Review: Harmony OS

 by Kang Shen

Huawei has just revealed its new operating system HarmonyOS 2.0 on 2^nd June 2021. The name of the operating system came from the Chinese mythology, symbolizing chaos and the world before creation. The origin of the HarmonyOS could date back to 2012, but it was not officially introduced until August 2019.

HarmonyOS 1.0 was firstly used by Huawei’s smart TVs in 2019 for the Chinese market and the recent released version, HarmonyOS 2.0, is available for more devices including smartphones, smartwatches, and tablets.

The initial idea of developing HarmonyOS was to develop a mobile operating system that could replace Android on future Huawei devices while the HarmonyOS today is described as an embedded operating system for IoT (Internet of Things) hardware.

“We’re entering a day and age where people expect a holistic intelligent experience across all devices and scenarios. To support this, we felt it was important to have an operating system with improved cross-platform capabilities. We needed an OS that supports all scenarios, that can be used across a broad range of devices and platforms, and that can meet consumer demand for low latency and strong security.” said Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group.

What is HarmonyOS ?

HarmonyOS is an operating system that covers a wide range of devices, including IoT, smart home products, wearables and mobile devices for example, smartphones and tablets.

The idea of HarmonyOS is to use one set of code to satisfy the demands of different devices, whether big or small. The HarmonyOS can even be implemented on devices with as little as 128 KB of RAM. And today it is possibly the only operating system that has the capability of covering such a wide range of devices.

What can we do with HarmonyOS ?

“Super Device experience” - Inside the HarmonyOS there is a control panel that provides a drag-and-integrate feature, where users can manage and connect multiple devices through simple and intuitive operations based on their needs in different scenarios.

For example, when you are trying to film something from different angles, with HarmonyOS you can link a drone or an action camera to your mobile phone, after which you are then able to control all other cameras from other devices connected to capture views from different angles.

The connection can also be used for productivity. If devices running on HarmonyOS are linked altogether, files can be easily accessed from different devices. For example, you can use your tablet and stylus to directly work on a file on your PC, and also access materials saved on your phone as an attachment for your email on the computer.

What are the advantages of HarmonyOS?

By using distributed architecture and distributed virtual bus technology, developers are allowed to focus on their individual service logic which is more efficient. Apps built on HarmonyOS can automatically adopt to different layouts while running on different types of devices.

HarmonyOS uses a Deterministic Latency Engine which sets task execution priorities and time limits for scheduling in advance. As a result, latency of the operating system therefore is able to be reduced to a minimum to maximize the fluency.

HarmonyOS is the first OS to use formal verification in device TEE (Trusted Execution Environment), where security is significantly improved.