apple has always aspired to create inspirational products and the brand relies extensively on customer loyalty. From the very beginning, they provided top-notch Apple-brand consumer products that were intended to work well with other Apple-brand products. This gave the company a great competitive edge over other vendors. When the iPad and Apple Watch were launched, competing products didn’t just have the challenge of beating them in their category but also beat the integrated experience that the combined Apple ecosystem delivered. This was a closed ecosystem that locked anyone that bought one Apple product into buying more Apple products to achieve the aspirational integrated experience. This gave Apple a considerable advantage over Android.
By delivering an ecosystem that is a lot more porous than the Apple ecosystem though (remember the “N”?), HarmonyOS provides this integrated experience while still offering customers a lot more freedom. One of the innovations Huawei is boasting about, for example, is a HarmonyOS-led head unit that can be applied in smart cars. If you open a navigation app on your phone and enter a destination, wouldn’t it be ideal if the map automatically synched with the sat-nav in your car once you got in? Or with your smartwatch when you are out on a walk? That is what HarmonyOS is pledging to deliver with networks between devices as simple to set up as tapping a phone against a laptop, tablet, or household appliance.
To explain it in a more in-depth way: HarmonyOS has elevated bottom-layer OS functions, enabling lower-level communications. So a non-HarmonyOS head unit could sync simple maps from your phone, but HarmonyOS takes it a step ahead, enabling your phone to then access the car’s GPS antenna (which may be more precise than your phone’s) to optimize location accuracy. When your phone is connected to a laptop, video calls using a phone app can directly access the camera, microphone, and speaker from your laptop. Videos stored on your phone can be streamed directly with a connected tablet or laptop.
This ability to utilize the potential of a variety of hardware is something giving HarmonyOS developers an advantage that Android and iOS currently don’t provide. From a consumer perspective, it makes multi-device experiences more fluid.
This makes both the hardware and app ecosystem equally important for HarmonyOS. Huawei revealed that they are investing 1 billion USD into a Shining Star program that offers financial rewards to developers who move their apps over to HarmonyOS. It was a jarring amount of money and goes to show how far Huawei seems willing to go to support developers.
While Huawei doesn’t seem to be very keen to exceedingly change its UI design in the near future, the company is unmistakably making waves with the backend changes that HarmonyOS comes with. The nucleus of the OS and the ecosystem around it are evidently a top priority for the firm. Their freehand approach to dealing with developers and integrating devices is also letting device and content creators chart the future course of the system.
As of now, Huawei has put out developer tools and documentation for HarmonyOS. A few universities and vocational schools have even started designing HarmonyOS development syllabi. The capability to port existing Android apps over to HarmonyOS and the variety of hardware abilities already available through Huawei’s tablets, smart TVs, and PCs are making it an interesting area for growth for many.
