Huawei HarmonyOS NEXT will ditch Android once and for all

At the Huawei HDC 2024 conference, the company officially announced the next iteration of their smartphone operating system, HarmonyOS NEXT. We know that Huawei has created its own OS in the form of HarmonyOS, but this particular version will essentially get rid of all traces of Android for good.

According to the report from GizmoChina, the new Huawei HarmonyOS NEXT platform will bring about some major changes. For starters, it is built using its own Hongmeng kernel. Prior to this, Huawei still leveraged the Linux kernel and the AOSP codebase. This is why it still felt a bit like Android and had support for Android apps up to a certain point.

With this change, it will be a brand new operating system created entirely by Huawei. This means that moving forwards, the war will no longer be between just iOS and Android. It will introduce a potential new competitor with HarmonyOS NEXT. The company claims that its new system architecture boasts a 30% improvement in performance and 20% reduction in power consumption.

Huawei's platform won't just be for smartphones. The company is envisioning it powering a variety of devices. Developers will also need to create one version of their app and it will work across multiple devices. The new platform is still in development and is available to a limited number of beta testers in China. Huawei expects to release in in Q4 2024.