
HarmonyOS is Huawei’s Android alternative for smartphones and smart home devices - jmsflknr
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/09/harmonyos-huawei-release/
======
Roritharr
In the Engadget article it was stated that:

"Huawei claims that Harmony OS' IPC performance is five times that of Google's
Fuchsia, and three times that of QNX."

Which I find fascinating. If they were building this as a Fuchsia competitor
and are forced now to push it to market we could see rapid innovation on both
sides of the divide actually coming to market soon!

~~~
hajile
Faster, smaller, and more secure, yet the say it's the backup plan.
Something's rotten somewhere.

I also find the "smaller than Linux" claims rather strange. ANY microkernel
will be smaller. Once you add those things back (at an almost insignificantly
higher abstraction), I'm betting things get to be around the same size or
slightly larger. I can't speak for other people, but I rather like not having
to do the old driver search routine I did on Windows for every little thing.

~~~
jeroenhd
> Faster, smaller, and more secure, yet the say it's the backup plan.
> Something's rotten somewhere.

Yes, and that rotten thing is the app ecosystem. Without apps, nobody will use
your smartphone. From what I've seen, HarmonyOS tries to be compatible with
Android, but knowing the difficulty Microsoft and Blackberry had with getting
the Android API to work a few years ago (before the many complications that
have been layered on top since), I don't expect much from it.

I think a switch of mobile OS will go down about as well as Windows Phone.
Only if they port most important apps and games (phone gaming is big in
China), their custom OS just won't get the popularity to get its own full app
ecosystem.

~~~
HillaryBriss
> Without apps, nobody will use your smartphone

even for Huawei, there will be _some_ 3rd party apps. and most people spend
almost all of their time on a small set of apps anyway. as long as the
critically important apps (there are probably only a couple hundred) to most
users are available AND Huawei offers some other benefits (e.g. relativeily
low price for good HW), maybe an app store with millions of apps is not
critical to success any more?

~~~
monsieurbanana
A couple of hundred critical apps is a huge understimation in my opinion.

What is different now than when Windows Phone flopped? They had tens of
thousands of phone apps (although I can't find an exact number), and it
clearly wasn't enough.

~~~
HillaryBriss
I just feel like a lot of the novelty has worn off, and the user base has more
or less figured out what they want to use a mobile device for by now.

People spend most of their time on the very small number of big name social
media apps, some games, and email, camera and texting apps. ok, so maybe it's
more like 1000 apps. IDK. but, if those are all present at the launch of the
Huawei store, then a lot of users will say "good enough for me." Huawei could
do the market research, figure out what those apps are, and then incentivize
those app devs to port to Huawei.

------
NiekvdMaas
A link with much more technical details: [https://www.xda-
developers.com/harmony-os-huawei-announce/](https://www.xda-
developers.com/harmony-os-huawei-announce/)

~~~
chvid
There is also a youtube video from the Huawei developer conference featuring a
series of demos and technical presentations:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fILSSiZVQ3M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fILSSiZVQ3M)

~~~
chvid
I have just being viewing the video for a bit (it is over 4 hours) and the
Chinese translator is a bit hard to listen to.

There seems to be quite few substantial announcements there. Amongst other a
new CPU with a redesigned pipeline.

------
vanderZwan
> _Yu claimed, without offering any actual proofs, that HarmonyOS is “more
> powerful and secure than Android.” “Can it be installed on smartphones? Of
> course.”_

This immediately made me wonder if I have ever seen "without offering any
actual proofs" added as a qualifier to any of the press statements of Apple,
Microsoft or Google.

Don't get me wrong, that kind of skepticism is good. It just feels naive and
tribal to limit it to the Chinese companies.

~~~
jaclaz
>This immediately made me wonder if I have ever seen "without offering any
actual proofs" added as a qualifier to any of the press statements of Apple,
Microsoft or Google.

I would go a little further, even the use of the verb "to claim" is in itself
a little diminutive, had it been one of the big US companies their CEO's would
have probably "said", "stated" or "announced" or "affirmed" (and not
"claimed").

~~~
varjag
How many US CEOs would have directly compared it to a specific competitor
product on the announce?

~~~
jsgo
There were I'm fairly sure 3 Google I/Os in a row where they specifically
spoke of iOS when talking about new features (probably more still, I haven't
followed the livestreams anymore for them or for WWDC in like 2 years I
guess). WWDC they'd do it as well (some during speeches, then the "whose
devices are up to date" pie charts with like ~10% on the newest Android
release of the time and >70% on the newest iOS release of the time). Microsoft
did it during the Windows Phone days, but I think now they're trying to extend
olive branches especially to Android, but I believe they've been nice about
iOS as well.

------
phantom_oracle
At the time of writing, it has only implicitly been mentioned in the comments
here about the security risks this OS might have.

We know that Google has a very close relationship to the US government w.r.t
surveillance.

Apple claims to be "fighting" it, whether as PR or genuine.

Huawei on the other hand is deeply intertwined with the Chinese government and
their policies should give an indication that backdoors and total surveillance
will be passed into the OS.

I don't see this OS succeeding beyond China though. US companies still
dominate the app market outside China. No WhatsApp = no thanks; to the
majority of the developing world.

~~~
ebog
> I don't see this OS succeeding beyond China though.

I wouldn't be so sure. Obviously it would be an uphill battle for the OS to
compete in the US or Europe, but anywhere that doesn't have clear smartphone
dominance yet (ie most of India or Africa) is fair game. Huawei already has a
strong foothold in both of those places, and the Chinese government is not
opposed to strong-arming them into sticking with Huawei infrastructure.

------
vgoh1
I don't believe for a second that buying a phone installed with HarmonyOS will
ever be compelling to consumers. This is microkernel based, which makes me
believe that it's not an AOSP fork, which means having compatibility with
Android apps is not going to be straightforward. Think of the problems that
Amazon has had filling their app stores with quality ports, and they are only
selling tablets now because they are nearly giving them away for free, and
also have tight integration with Amazon services, which some people like.
PurityOS has a slight chance, but only if they can make it work within the
niche audience that they are targeting. Microsoft couldn't make a phone OS
work. Firefox couldn't make a phone OS work. It takes years to develop a
catalog of apps. If Huawei were truly to be using this as a backup, they would
need to start working on getting developers on their platform yesterday, not
"in the future".

~~~
addicted
HarmonyOS, if it is a decent OS, which is a huge IF, will have the advantage
of having a huge and fairly receptive Chinese market.

It better be open source at least if it wants to have any chance of being used
outside China though, and not just “open” source.

~~~
bad_user
> “open” source

Not sure what that means, but open source is pretty much irrelevant in this
market, for one because we already have Android and it doesn't help much.

If you want to fork Android, it's easy and except for Google's proprietary
services, like the notifications, you get compatibility with the entire
Android ecosystem out of the box.

So why is there no successful fork around, except for Amazon's, which is very
niche and doesn't count?

Open source is defined by the freedom to fork. However if the market forces
are such that forking isn't feasible, then the open source nature is
irrelevant.

Going back to your usage of quotes in "open" source, if that's what you meant,
well, unfortunately Huawei is not the FSF.

~~~
LaserToy
I would say, their source code should be available for anyone to see,
especially security researches. And what is installed on the phone should be
exactly what is available in public.

------
saagarjha
> The availability of the mobile operating system, which is open source

Where is the source?

~~~
bjoko
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20652966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20652966)

------
achow
The Huawei CEO said HarmonyOS can replace Android on its smartphones “at any
time,” but reiterated its previous commitments to Google’s platform.

[https://www.androidauthority.com/huawei-
harmonyos-1017511/](https://www.androidauthority.com/huawei-
harmonyos-1017511/)

------
lota-putty
Market monopoly is bad for the market's harmony.

Two non-colluding competitors are better than a monopoly; three better than
two.

Hypothesis: Anything more than a 33% market capture by a producer is bad for
consumers eventually.

------
k_sze
Since nobody has pointed it out yet, harmony = 和諧, which is a euphemism for
censorship in China.

And then there is 和諧 = 河蟹, which is an atonal homophonic euphemism for the
euphemism.

~~~
Max_Mustermann
Could you explain a bit more about the atonal euphemism? Is this a common
alternative to express a word in Mandarin?

~~~
RockmanX
The atonal euphemism is a common alternative to avoid automatic censorship of
various websites.

~~~
k_sze
Exactly. It’s a tongue-in-cheek that basically says that you need to
circumvent censorship when you want to talk about censorship.

By the way, I’m not a linguist and I just completely made up that usage of
“atonal homophone”. Could an actual linguist chime in and tell us what’s the
correct way to describe a “homophone” that doesn’t match in tone, in the
context of a tonal language like Chinese?

~~~
gok
It's usually still called a pun or homophone. Most puns in English don't
precisely match phonetics (especially stress) either.

------
JohnJamesRambo
I can’t think of anything I want less than Huawei smart home devices.

~~~
andwaal
Google smart home devices?

~~~
wazoox
Reminds me of the joke: "My wife asked me why I spoke so softly in the house.
I said I was afraid Mark Zuckerberg was listening! She laughed. I laughed.
Alexa laughed. Siri laughed. Google Voice Assistant laughed."

------
einpoklum
> The top executive also claimed that HarmonyOS’ microkernel has “one-
> thousandth the amount of code in the Linux kernel.”

Wow, really? A microkernel with a lot less code then a macrokernel? I'm
amazed!

Seriously, though, this is the writing of a clueless reporter with no editing.
Obviously, that executive was simply _explanining_ that the microkernel is
small.

Other than that - it would be nice if HarmonyOS were to become a properly FOSS
OS which can be relatively easily installed on phones with Android (Huawey or
otherwise).

------
baybal2
So, they finally decided that the connotation is "tricky" with Hongmen. The
transliteration in Pinyin sound close to informal name for black societies.
The "Secret Society OS" is not the best pick for an OS name when things happen
in Hongkong.

~~~
jimmydef
No native Chinese speaker will mistake 鸿蒙 (Hong Meng) for 洪门(Hong men) . And
no Non Chinese speaker will even know what is HongMen.

Don't know where you're going with this.

~~~
baybal2
Sure, the thing is much more about the part of population with richer
imagination.

I myself could not have imagined character 貓 being censored because of another
"Mao"

------
AFascistWorld
Warning everytime you send or browse unharmonious messages, reapeated
offenders will have their phones bricked, as this will be the most voted
feature on Weibo./s

Stating that this is not for smartphones just days ago, now they decided fuck
it why not?

------
turbinerneiter
So, was anybody able to find some source code for this allegedly Open Source
OS or the allegedly Open Source ARK compiler?

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Which open source license requires them to release the code _before_ the
product is even released?

~~~
turbinerneiter
Fair enough regarding Harmony, but what is up with ARK?

Check out this Google Search: [https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-
b-d&channel=tro...](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-
b-d&channel=trow&q=ark+compiler)

Pages upon pages parroting the Open Source claim, bot not a single line of
code in sight.

Ma issue here is with these news outlets parroting the Open Source claims.
Your stuff isn't Open Source until the sources are open.

~~~
dleslie
I think I found it.

[https://www.huaweicloud.com/kunpeng/software/ArkCompiler.htm...](https://www.huaweicloud.com/kunpeng/software/ArkCompiler.html)

~~~
tobiasu
Some strings:

/usr1/compiler_cpu/code/current/build/hcc_arm64le_ark/../../open_source/hcc_arm64le_build_src/gcc-7.3.0/configure
--build=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --target=aarch64-linux-
gnu --with-arch=armv8-a
--prefix=/usr1/compiler_cpu/code/current/build/hcc_arm64le_ark/arm64le_build_dir/gcc-
ark-7.3.0-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu --disable-multilib --disable-libmudflap
--enable-nls --disable-sjlj-exceptions --enable-gnu-unique-object --enable-
linker-build-id --enable-shared --with-arch=armv8-a --with-gnu-as --with-gnu-
ld --disable-libstdcxx-pch --enable-libstdcxx-time=yes --enable-lto
--enable-c99 --enable-clocale=gnu --enable-multiarch --enable-gnu-indirect-
function --enable-checking=release --enable-threads=posix --enable-plugin
--enable-long-long --with-pkgversion='Compiler CPU V200R005C00SPC030B003'
\--enable-languages=c,c++,fortran,lto --with-
headers=/usr1/compiler_cpu/code/current/build/hcc_arm64le_ark/arm64le_build_dir/gcc-
ark-7.3.0-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu/sysroot/usr/include --with-
sysroot=/usr1/compiler_cpu/code/current/build/hcc_arm64le_ark/arm64le_build_dir/gcc-
ark-7.3.0-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu/sysroot --with-build-
sysroot=/usr1/compiler_cpu/code/current/build/hcc_arm64le_ark/arm64le_build_dir/gcc-
ark-7.3.0-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu/sysroot --with-
gmp=/usr1/compiler_cpu/code/current/build/hcc_arm64le_ark/arm64le_build_dir/gcc-
ark-7.3.0-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu --with-
mpfr=/usr1/compiler_cpu/code/current/build/hcc_arm64le_ark/arm64le_build_dir/gcc-
ark-7.3.0-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu --with-
mpc=/usr1/compiler_cpu/code/current/build/hcc_arm64le_ark/arm64le_build_dir/gcc-
ark-7.3.0-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu --with-
isl=/usr1/compiler_cpu/code/current/build/hcc_arm64le_ark/arm64le_build_dir/gcc-
ark-7.3.0-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu
--libdir=/usr1/compiler_cpu/code/current/build/hcc_arm64le_ark/arm64le_build_dir/gcc-
ark-7.3.0-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu/lib64 --disable-bootstrap --enable-fix-
cortex-a53-835769 --enable-fix-cortex-a53-843419 --with-system-zlib

Nothing out of the ordinary at first glance. The tarball has your usual
compiler stuff (binutils, gold) and a standard linux sysroot with glibc.

Whatever "ARK" is, I don't see it.

~~~
floatboth
It might be just a gcc fork probably?

I mean, the current compilers from Arm and AMD are literally just clang forks…
why would anyone reinvent the wheel when you can just tune clang :)

------
07d046
There's also a bit of discussion on the link I posted, which got enough points
but never made it to the front page
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20651984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20651984)

------
me551ah
It doesn't matter if it's faster or has more features, it is hard to get a
foothold in the Smartphone market. Windows Phone was better than Android IMO,
it had a much cleaner UI ( Compared to Android 2.3), better battery management
and was much easier to develop. But at the end of the day , developers just
did not write apps for it.

HarmonyOS will end up in the same boat. Devs won't write apps for HarmonyOS
because it wouldn't have users and users wouldn't buy Huawei because it
doesn't have apps. It's a chicken and egg problem which is really hard to
solve.

------
paulriddle
There is a related thread with some discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20651984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20651984)

------
rqs
Before somebody show me the code or even just few screenshots other than
[https://www.huaweiupdate.com/screenshots-of-ark-os-the-
new-h...](https://www.huaweiupdate.com/screenshots-of-ark-os-the-new-huawei-
os/), I'm going to assume this OS is based on Microsoft PowerPoint.

I been watch related news since the first broke out, but I noticed all the
news was just like "OakOS will be a better OS", "Hongmeng OS will be the
Android killer", " HarmonyOS will be an alternative OS that can run on
anything".

"Will be" is a very empty word, and I want to see the real info.

~~~
toxik
Huawei has stolen technology from its Western competitors on multiple
occasions so I would not be surprised if they just stole most of Android and
said neener neener state-sponsored anticompetition

~~~
bad_user
Given AOSP, the core of Android, is open source, which is what allows forks to
exist, including Amazon's, what's the point in "stealing" from Android when
they can just use it legally?

Google's grip on Android is via Google Play. Replace Play with your own store,
replace Google's proprietary stuff (email, maps, notifications) and you've got
a ready to use fork.

It's really not that complicated for a big company.

All smartphone vendors could do it, except none of them have the capacity to
recreate Google's ecosystem that's being controlled via Play. It's why Windows
Phone was a complete failure.

Think about that for a second. If Microsoft couldn't bootstrap an app
ecosystem, most companies don't have any chance.

And I'm sure Huawei could, but will it take off outside of China? I doubt it.

------
xbeta
Given that it is an OS from a China-fund company, I would hesitate to use it
as much as I can away from surveillance.

It is almost guarantee that backdoor will be there.

~~~
deadbunny
Can't see them collecting much more than google do.

One has more influence over my life, the other is China.

~~~
apta
We see what China is doing to its Muslim minorities. Having a government like
that gain insight into the habits of people of other countries is probably not
the best idea.

~~~
scriptproof
We see what Muslim is doing to its China minorities.

------
Nexusone
Hackernews is full of prejudice against Chinese things.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Hacker news has 173 comments right now and my rough estimate is %20 are anti-
China without contributing anything new to the conversation.

The original article on Tech Crunch has 5 comments and 80% of them are
prejudiced against China with some slipping into racist territory.

So I would say that Hackernews lifts significantly out of the general cesspool
that is internet comments.

------
xvilka
Hopefully, they will rewrite it in Rust.

------
api
Just what I want, a phone OS from a less privacy conscious company (China,
Inc.) than Google.

------
Theodores
As an English speaking person I have a vested interest in operating systems
that are in English.

If Harmony OS takes over then I doubt the finer points of the documentation
will necessarily be in English.

I know there are many strong opinions on everything to do with China, but if
English is no longer the lingua-franca in tech then I will be blaming the
Trump regime and the three letter agencies for messing it up.

~~~
pjmlp
Even in IT, in certain world regions you would have better luck with some
variation of Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian as Lingua Franca than
English.

~~~
krageon
Most of the IT infrastructure most people would use at any point will have
documentation in English. I'm sure you could find isolated examples to the
contrary and no doubt those examples are sometimes also great software worth
using, but this is currently not the norm.

~~~
pjmlp
Then I have to tell you that in quite a few projects, the skill that the
clients were looking for was that besides my programming skills, I also master
a couple of human languages.

No documentation, comments written in native language and even identifiers are
not so uncommon across many corporations.

~~~
krageon
I never claimed otherwise, I said that this could be the case.

------
jotm
Well, it's the app selection that makes an OS, so if HarmonyOS can't run
Android apps, it's doomed. Even if Huawei dumps money into developers
(Microsoft tried that with Windows Phone).

